Baseball: Jacob Handley, Plainfield East score 8 runs in 7th to stun Yorkville, win first sectional title

YORKVILLE – Jacob Handley insisted that he had been mentally preparing for seven innings Friday for his time to come.

But who prepares for this?

The Plainfield East senior’s turn to come off the bench and pinch hit came with five runs already across the plate in the last inning, two on base and one out in the biggest baseball game in school history.

“I mean, it’s the end of the season, you have to focus, you have to concentrate, you have to keep it together,” Handley said, “and keep going.”

The Bengals still are going after an ending they’ll never forget.

Handley’s pinch-hit, two-run double brought in the go-ahead runs, and 13th-seeded Plainfield East scored eight runs in the top of the seventh to stun sixth-seeded Yorkville, 11-8, in a Class 4A sectional final in Yorkville.

As Plainfield East’s players gathered at home plate to pose with the school’s first sectional championship banner, one player asked “Did we really just put up an eight spot?”

Yes, they did.

Leadoff hitter Brady Louck’s two-run homer started the scoring in the seventh, and his RBI single – the fourth time he reached base Friday – ended an inning that was as improbable as a 13th seed winning a sectional.

“This team is just different. They don’t give up,” Plainfield East coach Adam O’Reel said. “We said it before we went out, we’re not going out like this. If we go down, we’re going to go down fighting.”

Yorkville (16-14-1), seeking its first sectional title since 2002, was three outs away after scoring four runs in the fifth inning and two more in the sixth for an 8-3 cushion. Lukas Haddox had the go-ahead two-run double in the fifth, and Kyle Mack, who reached base three times and had two hits, scored the tying run.

But Plainfield East’s first seven batters reached base, and scored, to start the seventh inning. Jacob Denton’s two-run double tied it 8-8.

“I’ve never seen a barrage of barreled-up hits so quickly,” Yorkville assistant coach Nick Leonard said. “I don’t know what we could have done. We still had the bottom of the seventh, but we gave up eight runs in 20 minutes. It’s hard to refocus.”

Yorkville starting pitcher Connor Corrigan allowed one earned run on five hits with six strikeouts, persevering through a 59-minute lightning delay in the top of the second inning, to navigate through six innings.

At 99 pitches, he finally gave way to reliever Ryan Shimp to start the seventh, but Corrigan was summoned back after the first five batters reached for Plainfield East (16-15). Corrigan pitched to four batters before exiting for the second time.

“He was going to pull me after the fifth inning and I just said ‘Give me the ball,’” Corrigan said, “and he told me I was done after the sixth inning. Bases loaded, zero out, it was tough. I was just thinking get ahead with my fastball and let my defense work.”

“Connor pitched well through six, we made a decision to put Shimp in to give him a clean inning, and they hit him hard,” Leonard said. “We figured, let’s try Connor again, he had 16 pitches left. He wanted it.”

O’Reel said Handley was his go-to guy to pinch hit in the seventh, even though it took nine batters to get to him.

“We held back earlier in the game when we could have used him, but I thought we might need it if we come back around,” said O’Reel, whose team advanced to face Brother Rice in Monday’s supersectional in Crestwood. “Handley is a senior, started the season slow, didn’t get a lot of time, we’ve been working him in, and he kind of became the guy that, ‘Hey, let’s find one job for you,’ and it became the bat. He’s a fastball-hunting guy.”

Senior Reid Erickson, a starter as a sophomore who emerged as Plainfield East’s closer this spring, got the win in relief in his first playoff appearance. He came on in relief of Gavin Schmitt in the fifth.

“He’s one of the most trusted guys we’ve had,” O’Reel said. “He is the most unselfish kid, his attitude is so great.”

For Yorkville, the devastating ending wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar finish to a game this week.

In Tuesday’s regional final, the Foxes led Plainfield North, 11-5, going into the seventh inning before holding on for an 11-10 win. Mack and Gavin Dobbels both reached base three times, Dobbels doubling in the tying run in the fifth inning and doubling in Owen Ross in the sixth for a 7-3 lead.

The Foxes, despite the disappointment Friday, still made the program’s furthest postseason advancement since 2002 – and a somewhat surprising one at that as a sixth seed.

“I hope this run validates what we’ve done and I hope these seniors realize how impactful they have been to the program,” Leonard said. “We’ve all lost our last game of high school, maybe not in that fashion, but it’s never easy. Hopefully a week, a month a year from now they can look back and realize what a fun run that was.”