English baseball sees one slip away in final inning

LYNN – Three times, the English High baseball team was one strike away from beating Gloucester. Three times, the Fishermen escaped.Gloucester (5-2) rallied for three runs in the seventh inning to take a win away from the Bulldogs, 7-6, Friday night, at Fraser Field.Click here for more photos”No doubt,” replied English coach Joe Caponigro, when asked if his team had given one away. “It’s high school baseball. The kids make mistakes. You look up there on the scoreboard, and you see 11 errors, and you know it wasn’t a pretty game.”The teams actually only combined for 10 errors, but you can hardly blame the scoreboard operator for losing track. The two most damaging miscues occurred in the top of the seventh, two outs and Gloucester runners on first and third.Pinch-runner Logan Horne took off for second, and the throw from catcher Randale Lora went into centerfield. Sal Taramina, who had tripled earlier in the inning, trotted home with the tying run, and when English centerfielder Edison Percel let the throw get away, Horne came all the way around to score the winner. .Adam Philpott set down the Bulldogs (3-5) in order in the bottom of the seventh, the only half-inning in which no batter reached base. Philpott got a win with 2 1/3 innings of scoreless relief of Matt Catarino.The unlucky losing pitcher for English was Ben Bowden, who only allowed one ball to be hit hard. Lora started and gave up two earned runs in five innings.”Both our pitchers threw the ball well,” Caponigro said. “We’ll be back. We’ll practice (Saturday) and be ready for Marblehead on Monday.”Offensively, Josh Gonzalez had an RBI pinch-hit single in bottom of the fifth to highlight English’s five-run rally. After a wild pitch, Matt Merritt plated Gonzalez with a single. Bowden had a pair of singles and drove in a run, while Junior Santos reached base three times and scored twice.For Gloucester, Gilbert Brown had two hits, including a two-run double, while Philpott stroked a pair of singles,scored two runs and drove in another.