Par-Troy East stays alive
WILLIAMSPORT — In five years of playing together, Par-Troy East’s current Little League allstars have never lost two games in a row. The squad from Parsippany, N.J., was not about to let that happen Saturday night, not when it faced elimination from the Little League World Series.
“We knew we would come back,” PTE shortstop Emil Matti said. “We lost the first game of our state tournament and came back. It was nothing new.”
Neither were the bats of Matti and his teammates, which came alive to pound Gresham, Ore., 10-4, before a largely partisan crowd of 1,510 at Lamade Stadium.
Home runs have been the trademark of this PTE team and they got three more blasts Saturday night, including solo shots from Matti in his first two at-bats. The unexpected one came from eighth-place hitter D.J. Pico. After Matti’s two homers, the Mid-Atlantic Region champs had run up 53 in 21 games from seven different hitters. Pico’s made it 54 from eight, which explains his exuberance rounding the bases after jumping all over a fastball and yanking it over the left field wall. “When I saw it off the bat, I knew it was gone,” Pico said. “That was my first home run — even in regular season — and for it to come in the Little League World Series, that was pretty exciting.”
Matti, meanwhile, led off the game with a nine-pitch at-bat, capped off by a drive off the brick wall in right-center off a fastball on the outside part of the plate. His second time up, it was a tape measure job to left on an 0-2 count. Matti finished the game 3-for-3, including a double and two walks. “It didn't matter where we put it. It seemed like he was hitting it on a rope,” said Oregon manager Jason Trickle. “The beginning part of their lineup hit the ball well all night long. Our starting pitcher wasn't sharp early and they took advantage of it.”
David Ton also went 2-for-3 with a pair of RBI and Anthony Scannelli went 2-for-4 with a key RBI as he legged out an infield single when PTE broke the game open with a four-run fifth.
PTE will take on the loser of Sunday night’s California-Tennes- see game Monday at 4 p.m. Its real foe could conceivably be short pitching but Mike Ruggiero will have his top hurlers, Matti and Saturday’s starter, Bener Uygun, available because Kyle Phillips made his manager’s gamble pay off.
Ruggiero lifted Uygun after 35 pitches with a 5-0 lead in the second inning but after Oregon closed within 5-4 in the third, Phillips shut the door. He entered the game with one on and two in and got the last 12 outs, allowing just one hit, that to his first hitter, before retiring 12 of the last 13 batters he faced. With the tying and go-ahead runs on second and third, Phillips was able to escape by getting a groundout to third, an out on the plate on a nice play by second baseman Dan Ruggiero and a final flyout to right.
“We knew coming in here we were going to have to win with more than two pitchers, especially when we got into the losers’ bracket,” Ruggiero said. “I did decide to burn him with the other two available. My coaches talked me into it a little bit.”