Allentown tops Hopewell to win Back the Blue tourney
WHITEHOUSE STATION » Allentown came out on top in a battle of Mercer County summer baseball teams in the Whitehouse Back The Blue Tournament final Monday.
Allentown defeated Hopewell, 4-1, to win the tournament championship game at Brown-Ingram Memorial Field.
Coming off a hard-fought, 4-3 win over Clinton County (N.Y.) just prior to the title game, Hopewell got on the board first with a run in the bottom of the first when Kenny Tagliareni led off with a hit, Jason Greenzang followed with a fielder’s choice, Jack Haynes singled and Ameer Hasan plated the initial run with a sacrifice fly.
That was good news for a squad which had scored no less than four runs in each of its other four games in the tournament.
“Hats off to them. That’s a good team,” Hopewell head coach Mike Coryell said of A’town, whom he’d predicted would win the tournament a week earlier. “It was a good game. We had our chances.”
After rallying to defeat the host team, Whitehouse, 6-2 in eight innings, in the semifinal round earlier Monday, head coach Sahil Thakur’s club stayed hot in the championship tilt.
The visitors tied the game with an unearned run in the top of the second, then took the lead to stay with two runs in the fourth inning.
Randy Steen doubled in the goahead run, then Shane Hickey singled Steen home for a 3-1 lead.
Hopewell starting pitcher Tony St. John went 5 2/3 innings, striking out three, before being relieved.
Allentown used a different approach, starting Zep Princiotta on the mound even though he had thrown 105 pitches Saturday.
After Princiotta got through 1 1/3 innings, Jack Nitti came on and limited Hopewell to two more hits, while striking out five, over the final 5 2/3 innings.
“Our pitchers were able to throw strikes today,” Thakur said. “Zep gave us everything he had, and Jack really pounded the zone.
We were on point. We were sharp.”
With the outcome still in doubt as Hopewell continued to put runners in scoring position, A’town tacked on an insurance run in the top of the seventh when Connor Keenan drove home one more.
Keenan led all players in the game with three hits, including a pair of doubles. Hickey and Danny McCormick added two hits apiece, as did Tagliareni for Hopewell.
“Heading into the day (fellow coach) Justin (Ely) told the team, ‘Today’s going to be a dogfight, regardless of how it turns out for us. As in all things in life, the key is to persevere,’” Thakur said. “That’s exactly what we did.”
In completing their 2020 campaign with the Whitehouse Back The Blue Tournament title, Allentown also ended the long and highly successful run of Hopewell players Tagliareni, Greenzang, Haynes, St. John, Rickey Eng and Dylan Galgano, who had advanced to the Little League World Series in Arkansas as 10-year-olds and won a New Jersey American Legion state title in 2017 before the coronavirus pandemic made their last summer together equally unique.
Allentown Hopewell 010 200 1 — 4 8 0 1000000—140
2B: Keenan 2, Steen, Pellone, McCormick (A), Tagliareni (A); RBIs: Steen, Hickey, Keenan (A), Hasan (H).
WP — JaNitti; LP — St. John.