Marblehead defeats Lynn, reaches Gallant finals

SALEM – The winner’s bracket final of the 2011 Gallant Tournament on Sunday at Forest River Park was certainly full of fireworks. And when it was done, an unheralded team booked a spot in the finals.Trailing Lynn 4-0 after a Herbie Newton grand slam in the third inning, Marblehead rallied and scored 10 unanswered runs to take control and an eventual 13-8 win that sends it into Tuesday night’s (6:30) final against either Peabody or Lynn.”We are a good fastball-hitting team,” Marblehead manager Steve Tubridy said. “And once we caught up to them and showed our patience, we were able to get some hits.”Marblehead now sits in the tournament’s proverbial driver’s seat as Lynn and Peabody will play tonight (6:30) for the other spot in the finals and will need back-to-back wins to steal the title away.The game was scoreless into the third as Marblehead’s Liam Tubridy and Lynn’s Brendan Powicki each worked out of a jam.No. 9 batter Tyler Way led off the top of the third for Lynn with a single. Powicki followed with a walk and Sean Devin’s perfectly placed bunt loaded the bases. Tubridy rang up Kyle Autilio on strikes before Newton got hold of a fastball and launched it well over the left-center fence for a 4-0 lead.Spencer Carr was summoned from the bullpen and the move proved to be a shrewd one as he got the next two batters to shut down the Lynn threat.Marblehead hit the comeback trail in the bottom of the third as Crew Whittier led things off with a walk. Matt Koopman followed with a double that plated Whittier to make it 4-1.Koopman headed to third on a wild pitch and scored on an error to cut the lead to a pair after three.Carr set Lynn down in order in the fourth before Marblehead opened the floodgates in the home half of the inning.Back-to-back walks to Braden Haley and Tom Rockett with one out preceded a double from Kyle Koopman that cut the lead to 4-2. Ben LaVoie followed with a single to make it 4-3 and knock Powicki from the game in favor of Newton.Whittier reached on a fielder’s choice to load the bases. Matt Koopman walked to force in the tying run and Tim Kalinowsky’s base hit to right gave Marblehead the lead for good at 5-4.James McCarthy added the coup de grace when he cranked a grand slam to make it 10-4 after four.”This was one of those games where I had a feeling we were in trouble,” Lynn manager Jeff Earp said.It stayed that way until the top of the sixth when Lynn cut into the lead as Powicki belted a 3-run homer off Carr. But Marblehead got the runs right back in the bottom of the inning to effectively put the game away.Newton’s second homer of the game in the top of the seventh closed out the scoring.”We saw that their first pitcher was beginning to get a little wild so we backed off and showed a little patience at the plate,” Tubridy said.Peabody closed out a four-game marathon on Sunday with a 23-6 bludgeoning of Danvers that saw it belt four first-inning homers and eight in all for the game. Coupled with its seven round-trippers in a 19-1 win over Salem earlier in the day, Peabody finished with 42 runs on 40 hits in two games.