Martin's late heroics key for Lockport

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For much of the regular season, junior Joe Martin shared the catching duties with senior Josh Stanton at Lockport High School.

Martin was viewed primarily as a platoon player with good skills and a promising future.

He delivered on that promise in Lockport's 4-2 baseball victory over Benet Academy in a 4A sectional semifinal on Thursday afternoon at Neuqua Valley's Bill Walsh Memorial Field.

Martin connected for a two-out, two-strike, two-run triple that snapped a 2-2 deadlock in the bottom of the sixth inning. His hitting heroics were indicative of how the Porters (22-9) battled to hang a tough-luck loss on one of the state's top-rated senior pitchers, Benet's fireballing Bryan Roberts.

The University of Illinois recruit was victimized in the early-going by a defensive breakdown. Lockport scored two runs on two hits and two Benet errors in the bottom of the first, Steve Sabatino poking a seeing-eye single up the middle through a drawn in infield to score both runs.

Roberts (9-2) battled back to retire 12 Lockport hitters in a row and 14 of 15 in a stretch that carried him into the sixth. The Redwings (23-14) tied the score with two unearned runs of their own in the top of the second, both scoring on Alex Staehely's two-out, two-run single.

Lockport busted through in the sixth -- but only after working through some tense moments.

Mike Aguilar doubled and moved to second when Sabatino drew an "unintentional" intentional walk. Roberts coaxed Matt Denton to pop out on a bunt attempt and retired Jon Cisna on a flyball to center field.

Up stepped Martin.

He worked the count to 1-1 before his knees buckled on a curve from Roberts. The pitch was ruled a ball. Then, after taking a fastball for a strike to even the count at 2-2, Martin went the opposite way with a pitch that hung up in the zone. He made like Minnesota Fats in his heyday at the billiards table, cueing a ball off the end of his bat that carried down the right field line and dropped out the reach of Benet's Mike Cunningham. He made an unsuccessful head-first diving attempt to come up with the ball as Martin motored into third.

Derek Crouch and Aaron Wiegmann -- who both went into the game as pinch-runners for Lockport -- scored on the play. Sabatino, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound left-hander who has worked to overcome an off-season shoulder injury, watched from the bullpen where he was warming up for his first appearance on the mound this season. He started throwing long-toss two weeks ago and was cleared to pitch by his doctor on Tuesday. And he came out of the bullpen throwing gas.

Sabatino struck out the side in the top of the seventh on 15 pitches -- all fastballs -- to gain his first save.

"He called one curveball," Sabatino said of the signs from Martin. "I shook him off. I was like, 'No more of that.' It felt unbelievable. My adrenalin is still going. I want to go back out there for another one. It feels great."

He could get that chance as soon as Saturday.

Lockport, with a pitching staff bolstered by the return of Sabatino and junior right-hander Brandon Duplessis, will face Neuqua Valley at 10 a.m. in the sectional final. Neuqua advanced with a 2-1 eight-inning victory over Lincoln-Way East on Wednesday.

"I didn't envision him striking out the side," Lockport coach Steve Stanicek said. "But I knew, probably about a week and a half ago, he started throwing a little bit on the side and slowly started feeling a little bit better. Our biggest concern was his command. Can he throw strikes after being out so long?

"When he came out, I thought he was a little too pumped up. We were trying to calm him down. But I'll tell you right now, when you put a guy like Steve Sabatino on the mound, who hasn't pitched all year, the energy around the whole ballpark, you could feel it. The kids felt it. Everybody in the stands could feel it. And he really came up big."

Sabatino signed with Notre Dame in November.

"You know, I'm going to see how it feels," he said of whether he could close again on short notice. "That's the first time I let it loose a little bit. Hopefully, if I take care of it -- the more I throw, the better it feels. I can feel my arm -- it's strengthening. Hopefully -- maybe -- I can get in for a one-inning stint. Whatever the coaches want, I'm there."

Martin prepared for his big at-bat vs. Roberts just like the rest of his teammates. He has been hitting batting practice pitches thrown from a distance of 10 or 15 feet away over the course of the last couple weeks.

"You know, we get a leadoff double (by Aguilar)," Sabatino said. "After I get walked, I came off (he was replaced by Wiegmann). I went down to the bullpen. I'm thinking, 'Just somebody get it down.' "

The bunt Sabatino was rooting for never fell. Martin's hit did.

"That's huge," Sabatino said. "He's stepped in a done a great job with the bat. As soon as that dropped, I started really getting in the zone."

Roberts peered in at the home plate umpire, clearly upset he didn't get the call on the curve to Martin the preceded his game-winning blow.

"It was 2-1, and he gave me a fastball next," Martin said. "I just felt like being patient. I waited for the next one and was doing what we've been doing all year -- going the other way. The pitch was a little up. But I got my hands around it."

"A huge hit," Stanicek said. "Joey's been swinging the bat very well. He and Josh Stanton have been platooning back-and-forth. But Joey's been swinging the bat so well that he's got to be in the lineup right now. And he comes up with the biggest hit of the year right there."

Duplessis (4-1) worked 2/3 of an inning in relief to gain the victory. Junior left-hander Jon Cisna started and did what Lockport's coaches asked of him. He gave the Porters a chance to win by tossing 5 1/3 innings of six-hit ball. He struck out two and walked two.

Roberts, who came in with an average of nearly two strikeouts an inning, fanned six and walked one. He allowed five hits.

"We've been very positive in terms of our hitting philosophy," Stanicek said. "Over the last three weeks, we've been swinging the bats very well. We've faced some quality pitching. We knew Roberts was going to be a quality guy. And we knew if we were going to chase a lot of his high fastballs we weren't going to be very successful.

"I thought we had a great approach at the plate. We didn't chase a lot of things up. We made him bring the ball down. And he's a little easier to hit when the ball's down."

Connor Reilly had three hits for Benet, one a bunt single in the sixth that turned into a disaster for the Redwings. Pinch-runner Larry Coffey made the turn at second on the play and hesitated just for an instant as he thought about breaking for third. He eventually was caught in a rundown and tagged out by Aguilar.

"The difference was they got the huge two-out hit," Benet coach Jeff Bonebrake said. "You couldn't cue the ball out there better. That's just baseball. I think we had the kid with two strikes, too, didn't we? But he put the ball in play."

Bonebrake played for Joliet Catholic Academy in the early-1990s. One of his teammates was a running back named Mike Alstott. He went on to play collegiately at Purdue before spending more than a decade setting rushing records in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Roberts is on the same kind of career path -- just in a different sport.

"We were maybe hoping to get eight to 10 strikeouts from him on this team," Bonebrake said. "I don't know what he ended up with -- six. He's had better days on the mound. But, again, coming off four days rest, the thing is, he couldn't make a mistake out there. Our inability to make plays hurt. You look at that first inning. We give up two runs on a couple errors. Maybe that changes the whole momentum of the game.

"It's tough for him to end on that note. But, I mean, there's no kid I've ever coached I'd rather have on the mound at that time."