For second day in a row, the Cheverus baseball team rallied in the late innings to remain unbeaten.
Jack Casale singled with two outs in the bottom of the seventh Thursday to drive in the tying and winning runs, lifting the Stags to a 10-9 win against Westbrook at MacDonald Memorial Field.
A day earlier, Dominic Casale, Jack’s cousin, drove in the deciding run with a sixth-inning single as Cheverus edged Thornton Academy, 3-2.
“In a 24-hour period, these guys had a couple of real gutsy wins,” Cheverus Coach Mac McKew said. “It was a great win for us. Obviously, it was a good chemistry-type win against a good team.”
Casale’s winning hit came on a 3-2 count.
“Coming up in that situation, it’s a matter of getting the bat on the ball and finding the gap,” he said. “He threw me three straight balls and then I took a couple of strikes, but I never felt more comfortable hitting the ball with two strikes on me.”
Justin Ray and Griffin Watson, who both singled, were able to get a head start and scored before Casale’s hard-hit single into the gap in left could be tracked down and thrown back to the infield.
“We hit the ball and they hit the ball, and when that happens, the team that bats last usually has an advantage,” Westbrook Coach Greg Souza said.
“Hats off to Cheverus. (It) made the most of its opportunity.”
“We had the confidence to come up and end the game,” Casale said. “(Westbrook) hit the ball well all game. We didn’t locate our pitches well, but that was all right. We hit the ball pretty well throughout the game, and I think our diligence and our being mentally tough showed in the last inning.”
The Stags (6-0) scored five runs in the third inning to grab a 6-2 lead.
With one out, Jared Brooks belted a three-run homer to make it 4-2. After Maxx St. John reached on an error and Logan McCarthy doubled, Ray hit a two-out, two-run double.
The Blue Blazes (4-2) answered with seven runs over the next three innings to take a 9-7 lead.
In the fourth, Derek Higgins and Liam Coolidge doubled to produce a run.
Westbrook added two runs in the fifth on a walk and doubles by Dylan Francoeur and Higgins, who finished with four RBI.
In the sixth, Westbrook scored four runs on five hits and an error. Bailey Sawyer, Higgins and Brandt Herbert had run-producing hits.
Cheverus got a run back in the bottom of the sixth when Brady Freeman scored on a wild pitch.
Ray pitched 11/3 innings of one-hit relief to earn his first pitching win of the season.
“We piece-mealed our way through the game from a pitching perspective,” McKew said.
McKew removed Jack Mullen, a sophomore right-hander making his first varsity start, after four innings with Cheverus holding a 6-3 lead.
“He gave us four good innings, but my feeling was the top of their (batting) order was coming up in the top of the fifth and I thought they needed to see something different,” McKew explained.
“Apparently, it didn’t matter. They just saw the ball.”
The Blazes banged out a total of 12 hits, while the Stags had 13 hits.
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