Bennet Baumann’s walk-off single gives McHenry outright FVC title

McHENRY – Ten innings of baseball, covering two days, isn’t long.

Long is the flowing hair of McHenry junior Bennet Baumann. It reaches the bottom of the two digits – 3 and 0 – on the back of his jersey.

“Last year I cut it, actually,” Baumann said. “It used to be down [to the waistline], but probably not ever again.”

Long is the amount of time McHenry waited to win the Fox Valley Conference championship.

McHenry’s 3-2, 10-inning victory over Prairie Ridge on Monday – in which Baumann played hero thanks to a pinch-hit, opposite-field, two-out, walk-off single – gave the Warriors the outright FVC title.

They last won the conference in 2011.

“It means the world,” McHenry coach Brian Rockweiler said. “We’ve talked about it since the first day, and these guys never wavered from [the goal]. So it feels good.”

Championships require team efforts, and that’s what McHenry (27-4-1, 15-3) needed to beat Prairie Ridge (24-8-1, 13-5), which had to defeat the Warriors to earn a share of the FVC title in retiring coach Glen Pecoraro’s final season with the Wolves.

The FVC finale for both teams started Friday and was suspended because of darkness after eight innings with the score tied 2-all. McHenry had beaten Prairie Ridge two days earlier to clinch a share of the title.

Scotty Cole, McHenry’s third pitcher, started on the mound Monday and earned the win, striking out three of the seven batters he faced. He allowed one single in his two innings of work.

Pecoraro handed the ball to ace Riley Golden, the Wolves’ fourth pitcher, who walked the first batter he faced in the bottom of the ninth. The Wolves intentionally walked Kaden Wasniewski to get a lefty-vs.-lefty matchup with Golden and Conner McLean, and McLean grounded out to end the threat with runners on second and third.

Kyle Maness (2 for 4) led off the McHenry 10th by doubling down the right-field line. Golden retired the next two batters, before walking Donovan Christman.

Rockweiler then sent up the 6-foot-5, 175-pound Baumann to hit for catcher A.J. Chavera.

“He didn’t even get to take BP today,” Rockweiler said of Baumann. “We just had the guys who were probably going to play take some BP, and we had a couple of extra guys who didn’t. Just the way things happened, I had a feeling. [Baumann] has been in that spot a couple of times this year, [and] he’s hit the ball hard.”

Baumann’s role this season mainly has been as a pinch hitter. He also pitches and plays first base, but is not a starter.

“All of my at-bats have been pinch hits, so I was comfortable knowing that I was going to go in,” Baumann said. “I only had to put the ball in play, I knew that, and I got it in play.”

Baumann worked the count to 2-2, before delivering what he thinks was his fifth pinch-hit single of the season. Maness scored easily from second base, as the ball landed fair down the right-field line.

“We tell these guys when they’re pinch-hitting, ‘Let’s attack,’ ” Rockweiler said. “The second pitch he swung at was probably above his head, but who cares? You’re going in there to do a job.”

Baumann’s hit was only the fifth for McHenry, which had only a single through seven innings. Prairie Ridge had 10 hits, including three by Karson Stiefer (triple) and two apiece by Conner Pollasky (double) and Connor Innis.

It was the longest game of the season for either team.