FRANKFORT -- Joe Turek said his coach, Paul Babcock, "gets on me when I hit balls like that."
Only on this Tuesday afternoon, it could not have worked out better for Turek and his Lincoln-Way High School teammates.
The senior catcher lofted a sky-high fly ball to left field for what normally would have been the third out of the first inning. Instead, the vicious wind blowing out toward left took the ball away from Joliet left fielder Chad Carlson. It fell, the first two runs of the game scored and the Griffins went on to a 10-0 SouthWest Suburban victory.
Part of the reason for the final score was the wind did not quit. It carried junior shortstop Brandon Hohl's high fly to left -- and carried it some more, until it landed beyond the fence for a three-run home run, the key blow in a five-run fourth inning that put the game out of reach.
"Coach doesn't like me to hit high flies, but I guess you could say the weather helped us a little today," Turek said.
Hohl's home run?
"I didn't think at first that it was going to go out, but it would have gotten the job done," Turek said. "It would have been a sacrifice fly, which was what needed at that time."
The East scorebook recorded Turek's first-inning fly ball as a two-base error. Many scorers probably would have gone with a wind-blown, two-run double.
It did not really matter. The next two times at bat, Turek smoked hot singles to left-center field, the latter driving in a run, and he walked in his fourth at-bat.
Other than that, all he did was catch the six-inning shutout of junior left-hander Dietrich Enns, who allowed five hits, struck out seven and walked two.
"Dietrich was all right, but he was not completely on his game," Turek said. "He fought through it."
"A lot of times Dietrich got behind, but he got outs after he got behind," Babcock noted.
The problems for JT (8-4, 2-1) began before Enns threw the first pitch. An accident on Route 45 near the East campus snarled traffic, which included the Steelmen bus. It arrived late, and the 4:30 p.m. game began at 4:55.
The game's first batter, Matt Porter, had one of those high-quality at-bats. He fouled off one pitch after another, and finally, on the 10th pitch he saw, he singled to left.
"Their leadoff hitter did a heck of a job -- it seemed like he hit a dozen foul balls -- and Dietrich kept after him," Babcock said.
But the Steelmen could not execute the sacrifice, and the inning ended harmlessly. Then came East's wind-blown 2-spot in the bottom of the inning, and the rest of the afternoon was not exactly what JT had in mind.
"They're a good team," Steelmen coach Terry Piazza said. "You can't come out and make mistakes against a team like this.
"Porter has the good at-bat to lead off, and we can't get the bunt down. So instead of us jumping ahead, we're staring at not being able to execute."
Tom Lilja, who had three of the 10 hits for East (9-3, 3-1), singled with two outs in the second, stole second and third and scored when catcher Mike Hollenbeck's throw attempting to pick Hohl off first went into right field. That gave the Griffins a 3-0 lead as the pitches continued to mount for JT right-hander Edgar Silva.
Silva struck out the final two hitters to end a Griffins' threat in the third, but by then he already had thrown 80 pitches. In the fourth, the roof caved in as Matt Lysik doubled to deep center, Lilja singled and Hohl launched his three-run homer to knock out Silva. Two more runs scored on Turek's single and Cody Erikson's double off the center-field fence against reliever Justin Rogers.
That made it 8-0, and the Griffins ended it in the sixth when Lysik was hit by a pitch to drive in a run and Lilja ripped an RBI single up the middle.
"The wind didn't make the difference," Piazza said. "They hit the ball well and we didn't. They hit it on the nose for the most part, and our hardest hit ball probably was the one off the shortstop's glove in the last inning. It was the perfect recipe for a loss."
The Steelmen got two runners on after two outs in the second inning, and again in the fourth. Each time, a strikeout ended the mild threat.
In the sixth, they had runners on first and second with two outs when Matt Heizer rapped the hard groundball that deflected off shortstop Hohl's glove and into the air. Piazza waved Zak Horvat around in an attempt to break up the shutout, but Hohl recovered the ball and threw a strike to Turek, who put the tag on Horvat.
The play preserved Enns' shutout as the Griffins would end it on the 10-run rule in the bottom of the inning.
"Every win is important with our conference as tough as it is," Babcock said. "Terry (Piazza) has a good program, and they've got some monster kids over there. We knew we couldn't take them lightly at all."
"This was one we needed -- 3-1 in the conference sounds a lot better than 2-2," Turek said. "We had the rough conference loss to Sandburg (5-1 on April 6), but otherwise we have really been smoking the ball lately. One through nine, this is a good lineup to hit in."
"We still have areas we have to improve on," Babcock said. "For instance, I thought the first infield we took of the season was our best so far. But as long as we have confidence in ourselves and work hard, the rest will come."
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