Mount Greylock Rallies Late to Edge McCann Tech
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – A day dedicated to Mount Greylock baseball’s past was upstaged by a classic from a couple of current high school baseball teams.
Derek Paris outdueled Ozzie Weber, and Jackson Shelsy drove in the winning run in the bottom of the sixth to give the Mounties a 2-1 win over McCann Tech on Saturday afternoon.
The weekend game was a chance for Mount Greylock fans and alumni of the program to gather in honor of Steve Messina, who stepped down in 2020 after 28 years coaching at the school.
Current varsity coach Rick Paris decided to retire Messina’s No. 14, which will join the No. 21 worn by Messina’s longtime assistant, Norman Sweet, who was honored posthumously by the program in 2017.
“Coach Messina’s been great to these kids,” Paris said during a pregame ceremony. “My kids got the chance to be coached by him. It was such a pleasure to watch. And he’s been involved, not just here. He’s been involved in youth baseball for many, many years – keeping baseball alive.
“I just want to thank him for all he’s done.”
As early as Thursday evening, the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee could vote to grant a request to name the varsity field in honor of Messina, who won four Western Massachusetts Championships, going to the state title game in 2015, and is a member of the New England Baseball Hall of Fame.
He and many of his former players stuck around to watch the Mounties pull out their seventh straight win and improve to 12-2 this spring.
The younger Paris earned his third win of the season while lowering his earned run average to 1.22 after not allowing an earned run against the Hornets. He struck out eight, walked two and ended the game with a ground ball with two runners on base.
“It’s just basically throwing strikes for me,” Derek Paris said of the challenge of protecting a one-run lead in the late innings. “Kinda just keep pounding the zone. I don’t do anything different. I just do my thing and go with that.
“I know I have a defense behind me, so I just throw strikes and let ‘em hit.”
That defense was not always perfect on Saturday.
Mount Greylock committed four errors, including one on the first batter of the game and another in the top of the third that allowed McCann Tech’s run to score. The seventh inning, like the first, started with a bobble that allowed the leadoff runner aboard, but the same player who made that mistake, third baseman Thomas Martin, also came up with the game’s final out, cleanly fielding a tricky grounder and firing to first to end the game.
“We had the double play [in the fourth],” Rick Paris said. “I think there was an error in that inning, too, but we made a double play to get out of it. And then Thomas at the end making that play, he had a chance to redeem himself at third base and make the last out.”
Martin also scored the game’s first run in the bottom of the second.
He led off the inning by working a walk, moved up on a wild pitch and scored on Chase Doyle’s triple to right to make it 1-0.
That was all that Weber allowed until the sixth, although the Mounties did threaten, leaving six runners on base through the first five innings and three more in the sixth.
In the bottom of the fourth, the bases were loaded when Weber got the final out looking at a called third strike for one of his eight Ks.
That kept it a tied game at the time.
The Hornets (8-4) got their run in the top of the third.
Landon Champney hit a one-out single and stole second and third ahead of a ground ball off the bat of Weber, who reached on a two-out error.
In the bottom of the sixth, Mount Greylock’s winning rally started when Dylen Harrison led off with a walk.
Leif Johnson went in to pinch run and stole second. A ball to the backstop got him to third, and he scored on a double by Shelsy – one of just three hits the Mounties got off Weber in the game.
In the top of the seventh, Josh Livsey started the inning by reaching on the error, and after Paris retired the next two, Aaron Livsey singled to left to put two runners aboard. But Paris got out of trouble and Mount Greylock (12-2) got to keep its momentum going into Monday’s showdown at Monument Mountain (10-2).
McCann Tech goes to Mount Everett on Tuesday.