After death of schoolmate Anthony Gates, Franklin baseball reaches state title game again
WORCESTER – Another crushing loss.
Already with the initials “NG” on their caps, the Franklin baseball team added another fallen schoolmate to play for.
Anthony Gates.
The Franklin High sophomore died in a car crash on Monday night, and less than 24 hours later, the Panthers took Fitton Field with his surname attached to the back of their uniforms. At stake was another chance to reach the Division 1 state championship game. But this team was playing for more than a shot at redemption.
Gates was a football teammate of Franklin senior first baseman and captain Jase Lyons, who said after a 4-0 victory over Methuen that he was on the team’s mind since hearing the tragic news.
“I know a lot of the guys were close with him or the family or his brothers,” Lyons said. “We had a tough night and a long day but coming out here and winning it for them means the world to us.”
The Franklin community had already been rocked by the death of Nick Gaspar, also a sophomore, who died on May 19 after a two-year battle with cancer. Gates helped sell #NickStrong wristbands at a Franklin boys basketball game on Jan. 21, 2022 to benefit Children's Hospital in honor of Gaspar when both were freshmen.
The loss of Gates put additional weight on already heavy hearts.
“Waking up this morning and I found out who it was, it’s just heartbreaking,” said senior captain Eisig Chin. “I knew his brother and you don’t wish that on anyone. We all came to the field and we were down, but we all came together and talked. I think that made us stronger; we’re all a close-knit family and we all love each other.”
Franklin get another shot at Taunton
Five strong innings from Austin Campbell and a timely offense put the top-seeded Panthers (22-3) into the title game for the second year in a row. Franklin will meet No. 2 Taunton (20-4), a fellow Hockomock League Kelley-Rex foe, at Polar Park later this week. The Panthers defeated the Tigers twice this season, but Taunton edged Franklin in last year’s championship game, 2-1.
“It feels amazing,” Eisig said of returning to the state finals. “That’s all we wanted the entire season and now we have to be ready for it.”
“People will say iron sharpens iron; they’re in our league and we’ve been butting heads for years and they’re kind of a measuring-stick program,” said Franklin coach Zach Brown. “You want to play the best programs and they’re certainly right up there. At times, you feel like you’re looking in a mirror a little bit.”
Panthers end Methuen's magical run
Franklin scored a pair of runs in the second inning and added a third in the third when Rex Cinelli’s bases-loaded grounder scored Luke Sidwell. Chin’s leadoff double in the fourth led to the game’s final run when Ben Jarosz hit a sacrifice fly.
With two on in the fifth, Campbell fanned Owen Sullivan looking before Dillon Cashin took over on the mound to start the sixth. Again with two runners on, Cashin registered a pair of strikeouts to end the threat. The game ended when Cashin threw a 1-2-3 inning, the final out coming on a flyball to center.
Methuen was the story of the tournament, having started the season 1-7 and earning the No. 21 seed. Playing all of their previous three playoff games on the road, the Rangers defeated No. 12 Andover, No. 5 Central Catholic and No. 4 Xavier to reach their first Final Four.
But their run ended Tuesday night.
“Coming in here, you can’t face a bad team,” Lyons said. “We just knew we had to work harder and do things right and get runners on board and get them around, and that’s what we did. We played our style of baseball.”
Added Eisig: “We were following them from the start – they're a really hot team. We knew that this game wasn’t going to be easy, but we all had high expectations for ourselves.”
Franklin will set its sights on Taunton, but the team’s heart will remain with the Gaspar and Gates families.
“It’s already an emotional game when you add on these situations for us,” Lyons said. “Everybody supports each other and all those things bring us closer together and we’re always strong as a group.”
“It inspired us a lot,” Eisig said. “Just having those two from Franklin – they're so young. They should have had a long life. We’ll keep them in the back of our minds. We just want to win it for them.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Franklin baseball win after loss of another schoolmate; finals next
