by Dan Harrison
staff writer
—
Industrial Revolution innovator Eli Whitney sure would be proud of this summer's Peabody Legion baseball team.
After all, Post 153 has taken Whitney's world famous concept of interchangeable parts and applied it — with great success — to the diamond.
The result for Lou Karger's team: its first trip to the Legion state finals since he took over as the club's manager back in 1978.
Peabody is one of eight teams remaining in the playoffs set to play in the double-elimination finals at Campanelli Stadium in Brockton. Peabody will face the host squad in their opener at 8 p.m. tonight.
Looking up and down the lineup, almost half of Karger's squad can play more than one position — and that doesn't just mean switching outfielders from right to left field.
Take Peter Sucharewicz, for example, a kid who spent most of his high school career behind the plate. But when it looked as if Post 153 wouldn't have a third baseman heading into the season, Sucharewicz was eager to fill the hole and has thrived at the hot corner.
"Versatility has been key for us," explained Karger. "Peter's a good-sized kid with tremendous quickness, so we put him at third and he's done a nice job helping us out."
Peabody has an array of talented outfielders; however, one of the most talented, Andrew Guido, has taken over as the team's primary second baseman. Beau Batchelor is the starting catcher, but has worked himself into the pitching rotation as well and has become one of Peabody's most reliable fireballers.
Then there are middle infielders Sean Glabicky and Jimmy Leavitt, who have both proved to be quite dexterious playing both shortstop and second base positions without any dropoff.
Lastly there is Joe Gruntkosky, who has built an impressive high school career on the mound — earning Northeastern Conference Large MVP honors for Peabody High this past season — and will start tonight's game against Brockton. But he's also shown his all-around value to Post 153 this summer by playing first base as well to keep his big bat in the lineup.
This Peabody bunch is intelligent, too, and will do whatever necessary to improve itself. In fact, it was Andrew Guido, Sucharewicz, and Batchelor who approached Karger and assistant Kevin Johnson and asked for a shot at trying other positions. Luckily, Karger has been around long enough to know a good manager should trust his players.
"The kids aren't afraid to tell us where they can they think can help us out, and we're willing to let them try," said Karger, who was adamant about the impact Johnson has had in his first year as assistant manager.
"We don't want to pigeonhole a kid at a certain position. I give Kevin (Johnson) a lot of credit, his knowledge of the game and enthusiasm has made all the difference in the world. The kids respect him and he's a major part of the whole process (that has led us to the state finals)."
Along with being a team that can adapt to almost any situation, Peabody has proven to have another important intangible: resiliency. Twice in the last week Peabody was staring the end of their season in the face, and on both occasions, Karger's club rose to the challenge.
In the team's 15-inning, 11-10 win over Lowell on Wednesday, Peabody went down a run twice in extra innings, but both times were able to come back and tie the game. Even in Peabody's last regular season game against North Andover (which they needed to win to make the playoffs), they gave up a five-run lead and were looking at missing the playoffs — with a North Andover baserunner on second base in the bottom of the seventh to boot. But Peabody was able to get out of the inning and then go on to win it in the eighth.
"They're a blue collar team and a pretty lose bunch. Sometimes being loose is a good thing," said Karger. "They have a good balance of being real focused when they need to be, but they don't get so tight that they can't react."
A big reason for the club's resiliency has been the maturity of Tommy Moules and Batchelor along with Nick and Andrew Guido, who all came back from their first seasons of playing college ball.
"We're going down there with the mentality that we are there to win the state championship," said Karger. "I told the kids once you get on the dance floor, anything can happen. Now we're on the dance floor — and we want to win."
