Ryan Ganser messed up, and he knew it.
When the opportunity for redemption presented itself, he was not about to let it slip away.
Ganser belted a double over the head of right fielder Matt Porter to drive home pinch-runner Shane Paty with the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning as Providence slipped past Joliet 3-2 Friday in the opening round of the WJOL Area Baseball Invite at Plainfield South.
Ganser's heroics vaulted the No. 10 Celtics (5-0) into Saturday's 10 a.m. semifinal against Lockport, a 2-1 winner over Plainfield Central in eight innings. JT (4-2) will meet Central at 12:30 p.m. in the consolation semifinals.
Both teams have one more game after that. Providence will head to Silver Cross Field for either the third-place game at 4 p.m. or the title game at 6:15. Joliet will remain at South for either the fifth-place or seventh-place game, both of which will begin at 3.
Actually, Ganser was not alone in earning a talking-to from coach Mark Smith. Paty, too, was guilty.
Earlier in the game, with Providence leading 1-0 and threatening to get more, Ganser failed to get the bat on the ball on a suicide squeeze attempt, and runner Tom Barry was hung out to dry.
"The pitch was low and in the left-handed hitter's box," the right-handed hitting Ganser explained.
"I thought it was a poor effort at a squeeze, and I told him that," Smith said. "The thing is, there wasn't a person here who saw it coming. It wasn't a great attempt on his [Ganser's] part, but he came up big at the end."
As for Paty, Smith said he ran through the coach's stop sign on the game-ending double, which came with one out.
"Their second baseman had the ball [on the relay] before Paty touched third," Smith said. "He actually didn't get a good read. We were lucky the ground was soft in the infield, so the throw did not skip in hard. That helped us."
All's well that ended well for the Celtics and senior left-hander Casey Webber, who was locked in a chilling, seven-inning duel with JT senior right-hander Edgar Silva.
"It was a typical game when we play JT," said Smith, whose team tied the Steelmen in the last year's WJOL Invite title game and rallied to beat them 4-3 in this year's season opener. "I love Terry [Piazza, the JT coach]. He's a great coach and a good friend. But I wouldn't mind if we didn't see him again this year."
"It's always a dogfight when we play those guys," Ganser said. "They're a great team."
"Last year, the beginning of this year, yeah, they're definitely a tough team," Webber said.
JT managed six hits off Webber (2-0), who struck out eight and walked nobody. Silva also went the distance, allowing four hits and striking out eight. Silva (0-1) walked one and hit two batters, and those were the three Celtics who wound up scoring.
"Silva did not deserve to lose this game," Piazza said. "But he did walk a hitter and hit two, and those guys scored. They took advantage of the opportunities we gave them. We can't afford to do that with the way we're not scoring runs."
Providence's Chuck Triana walked with one out in the bottom of the second. Barry singled and junior catcher Kyle Thomas also singled to knock in Triana and make it 1-0. But the Steelmen escaped further damage thanks to the squeeze attempt going awry.
JT took its only lead 2-1 in the fourth. Zak Horvat and Silva singled, and Chad Carlson delivered a two-run double to right.
"I missed my spot there, and the ball went flying," Webber said.
"That was clutch on Chad's part, giving us the lead there," Piazza said. "And then we had another opportunity the next inning with a man on second, one out and our top two hitters coming up. But we popped up and hit a soft little liner to shortstop, and we didn't score there."
Providence had evened things 2-2 in the bottom of the fourth on a hit batsman, wild pitch, dropped third strike and Barry's RBI groundout. Things would stay that way until Ganser's heroics.
"In close games like this, the team that makes more mistakes usually loses," Piazza said. "We didn't take care of business in a couple of situations.
"They played well defensively, and we have a lot of things we have to work on. When you're not scoring runs, the small things add up."
Ganser said he knew he had hit his game-winning double on the nose.
"I went smooth through the zone and didn't feel it," he said, noting what hitters feel all too often in cold weather. "He [Silva] threw me a fastball low and on the outside corner. That's a pitch I like to hit."
Not many hitters appeared comfortable facing Silva or Webber, not in Friday's conditions.
"It definitely was a big advantage for the pitchers today," Webber said. "Coach [Smith] told me to stay right on their hands, and that's what I did."
"Casey was aggressive," Smith said. "He threw a changeup in the first inning, and I said, 'You can't do that today. You have to go after them.' He missed his spots a couple times, but for the most part, he threw real well.
"Silva did a heck of a job, too. He is going to do some good things for them."
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