Off the bat, Marist’s Justin Lang thought he was out.
“I thought I hit it too high,” said Lang, a senior shortstop. “I thought he’d catch it.”
With two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning and the score tied 4-4 Tuesday against St. Laurence, Lang’s fly ball hung precariously in the air.
Junior center fielder Ryan Seddon sprinted in with a path to the ball and dove. The ball bounced off the end of his glove, tumbling to the ground, and Marist’s Owen Duffy scored the game-winning run.
On senior day, the host RedHawks stormed back from an early deficit to edge St. Laurence for a 5-4 nonconference victory in Chicago.
As Duffy’s right cleat tapped home plate, a black-clad mob poured out of the dugout for Marist (8-7-1), dousing water and dancing near third base with Lang, the walk-off hero.
“We’re not going to play many more games on this field, so it felt great to get the win,” Lang said. “I want to give back to Marist for everything they’ve done for me.
“The team, staff, coaches — I want to win for them.”
The Vikings (10-4) bolted out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the first inning, and St. Laurence’s dugout celebration — “Hey! Hey! Hey!” — constantly rang out throughout an otherwise quiet diamond at Marist.
From there, the Vikings maintained a 4-3 lead from the third inning to the seventh. Junior pitcher Kannen Mosher cruised into the seventh, taking aim at a complete game.
“It was great to see him be the guy we know he is,” St. Laurence coach Pete Lotus said. “He was challenging hitters. It just got away from him a little bit in that last inning.”
In the seventh, Mosher yielded three singles. Off Mosher’s final pitch, senior infielder Jack Wade drilled a hit up the middle to score the tying run for Marist, ending Mosher’s day.
Hard-throwing senior right-hander Luke Geary entered and earned a strikeout before surrendering the walk-off single to Lang.
Senior outfielder Collin Jennings was not stunned by Marist’s rally.
“We’ve got grit,” Jennings said. “We don’t give up. I knew we’d come back. No deficit is too big for this team.”
The early 4-0 hole proved to be no issue for a team accustomed to first inning deficits in April.
After allowing those four runs and two hits in the first inning, sophomore pitcher John McAuliffe kept St. Laurence hitless until he exited in the sixth.
Junior reliever Harry Young then continued the hit drought.
“We battle,” Marist coach Kevin Sefcik said. “The key was Johnny kept them at four runs, and it gave us a chance. Then Harry came out of the pen and threw a bunch of strikes.”
For Sefcik, Lang and the RedHawks, the victory was tinged with a dash of revenge.
On June 1, 2022, Marist faced St. Laurence in a Class 3A sectional semifinal. The Vikings ended the RedHawks’ season with a 10-4 decision.
“I remember that they beat us,” Lang said. “And I remember them throwing (Geary) in that game.”
Lang said he recalled some of Geary’s tendencies on his game-ending at-bat, specifically noticing the tall righty pitching mostly outside Tuesday in the seventh.
“He threw me an off-speed pitch,” Lang said. “It was in the zone, so I just swung.”
The result was a jubilant victory for Marist over an elite rival. And the comeback was emblematic of the RedHawks’ season to date.
“We haven’t had the greatest start,” Lang said. “We’ve lost some games we should have won. But now we just have to keep on rolling, keep on winning.”
Sam Brief is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.