Chesterton baseball busts out of the starting blocks with a 25-0 blasting of Griffith with senior shortstop Ethan Glassman leading the way with two home runs and seven RBI

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Chesterton assistant baseball coach Toby Gentry instructs the team’s hitters, cuts the grass and manicures every aspect of the baseball diamond that looked nothing short of perfect for the Trojans’ season opener Monday.
Just three days after having arm surgery, Gentry was back coaching first base, his left arm in a sling. It’s a good thing he didn’t coach third base or his right arm might be in a sling, too, from waving so many runners home.
Chesterton defeated Griffith, 25-0, in a game shortened to four-and-a-half innings per the mercy rule and 22 of the runs came across in the first inning.
If you believe in omens, senior center Rob Czarniecki furnished a powerful one by crushing a home run well beyond the fence in left field on a 1-0 fastball. Two years ago, Czarniecki turned his first swing into a home run that sent him on his way to an all-state season for a team that won a sectional championship.
The Trojans sent 26 hitters to the plate in a first inning that lasted 1 hour, 3 minutes and that included a 1-2-3 top half of the inning with Troy Barrett on the mound.
In the first inning alone, the home team rapped 15 hits, three home runs, four doubles and a triple and reached on five walks and two hit batsmen.
Czarniecki and Barrett reached base four times apiece in the inning and senior shortstop Ethan Glassman drove in five runs.
Glassman singled in a run in his first at bat, walked and scored in his second plate appearance and crushed a grand slam in his third. He finished the day going 3 for 3 with two home runs, seven RBIs and four runs scored.
First baseman Eli McClelland belted a two-run home run and scored three first-inning runs.
No telling what the final score might have been had the Trojans not gone to great lengths to keep from running it up. First, they passed on taking extra bases in the middle of the first. Then it became more blatant.
Nate Redman led off the second inning with an infield hit and following Coach John Bogner’s instructions, took a huge lead and was tagged out intentionally. Czarniecki followed with a double to left and on the next pitch strayed far off the base to get tagged out intentionally. Barrett banged his second double of the day, this one to center, and was tagged out intentionally. Three up, three hits, three down. You don’t see that every day. For that matter, you don’t ever see that. Not your routine 1-2-3 inning.
Bogner said he talked to Griffith coach Andrew Braddy about it: “I went to him to explain to him we weren’t trying to show anybody up. He said, ‘Coach, we get it,’ The third baseman said, ‘Put 40 on us. We’ll get better.’ We’re not putting 40 on anyone. That doesn’t do any good to a high school kid.”
Czarniecki and Barrett called it a day after that, combining to go 5 for 5 with a home run, three doubles, three walks and an infield single. No. 3 hitter Caden Hackett was hit by a pitch and tripled in the first inning.
If you’re scoring at home, you know that the top four batters in the lineup combined to go 9 for 10 with three home runs, three doubles, a triple, and 10 RBI.
“I’m really excited to see what we can do,” Czarniecki said. “I think obviously 1 through 9 are really strong, but it’s tough to find a group of guys better than us 1 through 4. We’re going to be tough to get out, and that’s from top to bottom.”
He summed up what he has seen from Glassman’s bat in practice and in the opener in one word: “Tremendous. We were hitting in the cage before the game and his swing is just so much better.”
No. 5 hitter John Knight went 2 for 3 with two walks. Hitting out of the 6 hole, McClelland went 2 for 3 with a home run and two RBI and reached on a hit by pitch and a walk.
No. 7 hitter Gary Kirkland made the first out of the first and atoned for that by nailing a two-run double to the gap and adding a single before the inning ended.
An inning into his varsity career, No. 8 hitter Sullivan Fleming had singled in a run, doubled and scored two runs.
Redman, the No. 9 hitter, didn’t make an out, reaching on a hit by pitch, a double and an infield hit.
Barrett pitched the first two innings of the shutout, classmate Dylan Bradford the final three innings. Barrett allowed one hit, didn’t walk anybody and struck out five. Bradford didn’t allow any hits, walked three, hit a batter and struck out six batters.
The day could not have started off better for the Trojans because of all that Czarniecki went through with a recurring hamstring injury that kept him out of the lineup most of last season and left him searching to regain his form from two years ago.
“A little bit of a flashback,” Czarniecki said. “I won’t lie, going into the game today, I kind of had a feeling it might happen. It took the curveball low and he took a really a long time, so I kind of figured he would come with a fastball but he doesn’t really want to throw it and he just left it right there.”
First swing of 2024, home run. First swing of 2026, home run. An omen?
“I hope so, yes,” head coach John Bogner said. “Yes. He had some pretty celebratory words coming around the bases and said, ‘I’m back,’ threw a couple of other words in there, too.”
Czarniecki said that it was “probably the first one I ever hit that I gave it a little toss of the bat because I knew it was gone, living in the moment, and was just really excited that I hit it.”
Predictably, he walked on four pitches in his next trip to the plate.
“They didn’t want to throw anything close,” he said. “So, I walked down to Coach Gentry and said, ‘Well, first of many for that.’ But hey, the more I can get on base, the more I can run, the more we score, the more we score, the more we win, and that’s the name of the game right there.”
Glassman looked at his monster day as the beginning of a season he envisions lasting longer than most.
“I want to go as far as we can in the tournament,” Glassman said. “I think we have a real shot to make it to state and even win it. We just need to play for each other and get as many wins as we can.”