Last Wednesday the Lake Forest Scouts Varsity baseball team suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Warren Blue Devils after conceding a six run lead in the last three innings. The Scouts were hoping to get revenge at home last Thursday, but the weather said otherwise. The game was called off and the Scouts were forced to wait until Saturday morning to give the Blue Devils some payback. The final game of the shortened series featured all of the attributes that make up an intense ball game. In fact, the game was tied at the end of the sixth. This time, however, there would be a seventh inning unlike Wednesday’s game.

The offensive action began in the second inning after Paul Turelli and Pasquale DeFilippis kept the game deadlocked at zero in the first. Jason Cast opened the Scouts’ scoring with an RBI double to center field, easily scoring Paul Turelli. After Jason Cast advanced to third on a ground out, Charlie Reinkemeyer singled to center field scoring Cast and giving the Scouts an early two run lead. That lead didn’t last long, though. The bottom half of the inning started with Turelli giving up his second walk of the game, which brought the tying run to the plate with no outs. Robert Archbold, who has been hitting .267 so this season, homered to right field to tie the game at two in the second. Paul Turelli would later make up for his mistake in the top of the third.

After Caleb Durbin led off the third with a single, the Warren Blue Devils quickly got two outs, but could not finish the inning cleanly. Turelli ripped a ground ball to the first baseman Ricky Lee, who couldn’t field the ball correctly, allowing him to reach safely and Durbin to score, giving the Scouts a 3-2 advantage. Still, Warren would not go away. After committing a game changing error, Ricky Lee made up for his mistake on offense when he scored Vic Perez on an RBI single to right field. The scoring would be put on hold after the third inning and the defense of each side shored up.

After 4 ⅓  solid innings of pitching with five strikeouts, Paul Turelli was pulled from the game and Coach Del Fava gave the ball to Will Woidat. The Scouts continued to prosper on defense, but they weren’t getting run support on offense to take control of the game. After Woidat registered three outs, Coach Del Fava decided to go with one of their top pitchers, Drew Golde, to keep Warren scoreless and rely on their offense to win the game. Lake Forest and Warren entered the final inning tied at three. This time however, the Scouts would not let this game slip away.

Charlie Reinkemeyer began the Scouts seventh with a bunt single throwing off the Warren infield. The following batter, Brian Heidbreder, walked on five pitches, which put a Scouts runner in scoring position with no outs. After Johnny Salm dropped a sacrifice bunt moving the two base-runners to second and third respectively, things got a little crazy. For the second time in the game, a Warren first baseman committed an error. This time it was Danny Ahn who committed a costly error allowing Reinkemeyer and Heidbreder to score and effectively giving the Scouts a 5-3 lead. Drew Golde continued to dominate in the bottom of the seventh as he struck out two batters and caught a pop up hit by Sam Deluca to seal the Scouts late inning victory. The Scouts went from heartbreak to celebration in the matter of one series.

As it appears on the box score, the Lake Forest Scouts won by two runs, but three of the five runs that the team scored came off of errors. The Scouts need to get runners in when they are in scoring position. There were a few cases in Saturday’s contest where the Scouts did in fact leave a couple runners in scoring position. If the Scouts can minimize the amount of runners that they leave on base, the future will be brighter for the club. Next up for Lake Forest is the Libertyville Wildcats. The Cats are currently 11-3 overall, so there will be no room for error tomorrow night for the Scouts. The game begins at 4:30 at West Campus as the Scouts look to take down their bitter rivals in their home opener.