Arlington Legion Drops a Heartbreaker

For six and a half innings, the Arlington legion baseball team was matching Newton - the top team in District 5 - pitch for pitch.

Post 39 chose the worst time to make a critical mistake. An error on a potential double play ball put runners on first and second with no outs in the bottom the seventh inning, before Daniel Swain's RBI single off Rob Shea lifted Newton (8-1) to a 2-1 win over Arlington (3-4) Tuesday evening at Albemarle Field in Newton.

"Just keep your heads up, play hard," said Arlington manager Joe Sancinito when asked what he told his team after the game. "It was just a tough shake there at the end. All you can do is come back and play the next game."

Shea hit the first batter in the seventh before forcing what appeared to be a routine double play ball from Collin Whittier. But the ball took a bad hop on the grass in front of second base, skipping over the glove of Rob Caggiano into the outfield, resulting in no outs and runners on first and third.

"You just tell him you're going to get plenty of ground balls the rest of the year," said Sancinito of his shortstop. "We've still got 12 games in the season. In the grand scheme of things this is a minor hiccup. We played well most of the game."

Arlington had a chance to break a 1-1 tie in the top of the seventh inning, loading the bases off Newton starting pitcher Roy Desrochers (7 IP, 1 ER, 7 K) with just one out.  Desrochers wiggled his way out of the jam, getting Josh Balder to pop out to second after an eight-pitch at-bat and inducing a fly out from Caggiano. The inning represented the best scoring threat of the game for Arlington.

"[Desrochers] had kind of a different windup.  He hid the ball pretty well," said Sancinito. "Kind of a sneaky fast pitcher over there."

Arlington worked its way out its own jam in the bottom of the sixth. Starting pitcher Dave Mazza (5 IP, 0 ER) was lifted after walking back-to-back batters, but Shea came in and got three straight infield outs to retire the side. 

Newton's first run, which came in the third inning, was also unearned. Jack St. Clair scored on an error when his triple to center was mishandled in the outfield, putting Newton on top 1-0, but Arlington quickly erased the deficit in the top of the fourth.  Dan Csaplar responded with a triple of his own and Alex Finigan brought him home with a sacrifice fly to tie the game at one, but that would be the Arlington's only run of the game. 

Post 39 returns to the field Saturday for a 5 p.m. game at Weston.