By Greg Tartaglia – Record Sports
EMERSON – Park Ridge coming within an out of a mercy-rule victory was surprising.
Emerson scoring nine runs in the bottom of the seventh to force extra innings was stunning.
And Joe Carmosino’s two-out, RBI single in the bottom of the ninth that gave the Cavos a 14-13 win and their second North 1, Group 1 baseball title in three years? Well, as Friday evening set in at Jim “Doc” Sweeney field, no adjectives remained.
“We just won the sectional final,” Carmosino said before speechlessness simply took over.
No. 4 seed Emerson (19-8) trailed twice entering its last at-bat, 11-2 in the seventh and 13-11 in the ninth. Senior Robbie Leuck evened things at 13 with a one-out, two-run triple, then scored the game-winner.
The Cavos advanced to Tuesday’s Group 1 state semifinal against North 2 champ Glen Ridge (12-13).
Whereas pitchers ruled the day in Emerson’s 12-inning, 2-1 victory at top-seeded Wood-Ridge in the semifinals three days earlier, pitching limitations came in to play versus No. 7 Park Ridge (16-10).
Carmosino tossed five innings in the former game and had 74 pitches available for the latter but was chased in the fourth as the Owls built an 8-0 lead.
“My arm was feeling pretty good, but toward the end, it kind of just started to slow down,” the sophomore right-hander said.
Park Ridge starter Cole Triano had allowed two runs on three hits through six innings. His team took an 11-1 lead in the top of the sixth to make the 10-run mercy rule a possibility, but Emerson scratched out one in the home half on a walk, an error and two sacrifice flies to extend the game.
“That kid Cole Triano threw a [heck] of a game,” Cavos coach Chris Sommerhalter said. “He was shutting us down the entire time, but the pitch-count rule worked in our favor [Friday].”
With one out in the seventh, Triano reached his 110-pitch limit while facing Leuck, who hit what seemed, at the time, to be an innocuous RBI double.
“I thought it was my last at-bat ever,” Leuck said, “and I just wanted to make the best out of it.”
Then the Owls went to their bullpen, and the floodgates opened.
Eight batters later, the Cavos had the tying run on third after closing the gap to 11-10, and Andrew Braham (two doubles, two RBI) scored to tie it on a balk.
Jonny Meyer and Triano each drove in a run after the visitors loaded the bases in the top of the ninth, and Meyer stepped up to pitch the final 2⅓ innings despite not being listed as a pitcher on the Owls’ roster.
“We couldn’t put them away,” Park Ridge coach Pete Crandall said. “We had a chance in that sixth inning to get two more runs. If those runs turn out, we could have ended it in six… we ran out of pitching.”
Owls ace Dylan Triano was ineligible to throw after Thursday’s complete-game shutout of North Warren in the semifinals, and senior Justin Kuron was unavailable as well.
Nick Delpome (3⅔ innings, three runs) and Brandon Steidl (two innings, two runs) pitched out the game for the Cavos. Sophomore leadoff man Pete Durocher finished 3-for-6 for the second straight game and added two RBI.
“Things weren’t looking good, but something just happened,” Sommerhalter said. “There was energy in the dugout, even though we were down by nine. They still had life in there and still believed.”
