Canton Legion Baseball Earns Postseason Berth

The following is by Yoni Monat:

Following five weeks of ups and downs, the American Legion Canton Post 24 baseball team was at a low point late last week, having dropped three straight games and appearing in danger of fading from playoff contention.

However, excellent starting pitching performances and offensive production up and down the batting order resulted in four consecutive road victories this week, and Post 24 locked up a spot in the District 6 playoffs.

“The past few days have been good,” said pitcher/outfielder Jake Fishman. “We’ve been hitting the ball much better. We got out of the slump of our losing streak. And our pitching has been doing really well.”

The summer baseball team consists of high school players residing in Canton and Sharon. Captaining the squad is Canton residents Drew Blake (Milton Acad.) and Steve Mullaney (Canton High) and recent Sharon High graduates Fishman and Nathan Pedersen.

Pedersen says that the players from both towns have become much closer as the summer has worn on. “It just takes time for a regular team to finally get that bond – to know in a [given] situation, what they’re going to do or how they’re going to act,” he said.

Head Coach Greg Lyons has been impressed with how the team came together after he and Post 24 manager Al Jackson had sensed that the squad wasn’t clicking early in the season.

“The team slowly started to be a team, and not just a bunch of individuals. [Since] we came together as a team, [everybody has] wanted to make a play for a guy who just made an error. It’s been good to see,” Lyons said.

Post 24 sat in third place in District 6 East in July, but losses in three successive winnable games from July 9-12 threatened to derail the team’s postseason chances.

After a day off, the squad refocused prior to their game on Sunday vs. rival Stoughton. “The team came together,” Fishman said. “We decided, pretty much, that we were done with losing and ready to get back to winning.”

Lyons said, “After we had our little team meeting - got together, and squared things out – we’ve definitely been re-focused and are back to where we want to be.”

Post 24 sent its #1-pitcher, Fishman, to the hill in Stoughton. In the role of “stopper”, on the mound attempting to end the losing streak, the lefthander was his usual dominant self.

Fishman, who will pitch for Union College next spring, hit his spots with his fastball and featured an effective curveball, limiting Stoughton to just one run and striking out 10.

“Fishman, all year, has been our ace,” Lyons said. “He’s unreal. Anytime I hand him the ball, I am shocked if we lose. He doesn’t walk anyone. He has eight different pitches and keeps the game moving. He’s my type of pitcher.”

Despite Fishman’s efforts, the ballgame was tied, 1-1, in the top of the seventh inning. Then, Canton exploded offensively in a barrage not seen all season. Blake, the team’s leading hitter; Frank Sullivan; and Pat Vartanian all delivered 2-run hits in the frame. The six-run outburst salted the game away.

Post 24 kept swinging a collectively hot bat the next night. Every Canton starter stroked at least one hit (17 total) vs. Cohasset, resulting in 12 runs. Fishman said, “Once one person gets a hit, everybody else kind of catches fire, and we start to hit.”

Pedersen, normally a first baseman, started his second game of the summer on the mound. The Keene State College-bound righthander, who will be a pitcher for the Owls, limited Cohasset to just two earned runs over six innings of work.

“That was very good,” Fishman said. “He hasn’t been pitching a lot for us, but I knew that he would do well. He showed that he could do it.”

Lyons said, “He came out really well, was throwing strikes, keeping the ball low. Had a few unearned runs, but battled for us through six innings. That’s all we can ask out of him. He has a nice little movement on his fastball. If he keeps that up, we could definitely use him going forward.”

Second-year Legion player Liam Murphy took the ball on Tuesday vs. Morrisette. Murphy started his first-career game and shined on the mound.

Under the lights of Adams Field in Quincy, the righthander allowed just three runs in a complete-game effort. Fishman said, “Liam pitched great. He had struggled with throwing strikes in the past, but he hit his spots perfectly [on Tuesday].”

The offensive highlight was Fishman’s 360-foot dash. After stroking a run-scoring double, Fishman took the turn around second, and seeing an overthrow, wheeled around third and came home standing up.

Captain Steve Mullaney, Pedersen, Kyle DelSignore, Kevin O’Brien, and Robert Carmody also added RBIs. Fishman says that the key offensively was aggressiveness.

“The pitcher [from Morrisette] was pretty good - he threw hard. But we jumped on him right away and got him out of the game. That’s what we have to do when we face another good pitcher – just get him out of the game as fast as possible,” Fishman said.

Lyons says that Post 24’s 7-3 victory was the squad’s strongest overall game yet this season.

On Wednesday night in Holbrook, Sullivan overcame early difficulty on the mound to give Canton a strong effort. Fishman said, “I thought Frank pitched well, especially because his arm wasn’t in the best condition for tonight. But he just toughed it out and pitched a great game.”

Vartanian drove in Canton’s first run of the game with an extra-base hit in the middle innings. However, the squad scored no other runs before the seventh inning, which came with Holbrook leading, 2-1.

With Post 24 down to its last out in the top of the seventh, Blake and Fishman reached to load the bases. Pedersen then stepped to the plate and delivered one of the squad’s most crucial hits thus far this summer.

On a 1-2 count, Pedersen pulled a high fastball deep into left field for a triple. Three runs came home on the drive, and Canton pulled ahead, 4-2. “We had clutch hitting,” Pedersen said.

Sullivan made that margin stand in the bottom of the seventh, as the righty became the third Canton pitcher in four outings to pitch a complete game. Later in the evening, with Weymouth’s defeat, Post 24 officially secured a playoff berth.

Fishman said, “I’m very happy about [making the playoffs]. We’ve worked hard over the summer to get to the playoffs.”

Post 24 has three more games remaining in the regular season (prior to Thursday night's contest), which wraps up on Saturday. The squad has a chance to finish as high as third place in District 6 East, with the top five teams making the postseason.

Regardless of Canton’s final seeding, the team will face an opponent from District 6 West, the division in which Post 24 played last regular season. (District 6 East and West teams do not play each other during the regular season.)

Should Canton earn the #3-seed, Foxboro Post 93, a ballclub that Canton swept last season, appears to be the most likely opponent in the best-of-three series. Pedersen said, “I hope we get to play Foxboro.”

As for Post 24’s chances in the playoffs, Fishman said, “I definitely think we’ll be a contender. We’ve got some very talented players and we play well as a team. I think we’ll surprise some people out there.”