The Portland Little League All-Stars’ run in the New England Region tournament ended Thursday with a 2-0 loss to Salem, New Hampshire, in the championship game in Bristol, Connecticut.
With the win, Salem clinched a spot in the Little League World Series, which begins next week in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Portland defeated Salem 2-0 in the tournament’s opening game. Salem beat Burlington, Vermont, and Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in elimination games to reach Thursday’s championship.
Portland coach Brian Bechard said he is keeping his fingers crossed for Salem to do well in Williamsport.
“I can’t wait to see them in the (World Series),” he said. “We’re two evenly matched teams. I think if we played each other 10 times, we’d both win five times.”
Portland couldn’t beat Salem’s starting pitcher Colton Johnson, who led the game with three hits and seven strikeouts. Only one Portland baserunner managed to get past first base: Finn Day, who opened the bottom of the sixth inning with a bunt single.
“(Johnson) pitched against us in the first game and we didn’t hit him any better then either,” Bechard said. “His fastball is heavy. It’s hard to hit. Something about it was bothering our guys.”
Salem took a 1-0 lead in the third inning when Zach Bolduc scored on a perfectly executed safety squeeze bunt by Patrick DeFrancesco. As soon as Maine pitcher David King made his throw to first base to put DeFrancesco out, Bolduc ran to home base and scored easily.
Salem scored another run in the fourth inning. Grayson Buckley led off with a double and scored on Jackson Lemire’s RBI single.
Eli Peltier and Demetrius Brown-Phillips had base hits for Portland, as did Day. Portland played excellent defense, with center fielder Joe Salvaggio making two spectacular plays. First, early in the third inning, Salvaggio threw perfectly to Brown-Phillips at third base, catching a Salem baserunner and ending the inning. Early in the sixth inning, with two on base and no one out, Salvaggio quickly ran to the gap between left and center field and caught an ice cream cone ball to steal a hit from Salem’s Nolan Dupuis that would have scored two runs.
“I’ve never seen a catch like that in Little League, at least not with my own eyes,” Bechard said.
Portland was trying to become the fifth Maine team to advance to the Little League World Series, and it would have been the second in a row after Gray-New Gloucester accomplished the feat last summer. The other Maine teams to make it to Williamsport were Suburban (1951), Augusta (1971) and Westbrook (2005).
Bechard said that as the team progressed in the district and state tournaments, he felt they could compete for the New England title.
“We knew we were going to go far at states,” Bechard said. “After that, we were really confident we could do it. Overall, it was a great summer.”
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