Baseball: Maine East rallies to top Niles North

Updated: May 14, 2012 11:05PM

The seventh inning of the Maine East baseball team’s final home game of the season highlighted many of the strides the program has made this season.

After surrendering its two-run lead to Niles North because of two costly throwing errors, Maine East’s Andrew Glowacki escaped the top of the seventh inning with the game tied at four. In the bottom half of the seventh, the Blue Demons’ luck quickly turned.

Cory Evans, who scored three runs in the game, reached on an error to start the inning. After the Vikings retired Tyler Glowacki, George Zakharia was intentionally walked and Phil Papaioannou hit a single to set up a memorable moment for Maine East’s Steve Khatchadourian.

Khatchadourian, whose sole goal was to make contact with the bases loaded, came through with a game-winning single to give Maine East a 5-4 victory.

“We made mistakes, but we just came back,” Khatchadourian said. “Usually last year, we would have put ourselves down (after giving up the lead) and it would have piled up on us. We’ve made a big improvement this year.”

Maine East’s top of the order was particularly strong in Monday night’s game in Park Ridge. The first four hitters in the Blue Devils’ lineup combined to go 8-12 and scored all five runs.

All but one of those runs was unearned. Niles North (15-17, 3-12 Central Suburban League North) committed four errors in the game, and Maine East (11-15, 3-12 CSL North) capitalized on each one.

“It’s definitely heartbreaking because I think we lost the game more than they won the game,” Niles North’s Matt McTague said. “We had guys in scoring position a lot and we weren’t really able to execute. And (Niles North had) errors in the last inning, but you’ve got to shake that off.”

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