By Greg Tartaglia / Record Sports
Twins Cole and Dylan Triano enter their senior year at Park Ridge having led the school’s baseball team to the North 1, Group 1 championship game this past spring.
That the 16-10 Owls were one out away from a mercy-rule victory in the sectional final has been somewhat forgotten in the wake of an historic comeback by their opponent. Longtime rival Emerson staged a nine-run bottom of the seventh and won in nine innings, 14-13.
Cole Triano opts to take the same approach as the Atlanta quarterback who watched his team’s 25-point, fourth-quarter lead dissolve in Super Bowl LI a few months earlier.
“I’ve seen that Gatorade commercial with Matt Ryan [about using defeat as motivation], and I think about being on the wrong side of the biggest comeback,” Triano said. “And I just can’t wait for next year, because we all have something inside us that we’re just going to unleash.”
Cole, the elder of the 17-year-old duo by one minute, could be described as a shortstop who also pitches. Dylan, who stands the same 6-foot-1 as his brother, is the team’s pitching ace who also plays first base.
“Throughout our childhood, it’s always been, Cole’s more of the fielder/hitter kind of player, I’m more of the pitcher,” Dylan said. “But it can go vice versa.”
History bears out in the stats. Dylan Triano had the lower earned-run average (1.34 compared to 3.80) in a 7-3 season that featured 62 strikeouts and only 17 walks in 57 ⅔ innings pitched.
Cole carried the higher batting average (.353 versus .288) and led Park Ridge with 24 runs scored, adding 13 RBI.
The Owls’ best defensive alignment was with Cole Triano at shortstop and his brother on the mound. Dylan tossed three-hitters in the North 1, Group 1 first round and semifinals, respectively, the latter a 2-0 shutout of North Warren that put the seventh-seeded squad into the final.
“Going into the playoffs, our town and others didn’t really have any expectations for us to make it far,” he said. “But we knew we had the talent, and we knew we belonged there.”
With the sectional final occurring 24 hours after the North Warren win due to weather delays, Cole Triano was the only one of the Owls’ three main hurlers eligible/available to go to the state-mandated limit of 110 pitches. He did so in 6 ⅓ innings before exiting with an 11-3 lead.
“I came out and went back to shortstop, and there was no thought in my mind that we weren’t winning,” he said. “It was a really good feeling going on, and it slowly just went away.”
Emerson made it 11-all to force extra innings, though Park Ridge did respond by taking a two-run lead in the top of the ninth before the Cavos walked off.
“It’s probably the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life when that game ended,” Cole said. “There’s probably not a day that I don’t think about it at least a little bit, and it just eats my insides.”
That is what the Trianos and their five rising senior teammates are using to fuel their preparation for 2018.
Between now and then, the twins continue to play for their summer showcase team, the Jersey Seminoles, and have fall ball on the docket as well. They are currently undecided on colleges and are not averse to taking separate paths after graduation.
“We want to try and go to different colleges to see what it’s like,” Cole said, “but we always have a common bond and similar interests in the end.”
