By: Greg Tartaglia – Record Sports Staff
TOMS RIVER – Emerson and Middlesex came back for seconds.
This time, the Cavos were left wanting at the end of the Group 1 state baseball final.
With two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh, Middlesex junior Tyler Dymond drove a ball to deep center to score Mike Salerno and lift the Blue Jays past Emerson, 5-4, Saturday at Toms River North’s Ryan Field.
The Cavos had held off their Central Jersey foe in a similar situation when the teams played for the 2015 Group 1 title. In that game, Emerson escaped a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the seventh to win, 3-1.
As irony would have it, two of the Middlesex holdovers from that contest did the most damage at bat. Dymond and Salerno finished a combined 5-for-8 with two doubles and five RBI.
“We were in the same boat, we had two or three guys back as well from [2015],” Emerson coach Chris Sommerhalter said. “They were hungry, and we were hungry, too. We both wanted it.”
The Cavos (20-9) got the first helping of runs in the second. Senior Brendan Kelly hit a shot to left-center to score Brandon Steidl and tried to stretch a double into a triple. The throw to third actually beat Kelly, but he maneuvered around Quincy West’s glove.
“He went to swipe the tag, and I kind of held up for a second until it cleared out, and then I got in there underneath it,” Kelly said.
The Emerson catcher then scored on a Joe Carmosino sac fly for a 2-0 lead.
Middlesex (26-5) drew even on Salerno’s two-run double in the third, but the Cavos answered. Steidl scored his second run on Jared Delpome’s sac fly in the fourth, and Andrew Brahm came home on Anthony Laureano’s RBI infield single in the fifth.
“I’m proud of my guys, they played some good baseball,” Sommerhalter said. “They scrapped some runs across… we did little things right. They just had two big hits.”
The second of those came off the bat of Dymond, who pitched the first 4⅔ innings and allowed four earned runs. After switching spots with the third baseman West, he came up in the sixth and doubled in two to make it 4-4.
Carmosino (7-1) threw 95 pitches in six-plus, departing after Salerno singled to lead off the home seventh. Middlesex loaded the bases with a walk and a fielder’s choice, and lefty reliever Nick Delpome responded by getting a fly out and a pop up.
Then came Dymond’s drive, which sailed beyond the glove of the center fielder to end the game.
“About a foot-and-a-half away,” said Emerson senior Robbie Leuck, who played the final inning in left field. “He [Brahm] almost tracked it down, but that was a bomb – no one could make that play. It was just a great hit.”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to play in one state final,” Dymond said. “We were lucky enough to play twice against the same team, and we weren’t going to let them beat us again.”
Emerson won six in a row leading up to the Group 1 final, including two straight in comeback fashion.
“The seniors had one goal, and that was to win a state championship,” Kelly said. “Unfortunately, that didn’t get done, but it was a pretty good run.”
