American Legion: After Losing Last Seven, Medford Post 45 Gets a Win

ARLINGTON – After losing its last seven games, Medford Post 45 came out with an 11-4 win on Sunday, beating Arlington/Belmont Post 39 at Spy Pond Field.

“We had lost seven in a row coming into today,” said Medford Post 45 coach Ryan Kozul. “We’ve had a lot of injuries, we’ve been struggling with nine, 10 guys, so this was a nice win to get today.”

Medford’s win saw a scary moment though in the top of the fourth. At-bat against Arlington/Belmont, Pat Duffy was hit by a pitch in the face that knocked him to the plate. He was sprawled out for a few minutes before being helped up and off the field.

“(Duffy) got hit in the face with a pitch. I think he’s okay,” Kozul said. “It looked like he was a little bit cut up inside, but his teeth weren’t loose or anything. He went to the hospital to get checked out. I think a couple stitches and he should be okay.”

Medford took control from the start of the game, holding a 3-0 lead finishing off the top of the third.

In the top of the first against Arlington/Belmont pitcher John Powers, Ryan Carvalho scored on a pop-up. In the top of the second against Danny Fitzgerald, Mike Pizzi scored on Carvalho’s single grounder up second, and in the top of the third Duffy scored on Anthony Barry’s center field single.

Then Arlington/Belmont got three runs to tie it 3-all in the bottom of the third against Medford pitcher Nolan Brennan.

“We’ve kind of been having to use guys that don’t pitch too much and that was one of my better pitchers today (Nolan Brennan),” Kozul said, “and he’s a little bit hurt, but he toughed it out and pitched a great game with one-earned run, so he pitched great.”

Hunter Sleeper scored on Rob Wesoloski’s left field double, Wesoloski ran home on Rob Shea’s center grounder, and Shea, who stole third during a pitch, bolted home from third when Medford’s catcher made a wild throw to the third baseman in the attempted out.

Even though Arlington/Belmont was able to tie it, Medford held the rest of the game.

They scored twice in the top of the fourth, with Carvalho and Paul Covelle tagging. In the fifth they nabbed five runs, with three players scoring on an error and Chris Salvati and James McConville scoring on Brennan’s center single. And Carvalho had his fourth run of the game in the top of the sixth, running home on Covelle’s center field triple.

Kozul said that hitting has been the team’s problem, but the hits improved Saturday and Sunday.

“We weren’t hitting the first six and we finally started to hit yesterday, we had 10 hits yesterday,” Kozul said. “We made a couple base-running mistakes, so this was a continuation of yesterday I would say. We’re finally coming back around with the bats.

“We’ve been losing 5-2 games, 4-2 games, so this was nice today.”

Medford Post 45 played a second Sunday game, hosting Lexington Post 38 at 1:30 p.m. Next up, the team travels to play Hudson Post 100 on Monday at 7 p.m.