It's Monday, and you know what that means. It's time for the Sports Buzz, the fastest three minutes in Brookline sports coming your way right now:
Well, let's go to the diamond, and despite an opening game loss for the Lou Tompkins Brookline U-12 baseball 'A' team in the middle round trophy weekend, the squad has since improved to 5-2 overall, quite a turnaround from its first round record of 2-4.
An 8-1 loss to Weston at Donnelly Field in Cambridge was knotted at 1-1 until things unraveled in the fifth inning. Weston scored five runs on three hits, three walks, an error and a hit batsman to make it 6-1.
Brookline's Ryan Leung led off the game with a double and the team managed to get a baserunner with a walk or hit every inning, but the rallies often fell short as Weston registered 15 strikeouts on the locals.
Brookline scored its only run in the third inning when Koya Matsui ripped an RBI single.Justin Yue also had a pair of singles in the loss.
"We just had that one tough inning,” Brookline head coach Arlen Showstack said. “Weston’s pitcher threw well and kept us off balance.”
Brookline improved to 5-1 last week when Reo Shimbori struck out seven over three innings. The offense came to play as well as Neema Zarrabian’s long three-run home run got Brookline going in the first. Leung’s homer made it 5-0 and the first of Alex Chin’s two home runs was a grand slam that gave the team a 9-0 advantage. Chin's two-run blast in the fifth made it 11-0. Yue, who had two hits, drove in the last run with an RBI single in the fifth.
“This was a big game and the kids came to hit,” Showstack said. “We weren’t chasing and the patience helped.”
Meanwhile, the Brookline 'B' team began the Lou Tompkins All-Star season on a hight note, defeating South End.
But its fortunes were soon reversed as Brookline lost the next three contests to the same team, including last week's 8-5 defeat.
“We’re two evenly matched teams,” Brookline coach Michael Normant said. “The difference is we made more mistakes than they did.”
In the first inning, Liam Connor-Moreno ripped an RBI single, part of a three-run stanza that gave Brookline early control.
Brookline's Brett Amendola brought another run across in the fourth inning with a squeeze bunt, and Jack Levine contributed two hits, but that was not enough overall.
Brookline is now 6-3 in the lower division and 8-9 overall, but more importantly, jelling as a team heading into the playoffs.
“After slow start, we came together as a group,” Normant said. “Guys are working hard to become better as players.”
On the mound, Levine has been the team’s ace compiling a 4-1 record with a 1.40 ERA and two complete games.
“He has really kind of carried us on the mound,” Normant said.
The team was scheduled to play 2 1/2 more games (one was postponed halfway through) before the postseason begins, in which Normant expects to be competitive.
“We’re a really good team and are hard to beat,” he said.
Pat Ouellete and Peter Shanley contributed to this report.
