Townies fight off elimination with seventh inning rally, tie ITL semfinals
By Nick Curcuru
The Rockport Townies were three outs away from elimination in Monday's ITL Semifinal. The Townies trailed top-seeded Hamilton by three runs heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, losing momentum after scoring six unanswered runs to tie the game in the fifth.
The Townies, however, had another comeback in them. Rockport scored four times without recording an out in the bottom of the seventh inning, a dropped fly ball off the bat of Jack Sperry scoring Jameson Kamm with the running run to walk off with a wild 11-10 win at Evans Field.
"There was just a never say die attitude with these guys," Rockport's Keady Segel said. "We just stuck to playing the way we play, going station to station and we were able to chip away at their lead twice."
With the Townies win, the best-of-three series is tied, 1-1 with the winner-take-all Game 3 on Wednesday at Patton Park in Hamilton (5:30 p.m.). Wednesday's winner will advance to the ITL finals against the winner of the other semifinal series between the Manchester Essex Mariners and Rowley Rams. The Mariners currently lead that series, 1-0 with Game 2 on Tuesday night at Eiras Park in Rowley (5:30 p.m.)
Trailing 10-7 heading into the bottom of the seventh, Rockport saw six straight batters reach base safely with four of them coming around to score. Frew Rowen led off the inning with a walk and Charlie MacDowell was then hit by a pitch. Jake Engel loaded the bases with an infield single on a grounder between the pitcher and shortstop.
Jameson Kamm came up with the bases loaded and drew a walk on a lengthy at bat to plate Rowen to make it 10-8. Zach Morris followed by lacing a double down the line in right to score both MacDowell and Engel to tie it up, 10-10.
Facing elimination a mere moments ago, the Townies all of sudden put the winning run at third base with nobody out in the inning. Sperry then came up and hit a fly ball to left that was dropped, allowing Kamm, who was tagging up if the ball was caught, to score the winning run.
"Everyone just took what was given to them and didn't try to do too much," Segel said. "Hamilton has a deep pitching staff and we put together some really tough at bats against them."
Derick MacDowell earned the win, allowing four runs in four inning of relief. All four of those runs came in the sixth inning as the Generals took a 10-6 lead directly after Rockport tied the score in the previous half inning. Harrison O'Brien and Larry Saggese both had two RBI singles in the inning. MacDowell responded with a one-two-three top of the seventh to keep his team within striking distance in the bottom of the frame.
The Generals, who won Game 1 by a score of 7-0 and are the top seed in the playoffs, looked to be on their way to a rout early on by scoring the game's first six runs.
Phil Horgan delivered a first inning solo home run and Hamilton plated five more in the second with Horgan and O'Brien delivering with big hits.
Rockport, however, chipped away at that lead with two runs in the second, one in the third, two more in the fourth and another in the fifth to tie it back up. Joe Muzio, Sperry, Ethan Tanson and Kamm had run scoring hits while Segel tied the score, just beating a tag at home plate on a wild pitch.
