North Shore Phillies win NSBL title

HAVERHILL – The North Shore Phillies celebrated in style Monday after beating the Kingston Night Owls, 4-2, to win the North Shore Baseball League title.With victory cigars being lit all around, manager Chris Carroll, the veteran manager of the team, paid homage to the two other players who have been there as long as he has.”I’m happy for Cory (Moore) and (Chris) Blydell,” said Carroll. “They’ve been here from the beginning – or, at least, as long as I have.”Thus, the Phillies won their first-ever NSBL title, taking the series with Haverhill four games to two.Moore, as he has all season long, stood Kingston on its head with a strong, route-going performance. The NSBL’s Cy Young winner struck out eight, including the side in the bottom of the seventh inning. He walked two.However, he fell behind in the bottom of the first inning with the Owls scored a run when Jason Buco knocked Dan Lagasse home. But the Phillies got that back quickly in the top of the second, when Mike LaMothe’s grounder scored David Duval.The Phillies were back for two more in the fourth. Kyle Shepard got the first one with an inside-the-park homer down the left-field line. LaMothe knocked home the second one with an RBI single scoring Kurtis White.North Shore made it 4-1 in the top of the sixth, this time with White scoring on a double by Jairo Valdez. Kingston got one back in the bottom of the sixth when Buco walked, went to third on a single, and scored on Joe Morin’s base hit.The victory was sweet for Carroll and the Phillies, who lost in the NSBL finals last year to the Swampscott Sox.Carroll attributed a lot of the team’s success to the fact that none of his players had to cut their seasons short by going back to school, or to report for high school football games.”That was a big thing,” he said. “We played well all year, as did (Kingston). It’s great we had the two top seeds playing in the championship.”Moore, a lefty, was one of three southpaws to handcuff the left-handed hitting Night Owls, Sean Buckland and Ed Deren being the others.The Phillies also got key hits from the bottom part of their order Monday.”You need everybody to contribute,” Carroll said. “And we got contributions from up and down the lineup.”If we lost this game, and had to go to a seventh game, who knows what could have happened.”