Union City tops Shelton American

NAUGATUCK — Four times in a row this Union City Little League team faced elimination. Four times it has kept its summer going. It will try for five on Friday.

“It was hard, working up to this point, but now it’s just coming back together again,” pitcher Andrew Tyszka said Thursday night after a 7-4 win over Shelton American, forcing a winner-take-all game for the District 3 Majors championship on Friday at 6 p.m., again at Peter J. Foley.

Shelton American took a lead in the top of the third, but Union City answered right back with five in the bottom of the inning to take control before adding two more in the fourth.

After losing to Shelton American 5-2 in their first meeting on July 3 to fall into the losers bracket, Union City defeated Seymour, Foley and Shelton National to reach the final.

“Everyone wants a piece of you and wants to stay alive,” Union City manager Ed Tyszka said. “The best thing about it is these guys have come to play every day. They’re ready to go. We’ve worked to get good positioning for our pitchers.”

Andrew Tyszka went the distance Thursday night. Aidan Adanosky, who started the 12-2 win over Shelton National on Tuesday, is expected to pitch Friday.

A couple of errors helped Union City put together that big third inning.

“At this level, you can’t afford to give teams another opportunity, an extra strike, an extra out, an extra pitch, and we unfortunately did that a little bit today,” Shelton American manager John Larkins said.

“We really put a lot of weight on our pitcher, Nicolas Piscioniere. He faced the same team the first time we faced them and held that team to five hits.”

Union City had that many in the third on Thursday, with an RBI single from Adanosky, an RBI fielder’s choice for Nate Parker, a two-run single for Dylan Sepulveda and an RBI single for Jett Hall.

Ayden Sepkaski had all four RBIs for Shelton American, forcing a single past first base in the third and blasting a three-run home run to left in the fifth.

But Andrew Tyszka and a strong Union City defense didn’t let Shelton American rally otherwise.

“I’ve been coaching against this coach now in fall baseball the past couple of years,” Larkins said. “We have a good relationship. He’s a good guy. That is a good baseball program. They are well-coached. They’ve got a lot of toughnosed kids.

“(Friday) is going to be a dogfight. They’ve got momentum. They’ve got two games under their belts against two different Shelton teams. We’re coming back after a tough loss right now.”

WHAT THE...

Parker had a two-run fielder’s choice in the bottom of the fourth. With the bases loaded and one out, he dunked one into center field, shallow enough for Michael Spadaccino to get the forceout at second, but deep enough for both Damon Abate and Andrew Tyszka to score.

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“The majority of these kids, when they were 10 years old, they played up into the 11s, and we won the 11-year-old district championship with that group. But kids are still kids. They’ve got to learn, baseball is baseball, a perfect example of how some things just didn’t fall our way.” —Shelton American manager

John Larkins