Blackhawks’ Memorable Season Finally Ends In Regionals

The state 13-year-old Babe Ruth champion Newtown Blackhawks baseball team participated in the New England Regional Tournament in Vermont during the final weekend in July. The Blackhawks departed after losses to Central Maine and Cranston, RI.

Against Central Maine’s starting pitcher on July 31, Newtown managed only a pair of base hits, hard singles by Bobby Archiere and Patrick Rowley in a 25-5 defeat. Troy Frangione, Virgil Procaccini, Julian Dunn, Kevin Conte, Bobby Archiere, and Connor Roche all had hard hits off the bullpen.

The Blackhawks returned to Hawthorne Field on August 1 to face Cranston, RI in the first round of the loser’s bracket. Cranston prevailed 5-3 and eliminated Newtown from the tournament despite a valiant five-innings of two-hit pitching by Archiere. Trailing 2-0, the Blackhawks got the runs back in the sixth on the efforts of Julian Dunn (double), Charlie Huegie, Archiere, and Ryan Rosenberger.

Newtown nearly carried the 2-2 deadlock into the bottom of the seventh, but Cranston pushed three runs across with two outs after a bang-bang collision at the plate saw the ball kicked out of the mitt in what would have been an inning-ending play. Before the score got out of hand, however, centerfielder Nick Lotrecchiano, a source of numerous web-gems during the Blackhawks’ tournament run, once again was the defensive stopper  with a dramatic sliding catch that kept his team’s hopes alive.

As they had all summer, the Blackhawks responded with determination, narrowing the lead to 5-3 and loading the bases with one out to put the tying run at second in the home seventh. But another dramatic comeback victory wasn’t in the cards for the Blackhawks.

First baseman Julian Dunn cranked the ball in the clean-up spot with two long doubles to right field, but his longest shot of the day — a 320-foot bomb to right center — was caught by a Cranston outfielder. Batting in the three spot, shortstop Virgil Procaccini was similarly robbed on a long drive to straightaway left in the first inning.

After the loss, there was one more game: A ten-inning, tensely-fought struggle of the parents against the players and their siblings on a large tree-lined meadow. Contested with a distressed junk-ball bat and a tennis ball, the well-conditioned players and siblings outscored their athletically-gifted parents. The slugging highlight was Virgil Procaccini Jr belting a towering home run into a frog-filled drainage canal in deep left field. Annette Rosenberger, mom of outfielder Ryan Rosenberger, pitched a memorable inning for the parents, baffling the Blackhawks with a tantalizing arrayof offspeed junk delivered from the far left side of the pitching rubber.