By Dan Harrison
staff writer
—
DANVERS — With the bases loaded, nobody out in the third inning and Peabody already leading by two runs, things did not look good for pitcher Freddy Cole and his Swampscott Sox in Game 7 of the North Shore Baseball League championships.
Unfortunately for the Champions of Peabody, Cole is no slouch — and neither are his Swampscott teammates.
The former Franklin Pierce left-hander got back-to-back strikeouts with a devastating changeup, then got Bill Haskell to ground out to shortstop, ending the inning and keeping the deficit at just two runs. His Swampscott teammates responded by tying the game in the next inning, then taking the lead in the fifth when catcher Ryan Healey blasted a RBI double deep down the right field line off of Peabody's Seith Bedard.
In the end, the Swampscott Sox were crowned NSBL champions for the first time since 2006 with an 8-4 triumph over Champions at the Twi-Field.
After the game, Cole spoke about getting out of the third inning jam.
"I took a deep breath and said to myself, 'I gotta throw strikes,'" said Cole. "I had a couple good changeups to get (back-to-back) strikeouts. I just tried to make good pitches to do what I could to get out of the inning."
Swampscott's victory ended a three-year reign atop the NSBL for Peabody. In both of the last two years, Champions defeated Swampscott for the crown.
Healey's RBI double in the fifth could have been far more devastating for Peabody Champions had catcher and co-manager Mike Giardi not made a spectacular double tag on Swampscott's Steve Carr and David Lightbody.
"After I tagged one (Carr), I heard (the umpire) asking to see the ball then I saw the other guy (Lightbody) bearing down," said Giardi, who praised the class of the Swampscott baserunners. "I have a ton of respect for those guys because I could have gotten laid out hard on that one, but they came in sliding instead of barrelling down."
Healey's big blast seemed to wake up the slumbering Swampscott bats as the Sox plated five runs in the top of the sixth inning, thanks to a towering two-run bomb by Carr.
Healey, who had faced Bedard before, was sitting on the fastball.
"He's a good pitcher, but I knew he was going to try and blow me away with that fastball. So I was sitting dead red fastball," said Healey. "I said to myself, 'You better not miss it' — and I didn't."
For Swampscott head coach Joe Caponigro, whose team had a mediocre regular season (13-10-1), it was a co-state championship finish at the Stan Musial Tournament right after the end of the regular season that turned things around for his club.
"After that, we started playing our best ball. I told these guys 'It's not how you start, but how you finish'," said Caponigro, whose team didn't knock the cover off the ball, but came up with the hits they needed most last night. "We didn't have a lot of hits, but we had the key hits."
Giardi, who coached Cole in AAU baseball with the Hit Zone Hornets, very impressed with the lefty.
"(Cole) is a smart pitcher; not one of those guys who is just going to blow it by you, but a lot of times we were striking out looking. He battled the whole way," said Giardi. "As much as I don't want to see (Swampscott) win, it's nice to see a kid you've worked with go out there and succeed."
