As Sam Pattison rounded third for home after his first-inning home run Tuesday afternoon, his Lake Central teammates streamed out of the dugout and pounced on him as he crossed home plate, hopping and hollering in jubilation.
"I didn't like all the emotion we showed on the first run," Indians coach Jeff Sandor said. "I was worried we'd get too high too quick."
Indeed, by the time Steve Letz's two-run single to left field drove in Brandon Cloutier and Matt Siedentopf with the game-winning runs in the bottom of the seventh of No. 7 Lake Central's rollicking 13-12 victory over No. 1 Crown Point, that first run was barely a distant memory.
Because in between, there were four lead changes, countless momentum swings, six combined errors and about three hours of wild, woolly and windy baseball madness.
"It just feels great beating Crown Point, the No. 1 team," said Letz, who was 3-for-5 with a home run and five RBI. "It doesn't really get much better than that."
A few weeks ago, Letz came pretty close, though. Facing the No. 2 team in the state, LaPorte, he came up in the seventh inning with runners at second and third, facing a 5-3 deficit.
He struck out.
But against Crown Point's Mike Manion -- who was shelled for the first 32/3 innings but utterly dominant over the last three, briefly replaced on the mound for five batters in between -- Letz came up huge. With the bases loaded and one out, he took a second-pitch fastball and drilled it into left field to drive in the winning two runs.
"I know he wanted to be in that situation again," Sandor said. "He that that opportunity at LaPorte, and he had a chance to redeem himself tonight. And I'm happy he did."
Lake Central (13-1, 6-1 Duneland) was in control for most of the game -- leading 2-0 after one inning, 9-3 after three and 11-8 going into the final inning. But the Bulldogs (14-2, 5-2) have a history of torturing their biggest rivals, and were on the verge of one of the cruelest ones yet until Letz's heroics.
In the top of the seventh, against promising Lake Central sophomore Jimmy McNamara -- in a situation unlike he's ever faced before -- Colin Casey doubled and Scott Donley singled. Then, with one out, Jeff Limbaugh hit a monstrous three-run home run over the left-field scoreboard, clear to Dyer (the town line lies just beyond the fence) to tie the game. He hit it so hard, Coutier didn't even have to turn around in left field.
As the game approached the three-hour mark, and the sun got low in the sky, Sandor's mind briefly drifted to the unforgettable three-day debacle these two teams played a couple years ago, when darkness, tie games and DAC rules forced the game to be restarted twice.
"I thought it was going to go forever," Sandor said.
But the very next batter, Josh Negele, hit a high fly ball to left center that the fierce wind pushed all the way over the fence for a stunning 12-11 Crown Point lead.
"You saw a couple heads bob (on the bench), with an, 'Oh, (bleep),'" Sandor said. "But I don't think anybody on that field ever gave up."
Cloutier started the one-out rally in the bottom of the seventh with a double to left, Siedentopf followed by drawing a walk and Pattison was hit by a pitch to set the stage for Letz, who made the most of his second chance for a huge hit against a top team.
"Anytime you're in that situation, the nerves get to you, it's all going through your mind really fast," he said. "You just have to keep your composure and hit the ball."
The ferocious wind wreaked havoc all day, as the teams combined for six errors and several more misplays in the outfield. It played a big factor in Lake Central's seven-run third inning, in which Letz's three-run homer was the big blow.
"It was terrible," said Letz, a right fielder. "The wind was throwing everything off in the outfield. Anything high you couldn't judge, because you didn't know where the wind was going to take it. During the course of the game, you realize how strong the wind is and how to play the hitters."
And as Crown Point coach Steve Strayer put it, "They adapted better than we did."
Cody Dykema also homered for Lake Central, driving in two runs. Cloutier was 3-for-5 with two runs scored. Manion struck out 12 batters -- eight of them over the final three-plus innings. Limbaugh was 3-for-4 with five RBI and three runs scored, and Negele scored four times for Crown Point.
Strayer was pleased with the Bulldogs' effort over the final four innings, but was bitterly disappointed that it took a 9-3 deficit to spark the surge. He said the Bulldogs were timid, playing "not to lose," and that it cost them in the end.
"We have the potential to be good, but we're not right now," he said. "... Being down six runs, they changed. But I don't understand why you have to go down by six runs to play baseball, to compete. We knew Lake Central was a very good baseball team coming in here, so to come in and approach the game the way we did today, it turns my stomach."
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