Late rally falls short as Shrewsbury Post 397 eliminated in Northeast Regional tournament
WORCESTER — It was an unusual way for Shrewsbury Post 397 to go out ‒ quickly ‒ as hosts of the American Legion Northeast Regional Tournament.
The defending Northeast Regional champs have gone to the American Legion World Series in Shelby, North Carolina three times since 2017, but this time Post 397 couldn’t get the traction they needed in the Regionals to give themselves a legitimate chance to return to the Tar Heel state.
Post 397 lost to Greece, New York, 9-6, on Thursday afternoon at Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field. That loss, combined with a 4-3 defeat to Cumberland, R.I. on Thursday, led to an earlier than expected exit for the tournament hosts, who seemingly always find a way to stick around to the later rounds.
“Listen, we went down two straight and I didn’t expect to go down two straight,” Shrewsbury manager Frank Vaccaro said. “Hats off to New York.”
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The defending champs didn’t go quietly though, erasing a 4-1 deficit in the fourth inning before cutting a 8-4 deficit to 8-6 in the sixth. But in the end, Post 397 couldn’t push through when they needed to in order to seize control of the game.
“Definitely not the way we wanted to end the tournament but I can’t be more proud of our team,” Post 397 catcher Pat McManus said. “We fought a lot of battles all year. We were down to 11 guys during the middle of the year and we fought back from that. I couldn’t be more proud of the boys. We just didn’t want it to end this way.”
New York scratched out single runs in the first two innings before Shrewsbury cut that lead in half when McManus homered to left to make it a 2-1 game.
“It definitely felt good to get that one over the fence,” McManus said. “I think it brought a little fire to the team, we were kind of in there but we just couldn’t finish the job.”
New York tacked on two more runs in the fourth, highlighted by a Bryceton Berry RBI single which gave New York a 4-1 advantage.
Vaccaro said the early hole his team faced against an aggressive team from New York was partially self-inflicted.
“We made a lot of mistakes,” Vaccaro said. “If you make mistakes in these games, you lose. We’ve been on the other side and we’ve been on this side, the other side is better.”
Two of those New York runs came on pickoff plays. In each instance, New York scored when the runner on third beat the throw home while the runner at first was caught in a rundown.
“There is no way they should score two runs on a pickoff,” Vaccaro said. “We had the guy picked off and just didn’t make it happen.”
Despite all that, Post 397 came roaring back in the bottom of the fourth to tie it. McManus drew a bases loaded walk to make it 4-2 before James Benestad delivered a two-run single to center to tie it, 4-4.
New York regained the lead in the top of the fifth on a three-run homer by Jeffrey Broadnax and added another run in the sixth on a Tyler Stack RBI double to extend their lead to 8-4.
Shrewsbury's Jimmy Mitchell helped cut the lead to 8-6 in the sixth, launching a triple into the right field gap to score Benestad and Chris Pompei. Unfortunately, that was the last time Post 397 scored, as New York pushed across a run in the seventh to take the win.
“We will come back next year and see what we got,” Vaccaro said of a team graduating nine players. “I feel bad for the graduates but we did win the Zone, we did go to the state finals and we battled here. Sometimes you win and sometimes it doesn’t go your way.”
—Contact Chris Kyne at sports@telegram.com. Follow him on X @tgsports.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Shrewsbury Post 397's run ends in Northeast Regional Tournament
