Red Rocketeers Take Off Against Stoughton High Baseball

In the first game against this season, the Stoughton High baseball team walked seven straight batters in the first inning, leading to a 6-1 loss. In a rematch Friday afternoon in Stoughton, NA didn’t need to take advantage of the free pass—the Red Rocketeers simply crushed the ball.

After North Attleboro scored three runs off Stoughton’s Alex Fernandes in the top of the fourth inning to make it 5-0, Fernandes helped his own cause and got Stoughton back into the game in the bottom of the inning, clubbing a two-run homerun to left centerfield.

Trailing 5-2, this was as close as Stoughton could get, as the game quickly got out of hand, with the North Attleboro bats coming alive, scoring six runs in the fifth inning and six more in the sixth, beating the Black Knights 18-2.

“[North Attleboro] hit the heck out of the ball. Alex [Fernandes] came to play, kept us in the game early; [but] they were the better team. They hit the ball well, even had some loud outs and they just pulled away,” Stoughton coach Mike Armour said.

North Attleboro pitcher Eddie Fitzpatrick kept the Stoughton offense off-balance in his five innings of work.

“In my opinion, he’s maybe the best pitcher in the league,” Armour said.

His only mistake of the game was Fernandes’ two-run homer. Eric McPherson singled to start the bottom of the fourth and then Fernandes hit the homer, but it was not without some controversy.

Fernandes hit the ball over the green fence in left centerfield, but it did not clear the shorter fence used for one of the softball fields. The two fences are just a few feet from each other (--fourth picture in gallery).

Armour said if the ball clears the green fence it is considered a homerun. After the umpires and coaches debated the issue, the umpires gave Fernandes the homerun, the first one Stoughton has hit at home this season.

“[Fernandes] was the one bright spot,” Armour said.

After the homerun, North Attleboro scored the final 13 runs of the game, taking advantage of a strong wind blowing out to leftfield and centerfield.

North Attleboro’s Alex Witkus finished a double short of hitting for the cycle—with a single, a solo homerun and a triple in his first three at-bats.

McPherson reached base twice for Stoughton, with Fernandes, Pat Jackman, Will McGrath, Mike Connelly and Adam Kenney getting on once each.

Fernandes, Kenny Boykin and Frankie Morris combined to pitch for the Black Knights.

“We lose by one, lose by ten, it’s the same thing. It’s one game, that’s what I told the kids,” Armour said. “It wasn’t like we shot ourselves in the foot, they were just the better team and those [loses] are a little easier to swallow.”

Stoughton falls to 3-8 with the loss. The Black Knights look to rebound Monday at , the first of four scheduled games for the team next week.