Published: May 01, 2008 12:44 am      

HS BASEBALL: Lockport's Greco can't catch a break

LOCKPORT — If it wasn’t for bad luck, Lockport High School senior Dan Greco wouldn’t have any luck at all.

The Lions’ ace right-hander should probably be 2-0 at this point of the 2008 Niagara Frontier League varsity baseball season, but countless errors and a lack of offensive support have spelled defeat for Greco and his teammates.

“It’s definitely frustrating, but it’s still early in the season thankfully,” said Greco, the son of John and Christine Greco.

Heading into the seventh inning of Wednesday’s game against visiting Kenmore West at Outwater Park, Greco had a no-hitter going, but when the smoke cleared the Lions were 6-0 losers. In his previous start this season, against Niagara-Wheatfield in the Lions’ season opener, Greco hurled five strong innings and his team led, only to fall apart in the end and lose, 10-9.

“Niagara-Wheatfield is a good team, but we know that we let that slip away from us,” Greco said.

“In that game and tonight, the main problem — and that includes me — has been our defense. We’ve made far too many errors to win games. Another problem for us has been a lack of hitting, especially in key situations. Top to bottom in the lineup, you need hits and we haven’t been able to get them.”

Styrzo, who’s team dropped to 1-3 in the league and 3-6 overall on Wednesday, and his players, still retain all the confidence in the world in Greco.

“Dan can do it all,” Styrzo said.

“He’s our ace and we want the ball in his hands. He’s got a great fastball, a nice splitter a good change up and he hits his spots. He’s the type of player who wants the ball and the type who wants the bat in his hands when we need a hit.

“He’s a good fielder as well and he can run. He can do it all,” Styrzo said.

Possessing a variety of quality pitches, Greco is known not only for his formidable fastball, but his splitter and a quality change-up consistently catch hitters off balance. He had 10 strikeouts on Wednesday and five in the season opener.

A product of Lockport’s outstanding youth baseball programs, Greco began pitching at the age of 8 in the Lockport Little League.

“I played a lot of both baseball and soccer growing up, but baseball has always been my main number one sport,” Greco said.

“I just always loved playing baseball and pitching. I feel at home on the mound.”

Greco credits his LHS varsity catchers, including Andrew Godfrey and Kyle Fernandez, with his successes on the hill.

“Kyle’s been very good this year. We communicate well and we always discuss before every inning what’s working and what might not be,” Greco said.

In the meantime, it’s back to the drawing board for the optimistic Greco and his team.

“This year, I’m trying to be more of a leader and try to lead by example. We lost but we’ve got to move on. The next step is Thursday when we play North Tonawanda then we have Grand Island after that,” Greco said.

“We can still get out .500 this week and hopefully keep on winning from there.”

This fall, Greco, a high honor roll student at LHS, will attend the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology. The future engineering major also plans to play baseball.

He has three brothers, older siblings Matt (Canisius) and Josh (Fredonia); and younger brother Sam, 13.

Contact John D’Onofrio at 439-9222 Ext. 6247.