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LOCKPORT – It is 9:04 p.m. on June 11, 2005, at Kane County Stadium in Geneva.
The Class AA baseball state tournament championship game is winding down. Lockport leads Mount Carmel, 8-4, with two outs in the top of the seventh inning.
Matt Otteman is on the mound for Lockport, first baseman Travis Sterling at the plate for Mount Carmel. Otteman delivers and Sterling pops up the pitch in the direction of Porters first baseman Chris King. When the ball lands in King’s glove, coach Jim Hall and his Porters are Illinois’ 2005 Class AA state champions.
“Pure joy! The whole game from the fourth inning on was a blur for me,” Otteman said. “I remember making the final pitch and seeing that Chris King was under the popup. It was amazing. Pure joy!
“I have two rings, one from the Seattle Mariners and my championship ring from 2005 with the Porters. Lockport is my family and always will be. I cherish this ring most of all.”
Almost 10 years have passed. The young men who hoisted the championship trophy were honored with their coaches at a festive pregame ceremony Friday night before Lockport’s Southwest Suburban Blue game with Stagg at Ed Flink Field.
Hall, a USA Baseball National Hall of Fame coach, was honored along with his longtime friend and Porters pitching coach Butch Markelz. Associate coach Lee Turnbough was cited along with former Lockport skipper Steve Stanicek, who was on the staff in 2005.
Longtime Porters associate coach Ken Dobson and current head coach Andy Satunas were honored, too. Kendall Hutchinson, Dan Blaskovitz, Matt Barkley, Dave Jeglinski and Frank Popek rounded out the state championship staff. Trainers Joe Cunnane and Sarah Barr also were mentioned, playing a vital role for the team.
REMEMBERING ZACH
On a sad note, the memory of 2005 captain Zach Lammers was honored with a moment of silence. He died Aug. 4, 2014. Lammers also was an outstanding receiver for the 2002 and 2003 Class 8A football state champions. He attended Brown University and played football his freshman year. Satunas presented Lammers’ parents, Tom and Yumi, with a plaque honoring their son.
“The 2005 state champs were an amazing group of talented athletes who pulled together and worked hard and won the state championship,” Hall said. “We finished third in the summer of 2004, and I knew we had a good chance to win it all in the spring.
“Only once did I address the team about winning the state championship. It was before our first game with Lemont. I told them we all have to pull together, and we can win a state championship, as the football team did in 2002 and 2003.”
The 2005 Porters finished 40-3. They won the South Inter-Conference Association West and 17 wins of their 40 wins were against conference champions. They hit .467 as a team, scored 390 runs and hit 45 home runs.
Otteman was the leader. He went 12-0 with a 0.67 ERA, striking out 115 batters in 84 innings. He also batted .587 with four homers and 43 RBIs. He struck out 10 in a 6-2 quarterfinal victory over Schaumburg and pitched three innings to save the title game for starting pitcher Ed Krupa (7-2).
Otteman had an outstanding college career at the Texas-Arlington, setting the school record for hits in a season as a senior. He was drafted by the Mariners and played in their organization for several years.
STERNBERG ON FIRE
June 11, 2005, was a great day in the life of the Porters’ Eric Sternberg. He had three hits, one his 10th homer, and drove home seven runs in a 15-1 blowout of Barrington in Saturday morning’s semifinal. After Jake Christensen singled to tie the state title game with Mount Carmel at 2, Sternberg hit a three-run home, his team-high 11th, for a 5-2 lead.
Sternberg finished the season hitting .457 with 59 RBIs. He went on to a football career at Truman State, where he was team captain his junior and senior years.
Nick Mitidiero led the Porters with a .621 average and had four homers and 43 RBIs. He starred at Triton for two years and was All-Missouri Valley his junior and senior years at Bradley.
“I was the least excited after the final out of the championship game of anyone on the team because I knew we were going to do it,” Mitidiero said. “We were so good. One through nine, there wasn’t an out in our lineup. Our bench players were as talented as our starters. And with Matt Otteman and the rest of our pitchers, there was no one that could beat us.
“We were family. We were friends. I had a fine career at Bradley, but never found the chemistry and friendship that I found here at Lockport.”
Christensen hit .500 with eight homers and 47 RBIs.
He then had a college football career at quarterback for Iowa and Eastern Illinois.
“I won two state championships in football prior to the state championship in baseball and it just wasn’t the same,” Christensen said. “On that awesome night, we lost our minds when we won that state championship in baseball. After being so close so many times, it was an amazing experience. We really pulled for each other and the competition we had among each of us made us all better. We had an unbelievable lineup and we were a family and it was a great experience.”
How about Bryan Blaskovitz’s homer in the quarterfinal against Schaumburg?
King had just cut a 2-0 Schaumburg lead in half with an RBI single in the top of the fifth. Blaskovitz followed with a three-run homer to left that gave the Porters a 4-2 lead en route to their 6-2 victory. Blaskovitz went on to play at Eastern Illinois.
“The key to our success was our camaraderie,” Blaskovitz said. “After we lost to Glenbard West, our third and last defeat, we really pulled together. On the final play of the state championship, I was at shortstop and seeing that Chris King was under the ball – he never dropped anything – we knew the game was over. I looked at my teammates, looked at my family in the stands and it truly was an incredible feeling to have accomplished our goal.”
It was an amazing time at Lockport with the football team winning back-to-back Class 8A football state championships in 2002 and 2003. Kent Irvin, the former athletic director, summed it up best.
“We have been blessed with great students, great parents, great coaches and most of all talented athletes,” he said. “To work with our Hall of Fame coach, Jim Hall, was an absolute treat. No one in the coaching profession worked any harder than Jim. Our success was achieved because it is all about family at Lockport.”