Madison Junior LL Baseball Falls To Roxbury

The Madison Junior Little League baseball team had a rough go Monday night at Dodge Field, losing 17-0 to Roxbury in the first game of the best-of-three District 1 championship series.

Joe Mangeri pitched five scoreless innings to pick up the win while driving in three runs. Kyle MacRae was outstanding at the plate, going 3-for-3 with six RBIs, including a mammoth home run over the left field fence in the fourth inning for Roxbury's final two runs.

Johnny Costa picked up two of Madison's four hits.

Roxbury also scored 17 runs against Madison when the two teams met in pool play on June 30, when Roxbury won 17-15. This time, Madison's bats couldn't get anything going against Mangeri, who threw.

He held Madison's offense—which had scored 47 runs in the three pool play games—to just four hits over five innings.

"Hats off to their pitcher," said Madison coach John Costa. "They beat the heck out of us tonight. They were clearly the better team in every way tonight."

Malgeri struck out seven hitters, walked only two and didn't allow a batter to reach third base.

Roxbury scored early and often, plating at least two runs in each inning. Mangeri and MacRae each drove in two runs with singles in the first inning, when Roxbury took a 5-0 lead.

In the second, the first four Roxbury hitters all reached base and scored, including two on a two-out Doug Alexander single to make it 9-0.

Madison's best scoring chance came in the top of the third, when Costa and Marc Persing hit back-to-back singles with one out, but Mangeri got a flyout to left field and a strikeout to escape the jam.

Madison faces a must-win in Game Two of the championship series Wednesday night at 7 pm at Dodge Field. Game Three, if necessary, will take place Friday at 7 pm, also at Dodge Field.