St. Mary's Wins Northern Berkshire Babe Ruth Tournament
Newton doubled, drove in a pair of runs and scored twice for St. Mary’s, which jumped on top with a three-run first inning and never relinquished the lead.
Newton allowed two earned runs before giving the ball to Mason Bailey, who pitched two scoreless innings in the sixth and seventh.
The long outing from the St. Mary’s starter helped it get through a run of four games in three days, including the semi-finals and finals on Sunday.
“We kind of planned it out,” St. Mary’s coach Jeffrey Simmons said. “Cam [Simmons] threw on Friday. He pitched the whole game there. And we saved Dom, who is one of our aces as well, for today.”
Simmons struck out 12 in 5 and a third innings in a 9-6 win over North Adams Fire Department on Friday; he also went 3-for-4 with a pair of RBIs in that game.
Simmons played behind the plate in two of St. Mary’s four wins, including the finale, when he tripled in a run, walked twice and scored three times en route to earning the tournament’s most valuable player award.
After a 1-2-3 top of the first from Newton, the Lee-Lenox team’s first three hitters reached without a base hit in the bottom of the first.
Moresi switched pitchers, and Jackson Garner was able to settle things down a little bit.
He got a fly ball back to the mound and an RBI groundout to first for the first two outs. But then a wild pitch brought one run home, Kyle Caserta worked a walk and Owen Trombley singled up the middle to make it 3-0 after one.
Garner pitched around an error in the second to keep it 3-0.
But St. Mary’s chased him early in the third inning, and Josiah Brown went the rest of the way for Moresi, finishing with four strikeouts and three earned runs.
St. Mary’s scored three runs in the third, with Newton delivering an RBI double and Ethan Deane driving in a run with a single to left.
Moresi got on the board with three in the top of the fourth to cut the deficit in half when Ethan Moran hit a two-run single, and Brown drove in a run with a groundout to make it 6-3.
But Newton got a groundout to leave a runner at third and end the inning, and St. Mary’s quelled any momentum for Moresi with a four-run fourth to go ahead, 10-3.
Again, Moresi rallied. This time, Landon Garner and Ben Cachat each doubled in a run in a four-run rally to pull their team within three at 10-7.
But Newton got two strikeouts to end that inning, and Bailey retired the side in order in the fifth and the sixth, getting a 6-3 double play to end it when Caserta speared a line drive and threw to first to double off a runner.
“We’ve only had two losses on the entire season,” Jeffrey Simmons said. “We have a couple more games left, but we’re good. We’re a good team all around.
“We are lucky in that we have a lot of 15-year-olds, because we’re on the other end of the spectrum where [Moresi] was younger. So we have a few more 15-year-olds than most team, but they all, even the younger guys, produced.”
Photos from this game to come.
