Tunnel City Freight Repeats as Berkshire Baseball League Champ
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — It was a family affair on and off the field for Tunnel City Freight Sunday as it defended its Berkshire Adult Baseball League 33-year-old Division Championship with an 11-3 win over the Dalton Money Makers.
With a strong contingent of full-throated youngsters cheering the Freight from the hillside beside Buddy Pellerin Field, league MVP Matt Clark went 4 and two-thirds innings on the mound to get the win and a sweep of the best-of-three title game series.
Saturday’s Game 1 winner? D.J. Clark.
“D.J. got the win yesterday, Matty got the win today, Matty got the MVP this year, D.J. MVP last year,” TCF manager Mike Cirullo said. “It’s just a fun family event bringing the brothers and their parents and everybody around us. We had a good crowd to day with everybody.
“And back-to-back.”
It was a day of sweeps and repeats in the BABL on Sunday as the Great Barrington Millers beat the Berkshire Thunder, 2-0, to win their third straight 20-year-old Division title series, 2-0.
Dalton’s offensive frustration started early on Sunday.
After Reid Warner led off the game with an infield single, Jarrett Bayliss pounded a double to right field. But Warner got hung up between third and home and was tagged out. Two batters later, Clark got out of the inning with a fly ball to second.
Tunnel City Freight’s offense, meanwhile, cashed in on its early scoring opportunities.
Nolan Brassard led off with a triple to the gap in right-center and came home one batter later on D.J. Clark’s sac fly.
Three straight free passes then loaded the bases for Jon Boucher, who hit a two-run single to center that gave TCF a 3-0 lead after one.
In the third, Tunnel City broke the game open with a seven-run rally that featured two-run singles from Matt Clark and Cirullo.
“That’s been our roster all season – forming for that big inning,” Cirullo said. “We just wear you down with the bats, and the Clark brothers keep us in every game with their pitching. We were built for that big inning.
“We haven’t really gotten one for a while. It was good to finally get one. We really settle in once we get that big inning. Obviously, it gets the pressure off, and then we can just have fun out there.”
Down 10-0 and looking at a mercy rule loss, Dalton’s Frank Curtiss hit a two-strike pitch for a one-out, run-scoring fielder’s choice that kept the game going.
In the sixth, Dalton tacked on two more runs on four hits, including RBI singles from Jon Yetto and Mike Wojtkonski to make it 10-3.
Tunnel City’s Kevin Lamb hit an RBI double in the bottom of the sixth, and TCF reliever Boucher worked around an error and a Jared Carroll double in a scoreless seventh.
Photos from this game to come.
