Stoughton High Baseball Suffers Another Tough-Luck Loss

If there wasn’t hard luck then the Stoughton High School baseball team would have no luck at all. The Black Knights have already lost two games in the most improbable ways.

There was hitting an batter to force in the winning run. There was a Stoughton runner thrown out at home, that would have been the tying run against , to end another game. And now another ill-fated ending at home against Hockomock League rival Attleboro, on a chilly and misty Tuesday afternoon.

Stoughton had trailed 4-0, but came back with two runs in the sixth inning and then scored one in the seventh, and had the tying run at third and the winning run at first, with two outs and Mike Connelly at bat.

Connelly connected on a hard hit ball that was heading into right field that would have tied the game. Unfortunately, the ball hit teammate Alex Fernandes, who was running from first base. The play resulted in the last out and a heartbreaking, 4-3 defeat for Stoughton.

“We battled back and I was proud of the team for that, but we needed to start this game with as much intensity as we finished it,” Stoughton coach Mike Armour said. “We put ourselves in a hole that we couldn’t dig out of and to lose the way we did just makes it that much harder.”

With the loss Stoughton now drops to 4-9 overall (3-8 league and 2-3 Davenport Division) and now must win at least six of its last seven games to qualify for a post-season berth. Stoughton will play its third game in as many days, hosting O’Bryant for a second time this season, Wednesday afternoon.

Attleboro, after a 2-7 start, has won its fourth consecutive game and is now 6-7 overall (4-5 league and 2-2 Kelly-Rex Division) and will travel to North Attleboro on Wednesday afternoon.

“We were very fortunate to hold on and win this game,” Attleboro coach Matt Bosh said. “We are starting to get out of our early season slump and we continue to show how resilient we are when things go against us. We need to keep it going over the last seven games.”

The game began as a pitchers’ duel between senior Zach George for the Bombardiers and Brian Kaplan, a junior, for Stoughton. Both completed three shutout innings, before Attleboro broke the scoreless tie in the fourth inning with a pair of runs.

George, who had two hits in the game, helped his own cause with a one out single. Adam Woodhead followed with a deep shot into centerfield, for a double, scoring George with the game’s first run. Max Lancaster, a freshman, was up next and lined a single to left, to score Woodhead and give Attleboro a 2-0 advantage.

Attleboro added two more runs in the fifth inning on an RBI single by Ryan Olmo and an RBI double by Peter Cassidy, to give the Bombardiers a 4-0 lead. Kaplan gave up three runs and was relieved by sophomores Pat Jackman for two innings and Will McGrath for one inning, and both were able to shut the door on Attleboro’s offense.

George continued his one-hit shutout pitching until the sixth inning, when the Stoughton offense scratched together a pair of runs with an infield single, an error, a wild pitch, three walks and a hit batter. Frankie Morris was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and Sean O’Malley followed with a walk to cut the deficit to 4-2. George settled down to get the final out of the inning and keep the two-run lead.

Stoughton would get one more try in the seventh inning. Jackman lined a one out single to centerfield. After the second out of the inning, the Black Knights got a second life when Attleboro committed an error that would have ended the game, but instead put runners on first and third.

Fernandes followed with an RBI single to cut the Attleboro lead to 4-3, setting up the final hard luck play that handed Stoughton a defeat and gave George his complete game victory for Attleboro.