By: Greg Tartaglia – Record Sports
WOOD-RIDGE – Anthony Laureano’s senior baseball season came full-circle on Tuesday – with one notable exception.
The shortstop jumped into the middle of the Emerson players’ postgame celebration after the No. 4 seed Cavos outlasted No. 1 Wood-Ridge in 12 innings, 2-1, in the North 1, Group 1 semifinals.
The Blue Devils had won the teams’ opening-day meeting at Donna Ricker Memorial Field in walk-off fashion, a fact not lost on Laureano.
“When we won our [quarterfinal] game against Cedar Grove, I thought, we have to go back there,” he said. “We lost 8-7 and can’t forget it, but we’re a different team now than we were at the beginning of the season.”
Emerson (18-8) advanced to the North 1, Group 1 final for the second time in three years. It will host the winner of Wednesday’s semifinal between No. 7 Park Ridge and No. 11 North Warren, which was postponed from Tuesday.
The Cavos used both of their top two pitchers against Wood-Ridge, with sophomore Joe Carmosino (7-0) winning in relief of senior Robbie Leuck. The latter threw 102 pitches over seven innings of five-hit ball, walked four and struck out five.
Carmosino threw 62 and will be available for 78 more on Friday under the NJSIAA’s new pitch-count rules.
“We haven’t planned it out yet,” Emerson coach Chris Sommerhalter said. “We had to win this game first. There’s no tomorrow unless you win today, so we had to use him as much as we could.”
The Blue Devils (20-8), who needed 10 innings to edge Verona in the quarterfinals, 2-1, got all they could out of their two aces as well.
Nick Pronti allowed a run on four hits with seven strikeouts over the first seven innings, and fellow senior Shian Tanaka (7-3) fanned 11 in his five innings of work.
Emerson broke through when junior Andrew Brahm tripled to the gap in left-center – down the middle of the hashmarks of the baseball/football turf – and scored on Pete Durocher’s RBI single. The sophomore second baseman also doubled and scored the first run of the game on a Laureano sac fly in the fourth.
“He [Durocher] stepped up big for us this year,” Brahm said. “He’s filled in for an injury [senior Sam Purzak], and he’s been playing great ever since.”
Wood-Ridge made it 1-1 in the home sixth after Pronti led off with a walk. He later scored on Anthony Trano’s one-out single, but the next batter grounded to Laureano, who started a 6-6-3 double play to end the bases-loaded threat.
“I was hoping maybe we could get out with one run, but we had to play another, what, two hours?” said Laureano, headed to play at Kean next year.
Tanaka, too, escaped a bases-loaded jam in the ninth. At the plate, he finished 2-for-4 with a walk, as he, Trano (2-for-5), Pronti (1-for-4, 2 walks) and junior Jack Barteck (2-for-4, walk) accounted for all seven Blue Devil hits.
“Hats off to Wood-Ridge, they were an outstanding team,” Sommerhalter said. “They beat us early in the season, and these guys really wanted it. It was just an outstanding game all-around.”
