Pitching helps Huskies win battle of Oak Park

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The bar is set pretty high for Oak Park baseball, which is OK with Luke McLeese.

In fact, the rising senior is doing whatever he can to raise it.

"We're showing the new guys just [what] Oak Park tradition is and it's a good start, going downstate for the summer," McLeese said Thursday.

He had plenty to do with the Huskies qualifying for next week's Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association summer state tournament as he shut down host Fenwick en route to a 4-1 regional final win.

"He keeps the ball down in the zone," Oak Park coach Chris Ledbetter said of the right-hander. "A lot of high school kids don't like it when a kid can move it in and out. He moved it up and down a little bit, but mostly stayed down, in and out. And he changed speeds.

"It's successful at any level of baseball if you change speeds and change location."

No doubt: McLeese limited the Friars (16-5) to four hits. That wasn't even the biggest stat in Fenwick coach Dave Hogan's mind, however.

"When you look [at] the guys who are hitting .350 to .400 [and] you only get one hit from the top six guys [in the lineup], that's not gonna cut it," Hogan said. "Their pitcher was just keeping us off balance. You've got to give him credit."

That was exactly McLeese's plan, to leave the Friars guessing. An effective changeup helped, as did a pretty good idea of his opponents' tendencies.

"We played ball with a lot of these kids since we were 5 or 6," he said, "and we see a lot of these kids from travel teams."

The Huskies (20-6) staked McLeese to an early lead, scoring once in the first and two in the second off Fenwick starter George Kinsella.

Will Polley and Joe Gerace slugged solo homers for Oak Park, which also had an RBI hit from Sam Picchiotti and a sacrifice fly from Jo Jo Maldanado.

Fenwick couldn't counter, thanks to the efforts of McLeese.

"Hitting is contagious and so is not hitting," Hogan said. "I knew we had a situation when we had three strikeouts in the second inning."

With Kyle Glancy (9-4), Drew Golz (8-1) and Scott Rasley (4-3) all graduated from Oak Park's Class 4A state runner-up team, McLeese is one of the few Huskie hurlers back with much varsity experience.

"They lost some pitchers, but Oak Park and LT [Lyons], they don't skip a beat," Hogan said. "They just replace."

And keep raising the bar.

mclark@chicagosuntimes.com