Members of the Elyria Catholic football team celebrate their overtime victory over Bishop Hartley on Friday night. The big win moved the Panthers to the top of the Division IV state poll. (CT photo by David Richard.)

A thrilling victory over Bishop Hartley on Friday night brought Elyria Catholic more than just another win.

On the strength of their 34-28 overtime decision, the Panthers are the new No. 1 Division IV team in Ohio.

EC, unbeaten at 4-0, is atop the Division IV poll with 230 points, four points in front of second-ranked Ottawa-Glan­dorf, who received 15 first-place votes to the Pan­thers’ six. “This is a really neat thing for our team. I can’t lie about that,” said Elyria Catholic coach Ben Malbasa. “Obviously, this is just a poll, but it’s always nice to be well thought of.”

“This No. 1 ranking feels really great,” said EC’s prolific senior quarterback Danny Reaser, who set a school record with 508 passing yards, while throwing for six touchdowns in the Panthers’ victory over Elyria High on Sept. 9. “It shows how our hard work has paid off. We need to keep at the pace we’ve been going and hope to maintain that top ranking.

“Our game against Bishop

Hartley was a tough one. We hope the rest of the season will see some more exciting games.” The ranking is the highest for

Elyria Catholic under Malbasa, who is in his fourth year as head coach.

“I told our players (Monday) that we need to get better every week,” Malbasa said. “We want to achieve that and our goal of a long season (in the playoffs).” Elyria Catholic was not the only team in the area ranked in the state poll.

In Division II, Avon (4-0) is ranked fifth, while Westlake (4-0) is 18th.

EC will put its top ranking on the line Saturday against

St. Thomas Aquinas (2-2) in its last game before opening the

North Coast League schedule.

The Panthers beat Aquinas 28-7 last year.

“This week’s game against

St. Thomas Aquinas should be another good one,” Malbasa said.

“We’ve played each other the last few years. They are young but well-coached. It’ll be a good way to get ready for North

Coast League games.”

“St. Thomas Aquinas is a very good team that we can’t underestimate,” Reaser said. “They are very disciplined and can’t be taken lightly.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Luke Hochevar’s arm and Yuniesky Betancourt’s legs were a winning combination for the Kansas City Royals.

Hochevar recovered from a shaky start to earn his first win since May 26 and Betancourt stole home, leading Kansas City to a 6-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians on Sunday.

The top pick in the 2006 amateur draft, Hochevar (6-5) gave up three runs in the first two innings but none after that. He allowed eight hits over six innings, striking out five and walking one.

“The first two innings he was just throwing out there,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Then he adjusted and started pitching.”

More photos below.

Hochevar, who missed nearly three months this season with a right elbow sprain, agreed.

“He’s right,” the pitcher said. “I was mainly attacking them with fastballs, trying to be aggressive. But after the first at-bats, I settled in and started going after them a bit different. Instead of just pounding fastballs, I started mixing it up better.”

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Mitch Maier had a two-run single in Kansas City’s four-run second. Betancourt walked with the bases loaded to force in Kila Ka’aihue with the first run of the inning. With Betancourt on third, Maier broke from first and Indians pitcher Josh Tomlin ran toward him. Betancourt took off for home and by the time Tomlin turned around and fired to the plate, Betancourt slid in ahead of the tag to give the Royals a 4-3 advantage.

It was Betancourt’s first stolen base of the season and the Royals’ first steal of home since Alex Gordon did it on Aug. 2, 2009, at Tampa Bay. Kansas City has accomplished the feat 33 times in franchise history, five since 1999.

“It wasn’t planned that way, but it worked out,” Maier said. “I was trying to steal after he did the third-to-first move. Yuney did a great job. Soon as he saw the pitcher turn his back and run toward to me, he took off.”

Betancourt said it was his first career steal of home.

“I was bluffing, but when I saw him stop and turn, I just took off,” Betancourt said through a translator. “It was just great timing.”

Indians manager Manny Acta said that double steal is a play the Indians work on preventing “about 5 million times in spring training, and then 250,000 times during the season.”

“I felt Josh just buried himself in that four-run inning by pitching behind, and those walks really hurt him,” Acta said. “At the end, that butchered first-and-third double steal doesn’t happen very often, because he needed the awareness of the overall baseball game.”

Tomlin accepted the blame.

“I took my eye off the runner at third,” Tomlin said. “I saw the guy going to second and I tried to run him back. The other guy took off the second I had my back turned. That was my mistake. I looked the runner back — I’ve got to check the runner at third first.”

Ka’aihue doubled home Billy Butler and Wilson Betemit in the sixth.

Joakim Soria worked the ninth for his 39th save in 41 chances. He has converted 32 straight opportunities.

Tomlin (4-4) went five-plus innings, allowing six runs on six hits and two walks to snap his three-game winning streak.

Shin-Soo Choo hit a two-run homer, his fourth of the series, to give the Indians a 2-0 lead in the first. Trevor Crowe led off the second with a double and scored on Luis Valbuena’s single.

