PLEASANT PLAINS — Just last month, Williamsville junior Collin Grosenheider thought his season was over after taking a line ball to the face during batting practice.
That freak accident broke four bones and required surgery to repair it.
The Bullets lost three of their final four regular-season games without Grosenheider and entered the postseason with a 16-15 record, but beat Pittsfield and Petersburg PORTA to win the Class 2A Williamsville Regional without him.
Grosenheider returned on Wednesday, June 3 and took his place on the mound to close out Williamsville’s win over Roxana in the Pleasant Plains Sectional semifinal.
On Saturday, June 6, he kept the host Cardinals scoreless and needed just 94 pitches to lead Williamsville past Plains 3-0 in a complete-game outing to lead the Bullets (20-15) to their first sectional crown since the 2015 team finished second in Class 2A.
“We called the doctor after we won regionals, and she said (playing was) probably not recommended, but if you wear a mask, you can do it,” Grosenheider said.
Williamsville will face St. Joseph-Ogden in the Springfield Supersectional on Monday, June 8 at Lincoln Land Community College’s Claude Kracik Field at 7 p.m. for a chance at a berth to the Class 2A state semifinals. St. Joe beat Tolono Unity 6-4 to win the Monticello Sectional title, also on Saturday. St. Joe beat Williamsville 10-0 in five innings on April 11.
The Bullets will worry about that Monday. On Saturday, Williamsville coach B.J. Halford couldn’t have been prouder of Grosenheider.
“A little command issues early, but he hasn’t thrown a full game like that in a while. But the thing about him is he competes, right,” Halford said. “Like, he wanted the ball: ‘Hey, am I going to get to pitch?’
“Even when he’s not his best, he’s going to come out and still be better than most.”
Grosenheider had ‘his better stuff’
Grosenheider, while wearing a facemask that he’s still trying to get used to, struck out five and allowed three hits and three walks in his first start since May 9, a 6-1 win over New Berlin.
“I felt really comfortable. I was just trusting my stuff,” Grosenheider said. “Mask is a little iffy, but (he had to) just stick to it. I had to get comfortable with the heat. It was pretty hot, but after that, I was rolling.”
Williamsville junior catcher Tate Austwick said not only does he normally trust Grosenheider in tough spots, but he thought it was one of Grosenheider’s best performances on the mound.
“I thought he had some of his better stuff today, command-wise,” Austwick said. “Sometimes it’s hard to trust certain pitches in big spots, but I know when I got Collin on the mound, I can trust him throwing a 3-2 breaking ball, a 3-0 breaking ball to get back in the count.”
He even helped himself at the plate. He led off the bottom of the first by reaching after Plains catcher Jax Boon couldn’t corral a dropped third strike in time to get a sprinting Grosenheider. Four batters later, Peyton Casson ripped an RBI single down the third-base line to plate Grosenheider and give the Bullets a 1-0 lead.
That one-run advantage lasted all the way until the bottom of the sixth when Brenton Trickey was hit by a Drew Green pitch, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Dax Buttry and, after Gage Ratliff was intentionally walked, scored on Casson’s second RBI single of the game.
“I was excited, because after (Green) intentionally walked (Ratliff), I was just so ready to hit the ball,” Casson said.
Two batters later, Dalton Root provided an extra insurance run with a liner to center field.
Bullets kept enough composure
In the seventh inning, Grosenheider thought he didn’t get what he thought was a strike on Green. He stepped off the back of the mound to regain his mental sharpness. He finished that at-bat with a strikeout and got Plains’ freshman Max Johnson to ground into a fielder’s choice. With two outs and a runner on first, another Plains’ freshman, Greyson Dodd slapped a grounder through the left side of the infield.
Then came a very scary moment when the left fielder Casson, first baseman Trickey and Buttry at second all converged on a pop fly by Boon in foul territory down the first-base line. Casson said he was calling for the ball, made the catch but collided with one of his teammates.
First-base umpire Bob Claton ruled that, although Casson originally caught the ball, it came out on the collision. Meanwhile, the Bullets fans were yelling at the umpiring crew and Claton ejected one fan. Pleasant Plains players and coaches were also confused, thinking their two runners on the bases scored and put the game-tying runner at third.
After trainers tended to Casson, who remained on the turf for several minutes before getting up and finishing the game, the umpires converged and ruled Boon’s hit was a foul ball and the runners had to go back to their original bases.
Boon then reached on a throwing error by Ratliff, the Bullets’ third baseman, to put the tying run at first.
However, tempers quickly shifted from a continued confusion and frustration from the Williamsville players, coaches and fans to elation as the next Plains’ hitter, sophomore Dalton Glisson, grounded out to second to end the game.
Williamsville, which hadn’t won a regional title since 2018, also beat Plains 5-2 on April 30. Halford said while Plains owns 30 regional and sectional titles and six state trophies — including a pair of state championships — compared to the Bullets’ 23 regional and sectional titles, three state trophies with two second-place finishes, they are confident that they are also a quality program.
“We think we’re a top-notch program, too,” Halford said. “That’s how we approach what we’re doing. It’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s Plains, and they’ve got more hardware, so to say, than us, but it’s always been a battle between us and them.
“We feel like we’re one of those top-notch programs, too, and we expected to win because we’d already beat them once.”
Williamsville can expect to be in more tight games with Pleasant Plains in the future. Cardinals’ coach Dave Greer has just four seniors on a 25-win team with a plethora of talented sophomores and freshmen.
“(Grosenheider) pitched really well, and he kept us off balance a little bit,” Greer said. “I thought we had some good swings, and we had some bad swings. We made some mental mistakes. That’s part of growing up.
“It was one of those things where just everything we did was wrong today. The effort was there, and the kids were hungry, but it just wasn’t our day.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Grosenheider sends Williamsville baseball past Plains, into supers
Reporting by Ryan Mahan, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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By Ryan Mahan, Springfield State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
