Peabody claims second straight Gallant title

SALEM – Tuesday’s Gallant Tournament final at Forest River Park was between one team, Peabody, that was expected to be there and another in Salem that was riding the wave of momentum.Unfortunately for the host team, Salem would not be picking up its first championship trophy in 23 years. Peabody’s explosive offense saw to that.Dave Cravotta’s 3-run homer in the first inning got Peabody off and running. And by the time it was finished, Peabody had pounded out 15 hits and four home runs en route to an 18-4 win at Stephen M. O’Grady Field.”It was a great team effort,” Peabody manager Joe Spatafore said. “Every one of these players had something to do with this.”Salem was coming off a win over Swampscott in the losers’ bracket final that saw it exhaust about every arm that was available to manager Sean O’Keefe. And facing Peabody ace Tyler Noe, who was named the tourney’s outstanding pitcher, it was simply too big a hill for Salem to climb.Noe struck out 14 over six innings and allowed just five hits while his teammates went to town.Cravotta started Peabody in style when he ripped his homer over the right-field fence against Ben Kapnis with one out in the first to make it 3-0.Kapnis, who took the loss, was named the tournament MVP after going 10-for-21 with seven homers and 12 RBI.Salem got a run back in the bottom of the first on a hit, two wild pitches and a throwing error. But that would be as close as it got.Peabody responded by sending 11 batters to the plate in the second inning, scoring five times against Kapnis and reliever Jared Louf-Woods to make it 8-1.After his first-inning struggles, Noe settled down nicely and kept Salem at bay through the middle innings. His team, meanwhile, continued to score runs at a furious pace.Austin Batchelor and Ryan McManus each hit mammoth 2-run homers in the fourth before Peabody added four runs in the fifth to make it 16-2.Fittingly, Batchelor closed out Peabody’s title in style when he ripped his second 2-run homer of the game to left-center in the seventh. Salem scored twice in the bottom of the seventh against reliever Jonathan Barrett to close out the scoring.