Gallant Tournament on tap for next week

SALEM – If you’re a Little League player and not packing your bags for Williamsport, your season is just about over.Just about, but not quite.The 31st annual Ray Gallant Memorial Tournament gets under way on Thursday at Stephen O’Grady Little League Field at Forest River Park in Salem. The end-of-the summer tournament brings together many of the top Little Leaguers from Lynn, Peabody, Salem, Revere, Swampscott, North Reading, Danvers and Marblehead. This is the last hurrah on the small diamond for most of the players.The Lynn team, under manager Jeff Earp and coaches Leon Elwell and Sean Leydon, returns as the defending champion, having beaten Amesbury in the championship game.This year’s team features all new players including Bobby Alcock (pitcher/short); Conor Donahue (outfield); Brendan Lannon (infield/pitcher); Dan Lauria (outfield); Matt Devin (first base) Will Hunter (second base/pitcher); Colin Reddy (pitcher/infield/outfield); Tim Nerich (catcher); Usabio Quintana (infield/outfield/pitcher); David Stefan (second base/outfield); Jomar Moretta (pitcher/second/outfield); Francisco DeLeon (outfield); Julien Silvestre (first base) and Andy Duverge (shortstop) and Aubrey Conners (pitch/outfield).”The biggest thing about this team that’s exciting for everyone is that the Lynn Shore kids are involved. They probably haven’t been involved for 10-15 years,” Elwell said. “That’s a testament to (Lynn Shore president) Dave Dorgan and what they did over there (bringing the league back to life). It took a lot of hard work by a lot of people.”Last year’s tournament organizers opted to go with wooden bats for safety reasons and for competitive reasons, in that order. Although there was some grumbling and some teams decided not to participate, once the games got going it was just baseball.Gallant vice president Ray Cruddas said he was very happy with the way things worked out with the wooden bats, particularly after an Amesbury pitcher took a shot back back to the mound in the chest early in the tournament. The boy missed a game, but was OK.”I really feel if that had been a composite bat, it would have been much worse,” he said.Cruddas said North Reading, which was one of the original teams in the Gallant and is back this year, uses wooden bats during the regular season. Last year’s Lynn team didn’t seem to have much trouble making the adjustments. Lynn ended up 10-running the opposition in every game.”When the tournament started, I didn’t like it,” Elwell said. “But once we got into it, I didn’t think it made that much difference. The only difference was you didn’t see all the moon shot home runs.”One of the things Cruddas likes about the tournament is that it’s something players tend to remember years later. Cruddas said when he taught drivers’ education, 16-17 year old students would recognize him from the tournament and would tell him how much they loved playing in the Gallant.”I think they remember coming to Salem, playing at Forest River. It’s something that’s there every year with the same cast of characters,” he said.”This is the culmination of their Little League careers,” Elwell said. “This is the 31st year of the Gallant Tournament. A lot of great player from Lynn played in it.”One of those players who played not all that many years ago, Earp said, was Lynn’s Ben Bowden, a pitcher on the Vanderbilt University baseball team that just won the College World Series.”It’s their last Little League event, for the most part,” Earp said. “There’s great history in the Gallant.”The tournament starts Thursday with North Reading playing Salem at 5:30 p.m. and Peabody playing Swampscott at 7:30 p.m. On Friday, Revere plays Danvers at 5:30 p.m. and Marblehead plays Lynn at 7:30 p.m.