The Indians did not score again until the eighth when Crowe scampered home on Blake Wood’s wild pitch.

Michael Brantley singled in the seventh to extend his hitting streak to 19 games, the longest active streak in the majors and the longest by an Indians rookie since Larry Doby hit in 21 in a row in 1948.

Notes

• Royals 2B Chris Getz missed his sixth straight game after sustaining a concussion Sept. 12 at Chicago. Choo got his 20th stolen base in the third inning, giving him 20 home runs and 20 steals this season. After 74 home dates, the Royals’ attendance is down 193,309 from last season.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Sounds like a relaxing night for the Cleveland Indians.

Play a little baseball, come in and watch a little TV. Play a little more baseball, come back in for a little more TV.

Finally, more than 6½ hours and four rain delays after the game was scheduled to begin, the Indians made Matt LaPorta’s grand slam stand up for a 6-4 victory over the Kansas City Royals on a rainy, stormy Saturday night.

“Four rain delays. Unbelievable,” Cleveland outfielder Trevor Crowe said.

The delays totaled 3 hours, 40 minutes. The game itself took 2 hours, 57 minutes. One delay lasted only two minutes.

“I have not seen a two-minute rain delay,” Crowe said. “That was a first for me.”

The game, scheduled for a 7:10 p.m. start, didn’t end until 1:47 a.m.

The crowd had thinned out so much by the eighth inning the cleaning crew was already at work in the upper deck.

“There wasn’t anybody up there so it was good they could get a head start,” Crowe said.

LaPorta’s grand slam off Sean O’Sullivan (2-6) gave Cleveland a 5-0 lead in the fourth. Then Jai Miller and Mike Aviles hit two-run homers for Kansas City in the fifth off Justin Germano.

Joe Smith (2-2), the third of six Cleveland pitchers, pitched one inning and gave up two hits but no runs and was the winner. Chris Perez pitched the ninth for his 21st save in 25 opportunities.

“It was just a miserable night with all the delays,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “We start to get a little momentum with the four runs and then it rains and you go back out and try to get something going and then it rains. It was just a miserable night.”

During the delays, the Indians came in and watched football.

“Lots of football watching, and not much else,” said Justin Masterson, who started and went
3 1/3 innings. “Everyone was watching the football games, every single one that’s on. And a few card games. Try to wonder why the game’s not called sooner than it is.”

O’Sullivan retired the first nine batters but seemed to lose something during the two-minute delay. Michael Brantley singled leading off the fourth, stretching his hitting streak to 18 games, then Asdrubal Cabrera and Shin-Soo Choo singled.

Brantley scored on Choo’s single and Shelly Duncan’s single loaded the bases for LaPorta. The 25-year-old first baseman hit O’Sullivan’s 2-1 pitch over the fence in center for Cleveland’s second slam in two days off the struggling Kansas City staff.

It was the 11th loss in 15 games for KC and dropped the last-place Royals 1½ games behind Cleveland in the AL Central.

“Kid’s been struggling. He’s just had two days off to get his head clear and rest a little bit and came up big for us,” Cleveland manager Manny Acta said.

Acta admitted he’d never seen a two-minute rain delay.

“I just saw the guys wanting to come on and cover the field with a tarp and the umpire pushing them back,” he said. “But we played nine innings and no one got hurt. That’s the main thing.”

Brantley’s 18-game streak is the longest current run in the majors and the longest by a Cleveland rookie since Larry Doby hit in 21 straight in 1948.

Germano replaced starter Justin Masterson after a delay of 1 hour, 23 minutes with one out in the fourth. He hit Lucas May leading off the bottom of the fifth and Miller slammed an 0-2 pitch for his first major league home run.

The next batter, Jarrod Dyson, doubled off the wall and Aviles slammed an offering from Germano 409 feet for another two-run shot that pared the lead to 5-4 as light rain began again to fall.

Jayson Nix’s RBI single made it 6-4 in the eighth.

Germano went 2 2/3 innings and gave up four runs on three hits and one hit batter.

O’Sullivan went four innings and was charged with five runs and six hits.

The first three delays, including 36 minutes to start, had totaled two hours, one minute when play was halted after the Royals made the final out in the sixth. The game was resumed after another wait of 1 hour, 39 minutes.

Notable

Brantley’s 18-game streak is the longest by an Indian since Casey Blake hit in 26 straight in May-June 2007.
• If the Indians win today and sweep the Royals, KC will get a chance to climb back out of the cellar in a four-game series in Cleveland starting Thursday. It will be Royals’ last road series of the season.
• Dyson made an outstanding leaping catch at the wall in center field of Duncan’s drive in the fifth.

TODAY

• WHO: Cleveland at Kansas City
• TIME: 2:10 p.m.
• WHERE: Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City, Mo.
• PITCHERS: Tomlin (4-3, 4.17 ERA) vs. Hochevar (5-5, 4.81)
• TV/RADIO: Channel 3, SportsTime Ohio; WEOL 930-AM, WTAM 1100-AM