Navigators Win 2017 Championship
Even a little rain could not put a damper on the Island Baseball League’s ninth-season final game on Saturday night, September 9th, at Cardine’s Field, with the Narragansett Navigators defeating the Newport Storm 6 to 5.
The Storm jumped out to an early lead in the 1st as leadoff hitter Josh Brochu walked and later scored the first of two runs, with hits by Andrew Charron, Kenji Greenberg and Brian Maher. The Navigator’s would answer back with a run of their own in the bottom of the 1st when Steve Schneider scored on a hit by Justin Reifsnyder.
In the 3rd the Storm’s Jimmy Maher scored on the 2nd of three hits by Kenji Greenberg. The Navigators would tie up the game 3-3 in the bottom of the 3rd on a hit by Steve Schneider that would plate Andy Lima and Travis Greene.
In the 4th the Navigators took the lead as starting pitcher Rusty Forgue helped his own cause with an RBI hit. But the Navigators were stopped from scoring two more runs with a bare handed defensive play of the game by shortstop and leagues gold glove winner Josh Brochu. Over the next three innings the Storm were unable to score, even with two hits by Paul Dumas, but they were able to hold off the Navigators from scoring until the 7th. In the bottom of the 7th James Pierce tripled with Rusty Forgue and Greg Ferro on to push the lead to 3.
In the top of the 9th the Storm were still down by 3 runs. Brian Maher reached on an error, Ian Duprey tripled and Brian Fisher singled, and with no one out the Storm had the tying run on first base. The Storm were able to push the runner to 2nd, but the Navigators were able to navigate their way through the storm to win their 3rd Championship.
By Dougald Parkinson