Salem beats Swampscott to reach Gallant final

SALEM – It seemed only right that the host team would reach the finals of the silver anniversary Gallant Tournament.But for Salem to pull that off, it would have to beat Swampscott (which had already beaten it in the tourney opener) in the losers’ bracket final. Well, all Salem did was pound out 17 runs, 14 hits and four home runs to take a 17-13 win at Forest River Park on Monday.Salem will play unbeaten Peabody tonight (6:30) at O’Grady Field, needing to win twice to claim the title.”That’s what seems to happen in these losers’ bracket games,” Salem manager Sean O’Keefe said about the football game that broke out on Monday. “We knew that we had the team to do this, and it took us a while to get going.”Salem needed every one of its runs thanks to a plucky Swampscott team that didn’t fold despite trailing for the bulk of the game.”We battled and the kids never quit,” Swampscott coach Tim Cassidy said. “And that’s something the kids should be proud of.”Salem set the tone for the game right away as Kelly Abreu deposited Jake Cassidy’s first pitch over the right-field fence for a 1-0 lead. No. 2 batter Eric MacAdams followed suit moments later and Salem held a 2-0 lead.But that lead didn’t last long as Swampscott scored three times in the bottom of the first. Ryan January, David Reichert and Brendan McDonald all singled and scored on wild pitches to make it 3-2.Swampscott added an unearned run in the second to make it 4-2 before Salem’s offense exploded in the fourth.Ben Kapnis led off with a single before Andrew Crasco and Nick Latham walked to load the bases. An error allowed Kapnis to score before Crasco came around on a passed ball to make it 4-4.J.T. Kapnis was hit by a pitch to reload the bases before Jared Louf-Woods singled to right, plating Latham. An error on the play in right allowed Latham and Matt Marquez to also score.Aiden Scrimgeour completed the six-run, 10-batter barrage with a base hit that scored Louf-Woods to make it 8-4.”It was nice to see someone like Aiden have a great game,” O’Keefe said. “He played great at short and got a couple of big hits.”Swampscott got a run back in the bottom of the fourth on Reichert’s 2-out single that scored Drew Gentile. But Salem charged back for three in the fifth.Ben Kapnis led off with his sixth homer of the tournament before Scrimgeour and Abreu drove home runs to make it 11-5.Down by six, Swampscott needed a big rally and got it in the bottom of the fifth. Three errors and three hits cut the lead to 11-9 and knocked starter Marquez out.Crasco took over and got Salem out of the jam when Reichert’s safety squeeze scored Gentile but saw Ryan January thrown out at third on the play.Salem then broke the game open in the sixth, sending 11 batters to the plate and scoring five runs. A Jamie Dominguez single was followed by three straight walks that upped the lead to 13-10. Scrimgeour and Abreu capped the inning with hits that made it 16-10.Ben Kapnis’ second homer of the game in the seventh made it 17-10. But Swampscott didn’t go away, scoring three times in the bottom of the seventh and coming within inches of making things really dramatic when Trevor Massey’s shot to left-center bounced off the top of the wall.But Scrimgeour, who had taken over for Crasco, got McDonald on a grounder to second to end the game.