For all Libertyville senior outfielder Carson Holmes’ past success, he may not have looked like an obvious candidate for heroics in the Class 4A state championship game on Saturday.
Holmes, who had batted .500 in seven postseason games during the Wildcats’ run to the state title last year, was hitless in his previous 10 at-bats with six strikeouts when he stepped to the plate in the top of the eighth inning at Wintrust Field in Joliet.
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“I was slumping a little bit,” he said.
Holmes had been trying different bats in recent games, hoping one would help him get going again. For the final plate appearance of his high school career, he chose his bat, the one he had used almost exclusively last year but had avoided of late.
“It was more of a mental cleansing than anything else,” Holmes said. “What I was doing wasn’t working, so I figured I’d try something else. I decided to go back to old reliable, and it paid off.”
Indeed, Holmes delivered the game-winning hit, a single to left field that allowed junior pitcher Madden Cotts to score the decisive run, as the Wildcats beat Maine South 7-6 to win their second straight state title.
“It was a full-count fastball high and in,” Holmes said. “At first, I was nervous that it was going to hang up long enough for the left fielder to get to it, but he wasn’t playing very shallow. After I saw it fall, it was an electric feeling.”
Libertyville senior shortstop Trevor Wallace, who had just popped out and returned to the dugout to cheer for Holmes, overheard two teammates talking.
“After they saw which bat Carson picked, two guys said, ‘He’s got his old bat. Watch, he’s going to get a hit,’” Wallace said.
“He had batted third the whole year, so everyone had confidence in him. He’s one of the guys we would want up there in that situation even though he had been struggling.”
That confidence reflects the players’ trust in each other during a remarkable run for the Wildcats (31-10-1).
“Even though I wasn’t playing well, I knew that the team would have my back,” Holmes said. “We came into the playoffs off a loss, so we knew it wasn’t going to be easy, especially with us being the defending champions and having a target on our backs.
“But that’s what I love most about this team. Every win was a team win. We played for one another, and by doing that we ended up right where we left off last year.”
There may have been some fans who thought Libertyville coach Matt Thompson was shaking things up when he approached the home plate umpire before Holmes’ previous at-bat in the seventh inning. But Thompson was only putting Holmes back in the game after senior Nicholas Farmakis had replaced him in left field.
“During some ups and downs, we had talked to him and reiterated to him that ‘you’re our guy,’” Thompson said of Holmes. “After those conversations, you don’t expect to get pinch-hit for, and we had faith in him. He was still doing the right things at practice, hitting the ball well in BP. So we were confident in him.”
In the middle of Holmes’ final at-bat, senior outfielder Jack Cenar scored the go-ahead run on a balk. That gave Holmes a chance to exhale.
But Holmes’ single, which he hit to a similar spot on the same field as his RBI single in the Wildcats’ 4-1 win over McHenry in the state final last year, was critical because Maine South then scored a run off Cotts in the bottom of the eighth.
Afterward, Holmes was given the game ball, which will join two state medals and two championship rings as treasured mementos of a special time in his life.
“I’ve probably watched video of that last at-bat about 30 times, and there are recaps all over social media,” he said. “I still can’t believe what happened. It was a perfect storm of us doing all the right things to win.”
Steve Reaven is a freelance reporter.