English beats St. Mary’s to make Clancy final

LYNN – The English High baseball team lives to fight another day.The Bulldogs need to win the Clancy Tournament in order to qualify for the state tournament and they took the first step Friday with a 6-2 win over St. Mary’s in the first round at Fraser Field.Viewi Photo Gallery”We’ve been struggling,” English coach Joe Caponigro said. “Today we got a gutsy, gutsy performance by our senior pitcher Michael Troy. That was his fourth win for us this year and none was bigger than this one. I’m very proud of him.”The Bulldogs (9-10) struck early, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning. Kyle O’Connor led off with a single up the middle and took second on a wild pitch. Anthony Delacruz walked and Lucas singled down the left field line, loading the bases for Brett Molea, who grounded to second to second base to bring in a run with the second run scoring on a throwing error.St. Mary’s pitcher Clay Yianacopolus set the side down in order in the second and third, but shaky defense proved costly to the Spartans (12-6) in the fourth. Mike Ausiello walked for the Bulldogs and Molea laid down a bunt that went to Yianacopolus, who tried to get the runner at second and ended up throwing the ball away. Drew Gentile was up next and he also bunted back to the mound. Yianacopolus scooped it up, but made a bad throw to first allowing Ausiello to score. With two outs, Kelvin Aracena hit a fly ball to left to score Molea and the Bulldogs were up 4-0.The lead took a hit in the fifth when St. Mary’s scored both of its runs. Paul Halas walked and with one out, Matt Costanza doubled. Ryan Boiselle singled up the middle, scoring Halas, but English managed to keep the ball in the infield to prevent a second run from scoring. The Spartans second run came across when Bryan Nerich his one back to Troy on the mound and troy tied to go home with the ball. The throw sailed and St. Mary’s had its second run.It looked like the Spartans might be mounting a comeback, but unlike in their game against Classical earlier in the week, when English went up 5-0 and ended up losing 6-5, the Bulldogs hunkered down and shut the door on any thoughts of a comeback by St. Mary’s.English got two runs back in the fifth. O’Connor was hit by a pitch to start the inning. Delacruz struck out and Lucas Harris walked. It was on the walk that things got a little hectic on the basepaths. O’Connor tried to steal third on the walk, prompting a throw down to third that sailed out of bounds allowing a run to score. Harris, seeing the bad throw, just kept on running and with a second throwing error on the throw to the plate, he made it all the way to third. That set the stage for Ausiello, who drove in Harris on a suicide squeeze for the 6-2 lead.”Sometimes you’ve got to play the game backwards,” Caponigro said, explaining that generally he wouldn’t have had O’Connor trying to steal third. But, he said, when things aren’t going your way, you do things you might now ordinarily do.”This was huge,” Caponigro said about the win. “The second half of the season has been extremely frustrating for everybody on the team, the coaches on the team. We haven’t finished games where we’ve had opportunities to get W’s, so this was a big win, a big confidence booster for the boys.”St. Mary’s coach Derek Dana said Yianacopolus didn’t have his best stuff, but he also didn’t have the defense behind him. The Spartans also struggled at the plate.”I give Troy a lot of credit. He threw strikes, kept us off balance. We had opportunities early,” he said. “For some reason, whatever reason, our intensity, our focus, weren’t where they should have been.”Troy allowed five hits, struck out six and walked two. The defensive play of the game for the Bulldogs came in the fifth inning when John Gaeta hit a fly ball to Andrew Napoleon in center field. He made the catch and threw a strike to Drew Gentile at the plate to nail Ryan Boiselle, who tagged and tried to score. The double play ended the inning.The Spartans wi