Stoughton Legion Baseball Looks to Get Back on Winning Track

The Stoughton American Legion (Post 89) baseball team got off to a great start this season, , both at home, in close contests over Holbrook (5-4) and Jamaica Plain (4-2). The grueling regular season of 18 games in 27 days continued with four road games against tough competition and Stoughton’s promising 2-0 start quickly turned to 2-4.

Stoughton lost at Weymouth, 8-3, before being shutout over three straight games, both games of a doubleheader at Milton, 16-0 and 5-0, and at Morrissette (Quincy), 10-0.

Stoughton looked to turn things back around, returning home to play the first of a home-and-home two game series over consecutive nights against perennial power Braintree on Tuesday night.

Unfortunately, home cooking was still not enough as Stoughton lost its fifth consecutive game, again by a wide margin, 15-1, to fall to 2-5. Stoughton has been outscored in its last five games 54-4.

Braintree Post 86 and its vaunted offense jumped out to a 12-0 lead after three innings. Braintree scored three unearned runs in the first inning on its way to an early 4-0 advantage.

Braintree starting pitcher Nick Radcliffe struck out the side in the bottom of the first, before his team added six more runs in the top of the second to take an insurmountable 10-0 advantage.

Stoughton allowed two more unearned runs in the third inning, but seemed to settle down after that.

The home team scored its lone run of the contest in the fourth inning when Kyle Connors earned a one out walk and stole second. Connors moved to third on a long fly out to center field by Sean O’Malley. After a walk, Connors completed a double steal to get Stoughton on the scoreboard.

Jay DiStefano got Stoughton’s only other hit in the sixth inning on a ground rule double over the centerfielder’s head.

Braintree added two runs in the sixth and one more in the seventh to account for the final score.

“Tip your cap to Braintree; they came to play right from the start and we didn’t,” said Stoughton coach Jim Derochea. “We made some early inning mental mistakes in all phases of the game and it just snowballed from there. If you don’t come to play in this league, teams will jump all over you.”

Stoughton had four errors and was outhit, 15-2, but played very well over the last four innings.

“I expect us to play with passion every pitch and then everything will fall into place,” said Derochea. “We did that over the second half of the game and we stayed right with Braintree, but we had already dug ourselves into to [too] deep of a hole.”

Stoughton will try to right the ship and avenge the loss tonight, at Braintree, under the lights with a 7:30 start time.

Stoughton will return home after tonight’s contest to host Weymouth (Friday 5:50 p.m.) and Cohasset (Saturday 5 p.m.)