Ryan's defensive gem sparks Chargers

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For Dundee-Crown second baseman Kyle Ryan, it wasn’t a case Monday of being in the right place at the right time.

Rather, Ryan found himself in the wrong place at the right time, and as a result he was able to pull of a fielding gem to preserve the Chargers’ 8-7 comeback victory over McHenry in Fox Valley Valley play.

Ryan leaped and snared a hot line drive up the middle struck by McHenry’s Joe Ray, then dove for second base and tagged the bag a fraction of a second before Pat Murphy could get safely back to complete an unassisted game-ending double play.

“He likes to hold the runner at second base probably a little too close to the base and that’s why he was there to make the catch,” Dundee-Crown coach Jon Sawyer said. “It was a great play and he was heads up enough to get the second out, too.”

Ryan had struck out looking with the chance to expand D-C’s lead in the bottom of the sixth after teammate Kirk Hanselmann capped the Chargers’ rally from a 7-1 deficit with a go-ahead RBI single to left field that scored Willy Larsen.

“I had struggled at the plate,” Ryan said. “We were in double-play coverage and I was thinking I had to make a play for our team.

“I knew I had a chance to get the catch, but I didn’t know if I could get the guy at second. But I saw him leading off and I was (thinking), ‘I’m going to get him,’ and I dove and got him.”

The Chargers picked themselves up after starting pitcher Zach Vodicka got hit for back-to-back-to-back home runs during a six-run McHenry first inning.

Murphy smashed a two-out, three-run home run to center field after Justin Diedrich had singled in a run. Then Colin Hansen and Ray hit home runs, Hansen’s deep to center and Ray’s on a line over the lower left-center fence for a 6-0 lead.

Sawyer thought the Chargers (6-19, 3-7) should have been out of the inning before the rally on a play that went for an infield hit.

“When you have a couple bad plays and it leads to a big inning, it’s pretty easy to get demoralized and give up, but they kept on having the right approach at the plate,” Sawyer said. “We told them that with the wind blowing out like it was, if you keep the right approach you’re going to see some stuff.”

They did, starting in the first when Brendon Schumacher singled in Jake Romano. Although McHenry (19-11, 6-5) got that back in the third when reliever Chris Sailor (3-2) allowed a two-out RBI single to Mike Canevello, the Chargers puled within 7-3 in the third on Schumacher’s double and Chris Leifel’s home run to left.

Larsen singled in two runs in the fourth to make it 7-5. Then Hanselmann, who had three hits, homered to left-center over the scoreboard in the fifth, causing McHenry to pull Canevello.

But the rally wasn’t done as Ryan walked and came around on Ethan Finn’s game-tying RBI double to left off Jordan Oster.

Larsen singled, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored on Hanselmann’s game-winning RBI in the sixth off loser Josh Conway.

The hit made a winner of Sailor, who relieved Vodicka with two out in the second and successfully dodged trouble the rest of the way. McHenry had runners in scoring position three times and runners on base every inning, but Sailor yielded five hits and only the third-inning run.

“I was just hitting the zone, making good pitches and keeping it off-speed so they would pop up and hit ground balls,” Sailor said. “We knew we could come back after they got the lead. When we first got in the dugout I could tell the feeling wasn’t there right away, but after that inning we got up and we started back right away. When they started out with three homers, we were bound to get one or two.”