Three battle for county title

Who will play two and who will win the big one today in the Cook County American Legion baseball tournament?

Those questions will start being answered at 11 a.m. at Rec Park in Arlington Heights. Arlington, Palatine and Wilmette bring 1 loss into the final day of the double-elimination tourney.

On Friday at Rec Park, top-seed Arlington eliminated No. 2 Elk Grove 12-6, and No. 3 Wilmette routed No. 4 Palatine 13-2 in six innings.

So today's first game has defending state champion Arlington (37-9) facing No. 3 Wilmette (37-8). The winner comes back at 2:30 p.m. to play for the title and a trip to next week's state tournament in Mattoon.

Waiting will be Palatine (26-14), which earned the right to play just once today by winning its first three tournament games.

"I've been waiting for it all week," Northwestern-bound left-hander Matt Gailey said of his chance to start today and send Palatine to its first county title since 1997.

All three teams had legitimate reasons to be optimistic about their chances today. Arlington will start righty Kyle Gaedele, and coach Lloyd Meyer has lefties Jon Carlson and Dominic Pugliese rested and ready.

Kyle Henning can also pitch, and even ace Trace Ruffie figures to be available for an inning or two.

"It's a tough fight," Meyer said of Arlington's quest for a third straight county title and ninth in 10 years.

"I feel we have a great shot," said catcher Andrew Butkus, whose RBI triple sparked a 4-run fifth inning as Arlington erased a 3-2 deficit. "We have a lot of pitching left.

"Our goal after our first loss was to get to (today) and see what we can do there."

Arlington added 4 runs in the sixth and 2 runs in the seventh. Tim Scanlan went 3-for-4, Matt Serna was 2-for-4, Will Hagel went 2-for-5 with an RBI triple, and Jason Ganek and Shane Uhle had RBI doubles.

"We've got good sticks all the way down the lineup," Meyer said, "but we've got to be consistent."

Lefty Scott Winters likely won't be available today after throwing 129 pitches against Elk Grove (33-6).

But Winters, who is transferring from Wisconsin-Parkside to Heartland Community College in downstate Bloomington, gave Arlington's staff a big boost by pitching one batter into the ninth and scattering 7 hits with 7 strikeouts and 2 walks.

"He's our workhorse," said Butkus, who joked he didn't do a good enough recruiting job to get his former Prospect High teammate to join him at Oakton College. "He throws as long as he can. He was dying, but he stayed in there and kept us in the game."

Wilmette, which won the county in 2004, also used the pitching-big hitting combination to send Palatine to just its second loss in 16 games.

Lefty J.B. Blanchard needed 88 pitches to throw a 6-hitter with 5 strikeouts and 1 walk. A leadoff homer by Steve Spellman (3-for-5) started a 5-run third and the Waves' offensive onslaught.

Northwestern-bound No. 3 hitter Chris Lashmet was 3-for-4 with 3 RBI, Sam Franklin was 3-for-4, Ben Gardner had two 2-run singles, and Danny Pritz was 2-for-4 with 2 RBI.

Wilmette has Eastern Kentucky-bound lefty Paul Duncan and Bucknell-bound righty Trey Frahler ready to pitch today. Duncan threw a complete game Tuesday, and Frahler went 3 innings Wednesday.

"That's kind of nice, but it's always tough to win a double-header," said Wilmette coach Mike Napoleon. "They'll be fresh and we'll just see what happens."

Palatine led 2-0 in the second on Gailey's RBI single and Charlie Limjoco's sacrifice fly, but 5 errors led to 5 unearned runs for Wilmette.

"I think we were too worried about what was going on (today) and all the situations instead of focusing on this game," Gailey said. "We still feel very confident and we put ourselves in a great position.

"We had a bad game and hopefully we got it out of our system. Our job is to finish it off."

Elk Grove's season was finished less than 24 hours after a heartbreaking 10-inning loss to Palatine.

Greg Atamian went 3-for-3 with a triple and 2 RBI, but the Red Sox couldn't hold a 3-2 lead after 4ˆ¨ innings.

"I think our team was still riding the emotional loss (Thursday)," said Elk Grove coach Brian Mucha, whose team was second in the county last year. "I was kind of worried about that (Friday) morning.

"Hopefully we can get over the hump the next couple of years and find out how to win this tournament."