BC High inside-the-park HR beats Plymouth North
PLYMOUTH — When you roll the dice, you must be willing to pay the price and BC High head coach Norm Walsh is now collecting on the dividends.
The Eagles (10-7) decided to leave their star hurler Shea Sprague on the bench for the preliminary round of the Div. 1 South sectionals in a 13-2 win over Silver Lake.
Sprague waited his turn and cashed in on a completegame 5-2 victory over Plymouth North as BC High advances to the sectional quarterfinals to face Wellesley, 1-0 winners over Mansfield, Wednesday at 4 p.m.
The fourth inning featured all five runs for BC High, capped off by Chris Capozzi’s inside-the-park, three-run home run that gave coach Walsh all his team needed.
“That’s why (Sprague) is our No. 1. He is a veteran, pitched for us quite a bit when he was a sophomore, and obviously with no season last year — he’s our guy this year,” said Walsh.
Plymouth North senior right-hander Matt Murphy was pitch-for-pitch with Sprague for the first three innings and racked up four strikeouts. But the St. Joseph College of Maine-bound senior righty ran into trouble in the pivotal fourth inning.
Tim Wagner led off with a single and stole second base. Cleanup hitter Andrew Manning tripled to the cavernous right-center field gap to plate Wagner for the game’s first run and Manning later scored on a wild pitch for the 2-0 BC High lead.
But after a walk to Harry Peters, Murphy was able to grab two quick outs to leave Peters at second with two down.
BC’s Damian Brown worked a seven-pitch walk that frustrated the Plymouth North bench and Capozzi followed with a 1-2 fastball into the left-center field gap that just kept rolling to the wall for the three-run roundtripper and a 5-0 lead in the middle of the fourth.
“(Sprague) shoved and did a great job, I mean they had one good inning and they found a couple of balls and hit them good,” said Plymouth North head coach Dwayne Follette. “With the wind blowing in here it is tough, you have to manufacture runs. Good pitcher and we ran into a buzzsaw.”
Plymouth North (10-3) didn’t quit and came right back out of the gates with two runs of their own in the bottom of the inning. With one out, Plymouth North had their next four hitters reach base as Joe Norris started things with a double to rightcenter.
Dylan Zemotel and Matt Murphy followed with singles with Murphy helping his own cause with the RBI base knock to give Sprague his first sign of trouble.
After Connor Vercollone walked to load the bases —
Plymouth North could only muster one more run on a fielder’s choice as Sprague settled back down and was super-efficient the rest of the way in the 95-pitch, four-hitter.
Plymouth North didn’t let things get away as Danny Riordan and Alec Peruzzi came on for three innings of scoreless relief for Follette, but it was Sprague, who is headed to Elon next season, who doomed the Patriot League Keenan Division champions.