Junior left fielder Niko Villacci had bounced around the lineup this season for Oswego East.
However, Villacci appears to have found a permanent home batting ninth in the order. And when the Wolves needed him in a clutch situation Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t even flinch.
“It was kind of a perfect situation for me — one out, runner on third,” Villacci said in describing his extra-inning heroics. “All I really had to do was put the ball in play.”
Villacci delivered exactly what Oswego East needed.
His chopper to third base allowed Mason Palermo to race home with the winning run for the host Wolves in a wild 6-5 Southwest Prairie Conference win in eight innings over Yorkville.
Villacci also singled in a run in the second inning for Oswego East (14-16, 5-6). Devin Wheaton had two hits, including a double, and scored twice. Derek Kubek tied the game in the bottom of the seventh by drawing a bases-loaded walk. Joe Grimm and Carter Rapp each added RBI singles.
Kal Arntzen, Kamden Muell and Frankie Pavlik tallied two hits apiece for Yorkville (14-12-1, 7-4). Aaron Klemm briefly gave the Foxes the lead with an RBI squeeze bunt in the seventh.
Villacci began the season leading off for Oswego East, but coach Brian Schaeffer decided to experiment after teams attacked the Wolves’ underclassmen stars — Dominic Battista, Jacsen Tucker and Villacci — with a steady diet of off-speed pitches.
“Everybody knows who those guys are,” Schaeffer said. “We moved them around a little bit to try to get them to see some fastballs. (Villacci) is a good fastball hitter. It’s the off-speed stuff that he sometimes struggles with, so we moved him around.
“He’s made some adjustments and he’s putting the ball in play, which is what we need.”
Another offshoot of moving Villacci to ninth? It serves as a sort of second leadoff hitter for the Wolves. When he gets on, it allows Battista to do damage at leadoff, with Tucker batting third.
“I hit a little slump, so I moved down to nine,” Villacci said. “I just found my groove at nine. I’ll stay there because I found my groove and the offense is clicking, so there’s no point in moving.”
Aside from a 1-0 loss to Yorkville, Oswego East has scored 43 runs in the past five games, so that formula seems to be working
“We definitely kicked it up in the second half of the season for sure,” Villacci said. “The first half the bats weren’t really going.”
Oswego East jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but the Foxes rallied with three runs in the third to tie it up.
The Wolves took a 4-3 lead in the fourth on Grimm’s RBI single and held that until the seventh. Three errors created two unearned runs, and suddenly, Oswego East trailed 5-4 in the eighth.
“We were playing small ball, putting pressure on them,” Yorkville coach Tom Cerven said. “We definitely forced some errors and we were able to get some runs here and there, especially there in the seventh to turn the screws on them and make them make some uncharacteristic plays.”
Kubek’s RBI walk tied it, but Oswego East left the bases loaded to force extra innings. Palermo led off the bottom of the eighth with a double, and then with one out, Villacci did his thing.
As a sophomore, Villacci gained notoriety by taking over as the starting quarterback for Oswego East. Make no mistake, though. This is what he was born to do.
He also plans on continuing his baseball career in college.
“It’s always been baseball,” Villacci said. “I feel like football has overshadowed it since I was a sophomore on varsity. Baseball is my love. All of my family plays baseball, so it’s a family thing.”
Paul Johnson is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.