English baseball defeats Classical

LYNN – With its hopes for making the state tournament contingent on knocking off archrival Classical, the Lynn English baseball team put together one of its best games of the year.Sophomore southpaw Ben Bowden shut down the potent Rams offense, holding Classical to one run on nine hits, while No. 9 batter Edison Purcel broke a 1-1 tie with a solo homer in the top of the fifth to lead the Bulldogs to a 3-1 win at Fraser Field.Click here for a photo gallery.”Ben pitched a really good game for us,” English coach Joe Caponigro said. “And Edison came up big for us when we needed it.”Across the diamond, the Rams (9-7) were left to contemplate having let a golden chance to clinch their first tournament berth under Mike Zukowski slip away.”Ben kept us off balance and got the big strikeouts when he needed them,” Zukowski said. “We didn’t have the timely hitting (Wednesday) at all.”English (8-10) got the scoring started quickly as Matt Merritt singled with one out in the first and headed to third when Joe Rose’s (7 IP, 6 H, 2 ER) pickoff throw went awry. Junior Santos’ fly ball to center was plenty deep enough to allow Merritt to cross easily.Classical got that run back an inning later as Angel Tavares and Rose singled with one out. No. 9 batter Huebert Segura then delivered a two-out base hit for a tie game.The Rams would have an even bigger chance to go ahead in the third when Wilfredo Feliz and Kyle Devin singled. Greg Rybak followed with a walk to load the bases and bring Caponigro to the mound for a confab with his battery.”I went out there more to talk about how we were going to play it and Ben said, ‘I got this, Coach,'” Caponigro said.True to his word, Bowden did have the situation handled as he popped up John Finnigan before striking out Tavares and Rose to end the inning.”Benny was mentally tough (Wednesday) and did a great job,” Caponigro said.Rose also was doing a fine job on the bump, working out of small jams in the third and fourth innings to keep the game deadlocked heading to the fifth.Purcel then delivered a lightning bolt as the surprise starter ripped a fastball over the left field fence to give the Bulldogs a 2-1 lead. English would then see Merritt single and move to third on two wild pitches before Randy Ruiz’ two-out hit upped the lead to 3-1.In the bottom of the fifth, Purcel struck with his glove as he threw out Rybak trying to go from first to third on a Finnigan hit to end the inning.Classical would have one more chance in the seventh when Kyle Gauthier led off with a single and was at second with no outs after a passed ball. But Bowden dug deep and got the next three hitters to end the game.