Having seen its once vast lead in District 6 West shrink after two straight losses, the Norwood American Legion Post 70 baseball team needed to find a way to stop the bleeding on Friday night against Westwood.
In a matchup between two of the West’s top hurlers, Norwood’s Chris Pinette applied the tourniquet, outdueling Westwood’s John Sheehan to give Post 70 a much-needed 3-1 victory. At 10-4, Norwood currently owns a four-point cushion over Westwood in the race for the No. 1 seed.
“We made it a point to see if we could go out and beat one of the best pitchers in the league,” said Norwood manager Paul Samargedlis. “It was a playoff-type atmosphere. That kid (Sheehan) is good and we 100 percent expect Westwood to be a playoff team. We put it to the team and they responded.”
The game was scoreless through four innings before Bryan Ginsberg broke the ice for Westwood by crushing a home run to deep center to put Post 320 up 1-0.
Norwood answered with two in the bottom half. Sean Keady singled on an 0-2 pitch with two outs and with the Norwood center fielder on the move from first, Brian Williams drilled a ball to the gap that tied the game. The throw to the plate bounced away and Williams took off for third, with the attempt to get him sailing high and bringing him in to give Post 70 a 2-1 edge.
Jesse Shaughnessy added an insurance run with a solo shot off Sheehan (10 strikeouts) to start the sixth, his fifth home run of the year.
Westwood threatened in the seventh, getting a pair of singles to spell the end of the night for Pinette, who struck out four and walked three to move to 3-0 on the season. Norwood brought Chris Foley in with one out to try and close the door. A walk loaded the bases but Foley recovered to get C. J. Parsons to ground into a game-ending double-play.
The Post 18 offense was quieted by Needham yesterday as Dedham could only managed one run in a doubleheader sweep by Post 14. Post 18 falls to 4-5-1, currently five points out of a playoff spot.
“It was two big losses, even a split would have had us right there (in the playoff hunt),” said Dedham manager Dave Brown.
Dedham got two well-pitched games by Drew LoRusso and Andrew Bishop but were bit by some sloppy fielding in both contests. Mike Reardon singled, stole second and came around on a throwing error and a passed ball to avoid a shutout in the early game.
Post 18 picked up two points Friday night without taking the field as a misunderstanding on the game time – Walpole showed up for a 5:55 p.m. start instead of the scheduled 7:30 p.m. start – resulted in Dedham earning a win via forfeit.
