All Even

The Intertown Twilight Baseball League championship is now a best-of-three series.

The five-time defending league champion Manchester Essex Mariners and the Rockport Townies started the league championship series on Saturday and Sunday. After the weekend's slate of games, the teams split a pair of games and the series is tied 1-1.

The Mariners drew first blood on Saturday at Memorial Field in Essex with a 3-0 win and the Townies bounced back with a 6-3 win on their home turf, Evans Field, on Sunday afternoon.

The teams will play the pivotal Game 3 on Wednesday back at Memorial Field in Essex.

"Every game is a must win game against the Mariners because of the talent they have," Townies manager Jay Pallazola said after the Game 2 victory. "We made enough plays to get the win (in Game 2) with a good all around performance."

Mariners manager Ryan Marques says his team is going to put Sunday's loss in the rear view mirror and focus on taking the lead in the series on Wednesday. 

"We've been in this situation before being tied or even being down in the series," he said. "But we're confident and we will come ready to go in Game 3. We didn't have our best game today but we aren't in a bad spot because we got the win in the opener."

Rusty Tucker grabbed the Game 1 win for the Townies with a complete game shutout, while Derek Osmond kept the Mariners offense contained as he picked up the win in Game 2 allowing no earned runs in 5 1/3 innings pitched.

"Osmond was cruising through the first five innings and gave us the performance we needed," Pallazola said. "And I actually thought we put some good at bats together against Tucker in the first game. He averages about 15 strikeouts per game and we only struck out seven times on Saturday. We made more contact than we usually do but we didn't hit it very far."

The Mariners got on the board in the fourth inning during Saturday's championship series opener with a pair of runs on a Tucker RBI single plating Max Nesbit, who doubled. Tucker was later knocked in on a Caulin Rogers single to extend the lead to 2-0.

Manchester Essex added one more insurance run in the sixth inning when Mike Cain came around to score on an error after reaching on an error.

The Townies best chance to score in Game 1 came in the very first inning when a fielding error and a walk put two men on with nobody out. But a 4-6-3 double-play and a strikeout got Tucker out of the jam. Rockport only had six more base runners over the final six innings on two hits, two walks and two errors.

The Townies were able to take control in Game 2 with a three-run fourth inning.

Jordan Pallazola made it 1-0 when he singled and moved around the bases on a pair of Mariners errors. Mike Emerson then singled in Nolan Webb and came around to score on a bases loaded walk to give Rockport a 3-0 lead after four.

A Pallazola home run extended the lead to 4-0 in the fifth before the Mariners got on the board in the sixth.

Cain came around on a fielding error after being hit by a pitch for the first Manchester Essex run, and Rory Gentile cut the Townies lead to 4-2 after reaching on a walk and coming around to score on a balk.

"We had a tough inning in the fourth and we weren't getting on top of the baseball, we were popping everything up," Marques said. "We need to get going earlier in Game 3."

The Townies grabbed a couple of important insurance runs in the sixth with a two out rally. Conor Ressel tripled down the left field line and was driven in by an Alex Webb double into the right field Woods. Webb later came in to score on a Keady Segel single to make it 6-3.

Those two runs turned out to be important as the Mariners cut the lead to 6-3 when Noah Aiello came in on a fielding error after leading off the frame with a single. The Mariners would go on to load the bases but Shawn Hull induced a pop up to earn a one-out save and preserve the Townies win.

"Shawn has been closing games for us all season," Pallazola said. "We only asked him to get one out but it was a pressure situation with the tying run on base."