Frederick's unbeaten legion baseball team survives scare, beats Brunswick

Jun. 28—Brunswick is fielding an American Legion baseball team for the first time in 11 years, and its young roster is loaded with 16-year-olds.

Nonetheless, the newly revived program hasn't been win-starved, and it even threw a scare into unbeaten and defending Maryland state champ Frederick FSK Post 11 on Wednesday.

But with Frederick getting vital contributions from current or former Brunswick High School players Joey Sweeney, Tyler Lowery and Colin Pearre, who were allowed to play with FSK Post 11 because they got waivers or were grandfathered in, Post 11 held on for a 7-5 win at McCurdy Field.

Sweeney's five-RBI night and Lowery's stellar starting pitching performance allowed Post 11 to hold what seemed like a comfortable lead through the first six innings. But after Brunswick rallied for four runs in the seventh, narrowing Frederick's lead to 7-5, Pearre took the mound and recorded the final two outs for the save.

"Give credit to them," Post 11 manager Matt Myers said of Brunswick. "They're a young team. They're scrappy. They play hard, fought to the last out."

Frederick (8-0) had been piling up lopsided wins recently, so Brunswick manager Steve Dinges had no complaints about losing by a pair of runs.

"When we come over here, all we want to do is be respectable, play respectable baseball," he said. "A 7-5 ballgame, I mean, we're right there. I have nothing bad to say."

Brunswick has a 4-5 record, which is respectable for a revived program with a slew of young players.

"We're building," Dinges said. "I've got six 16 year-olds on this team, and they all played big minutes. Our starting pitcher [Alex Frye] just turned 16, and he pitched a heck of a game."

Aside from getting players from Brunswick High School, Post 96 can also draw from parts of Jefferson County, West Virginia (it has two on the roster), Middletown and Tuscarora that are closer to Brunswick than other nearby Legion programs.

"It's been kind of tough. Just getting back in," Dinges said. "We've got to sell the program again to the kids who knew nothing about it. These kids were 5 and 6 years old the last time we had a program, so they knew nothing about it."

Sweeney, a 2022 Brunswick High School grad who just finished his freshman year at Methodist University (North Carolina), fit that description when he was looking to play Legion ball to stay sharp for when he returns to college.

"I actually didn't know Brunswick was going to have a team this year at first," he said. "So I was reaching out trying to get a team that I could play for, so I reached out to Coach Myers and [assistant coach Mike] O'Brien to see if I could play here, and then I found out they were having a team, and I got the waiver signed to come here and play."

Sweeney drove in Post 11's first five runs Wednesday, hitting a two-run single up the middle in the first and a bases-loaded triple to right field in the third. Both clutch hits came with two strikes.

Sweeney said it was crucial to hunt for his pitch — his first-inning hit came on a fastball — on a night when Frye was serving up a steady supply of curves.

Lowery said his curve wasn't the sharpest on Wednesday, but his fastball and change-up did the trick on a night when he had 10 strikeouts in six-plus innings. He held Brunswick to three hits and one run through the first six innings, and the lone run came via a throwing error after a dropped third strike.

While Lowery had a shot at the complete game, he was pulled after Brunswick's Conner Ohler and Jeremy Bel opened the top of the seventh with singles. After Keagan Everhart reached on a bunt (no one was covering first on the play) to load the bases, Willie Frye drilled a three-run triple to the gap in right center.

Frye later scored when a pitch got past the catcher.

Pearre entered the game with one out, a 7-5 lead and a runner on first. He was aided by center fielder Tyler Knill's sliding catch, which came with runners on first and second, and then he got the game-ending strikeout.