Eric Knopsnyder
The Tribune-Democrat
JOHNSTOWN —
Francis Brooke made sure the Youse’s Maryland Orioles went home as a “real Baltimore team.”
Anything less than a AAABA Tournament championship is unacceptable for Baltimore, said Brooke, who threw a six-hit shutout as the Orioles beat Johnstown’s Delweld 4-0 on Saturday at Point Stadium for the city’s 27th title.
“When you’re on a good team, you don’t want to do worse than all of the teams that came before you,” Brooke said. “It’s nice that we can now consider ourselves a real Baltimore team, because if you don’t win it, you’re not really up there with everyone else.”
No team in the 66th annual tournament was “up there” with Baltimore.
The Orioles outscored opponents 41-6 in going 6-0.
Baltimore’s pitching and defense were outstanding throughout the week, and Brooke was named the tournament MVP after going 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA. He did not allow a run in 15 innings pitched. He gave up 12 hits and a walk while striking out eight, including seven on Saturday.
“He was our star,” Baltimore manager Tim Norris said. “He’s not going to overpower anybody. He’s (throwing) 84, 86 (mph). He throws strikes, he mixes it up, he locates. He’s a pitcher.”
Brooke’s performance overshadowed a strong start by Delweld’s Bobby Carbaugh, who went the distance in the loss.
He held Baltimore’s high-powered offense to four runs on eight hits. He struck out five and walked two.
“We got a good pitching performance from Bobby, good enough to win a ballgame,” Delweld manager Chris DelSignore said. “We couldn’t get the big hit when we needed it. I thought we hit the ball well at times. Give credit to their pitcher. He was able to pitch in duress and shut us down when he needed to.”
Trailing 2-0 in the sixth, Delweld had runners on first and third with one out and George Roberts, who entered the game with a .476 average and seven RBIs, at the plate. DelSignore called for Zach Vignero, who was on first, to steal second.
When catcher Dante Rosenberg threw to second, Baltimore’s Chris Cook cut it off and easily threw out Matt Donaldson, who had broken from third, at the plate.
“I didn’t know Matt was going to go at the time,” DelSignore said. “He just kind of took off on his own. At that point, we were just trying to get a guy into scoring position for George to try to get a base hit to tie the game up.”
Instead, Roberts lined out to right and Brooke got out of the inning unscathed.
The results of the play lingered a bit longer, however. Donaldson, who crashed into Rosenberg in an effort to knock the ball loose, was hit by a Brooke pitch with two outs in the eighth inning. Rosenberg was then hit by a Carbaugh pitch after two outs in the bottom half of the inning.
Patrick Blair had the first of his two hits in the third, when he singled and scored on Ben Carhart’s double.
Rob Amaro, who doubled and scored on Glynn Davis’ sacrifice fly in the fourth, homered over the screen in left in the sixth.
“I didn’t really know if balls could get out of this park because of the high fence,” Amaro said.
“When I hit the ball, I just run because I never know if it’s going out or not. Then I saw the left fielder didn’t move very much. I was excited that it went over and I gave our team another run.”
Cook drew a walk to leadoff the eighth and scored on Carhart’s sacrifice fly.
“They’re a great team,” Carbaugh said. “Keeping them to eight hits and four runs is great for me. I had a lot of defense behind me. I gave up one bad pitch for the home run. That was about it. We fought hard, we just couldn’t get the runs.”
Delweld missed another scoring opportunity in the eighth. Austin Urban hit a leadoff double, but Brooke retired the next three hitters in order.
Vignero and Urban each had two hits for Delweld, which won the local AAABA League playoff title for a fourth consecutive year but hasn’t been able to bring the host city its first tournament title.
“I hope the city was proud of our performance and what we were able to put out there, but I’m not going to rest until we bring this one home,” DelSignore said.
“We’re going to continue to work and bring good, quality men into this dugout and keep Delweld strong.”
