Jersey Bound Again

For Johnston baseball players, New Jersey always tops the list of summer destinations.

And they’re going back again.

The Johnston Senior League all-stars won the state championship last Wednesday with a 6-2 victory over Smithfield and will now head to the Eastern Regional in West Deptford, N.J.

For the veterans on the Johnston squad, it’s their fourth state championship and their fourth trip in four years to a regional in New Jersey. They will open the regional on Thursday, but not before they took a little time to celebrate.

“I’m stunned myself,” said manager Joe Santilli. “Four years – district champions and state champions. I don’t think you’ll find a better group. You won’t see something like this for a while.”

The four-year run began in the summer of 2011, when the current veterans were the youngest members of the Junior League team that made it to the World Series. They won another Junior League title in 2012 then moved to the Senior League ranks and reunited with their former World Series teammates to win another state championship last summer.

Faces changed again this year, but the results did not. Johnston cruised through the district tournament and beat East Greenwich and Smithfield to capture another state title.

“They wanted it one last time,” Santilli said “All they kept saying was, ‘We’ve got to finish.’ We’ve got some younger kids too, but these older guys said from game one, ‘We’re ready.’”

Johnston opened the three-team state tournament with a lopsided win over East Greenwich. That moved them into the championship round, where they needed to win just one more game for the title.

Before a big crowd at Exeter/West Greenwich Little League, Johnston wasted no time putting itself on track. Jake Coro led off the top of the first with a single and stole second. Korey Fijal knocked him in with a base hit. After another Johnston hitter reached, Austin Conte smacked a two-run double, staking Johnston to a 3-0 lead.

“That set the tone,” Santilli said. “This group doesn’t need much confidence. When you give them confidence like that, they’re hard to beat.”

Johnston pitcher Jake Podmaska took the early lead and ran with it, pitching two scoreless innings. He ended up allowing just two runs in 5.1 innings of work.

“He was on,” Santilli said. “We saved Jake for this game. He kept asking for the ball, but we wanted to hold off. We said, ‘Wednesday, if we get there, the game is yours.’”

Johnston added another run in the third on an RBI single by Jordan Gillheeney that scored Fijal. Smithfield scored its first run in the bottom of the third, but Podmaska induced a groundout to strand a runner at third base.

Podmaska followed with two more scoreless frames, aided by a runner getting caught stealing by Gillheeney in the fourth and a double play in the fifth. Johnston tacked on two insurance runs in the sixth, with both scoring on a misplayed fly ball off the bat of Conte.

Smithfield came to life in the sixth, when Sean Kiernan drew a one-out walk. Coro relieved Podmaska and Kiernan quickly moved up two bases on a wild pitch and a stolen base. Coro induced a pop-up for the second out, but Anthony DiLorenzo drew a walk to put two men on.

Mike Lavallee followed with a double to the gap in left-center. Kiernan scored from third while pinch-runner Evan Sousa raced around from first and looked like a sure bet to touch home. Instead, center-fielder Marc Conte unleashed a bullet to the cut-off man Coro, who fired home, where Gillheeney put the tag on Sousa to end the inning.

Johnston led 6-2, and had grabbed momentum right back.

“That was a fantastic throw,” Santilli said. “That just took the wind right out of their sails.”

Smithfield threatened one more time in its last at-bat, opening the bottom of the seventh with a base hit and putting another runner on thanks to a Johnston error. But with runners on second and third, Caparco made a sliding catch of a line drive at second base and Coro struck out the next batter. He then induced a ground ball to second, where Caparco fielded and flipped to first for the final out.

“You can tell the kids that have been here,” Santilli said. “Nothing fazes them. When other teams are coming back, it’s getting loud, they just keep playing ball.”

The result was another championship – and a return trip to New Jersey. Johnston will play the second game of the tournament on Thursday night against the host team, West Deptford, N.J., at 7:30 p.m. The tournament is double-elimination and continues through Wednesday, August 6.

“We start off tough, playing the host team right off the bat,” Santilli said. “I think we can match up with anybody down there. It’s tough. The level goes up. These are the best teams in the region. But with the experience we have and the pitching we have, I think we can give anybody a go.”

Whatever happens in New Jersey, it’s already been a great four years.

“I can’t say enough about these guys,” Santilli said. “Four years – it’s a run for a lifetime.”