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Peabody’s Alex D’Angelo, in his first varsity appearance, tossed a perfect game against Revere.
By ANNE MARIE TOBIN
PEABODY — What a week it has been for the Peabody High baseball team. The Tanners opened the season with wins against two teams (St. John’s Prep and Danvers) that had humiliated them last year, then defeated Saugus Thursday in its home opener..
That was nothing compared to what happened Saturday.
Alex D’Angelo, making his first ever appearance in a varsity game, did the unthinkable. The junior threw the rarest game of all, a perfect game. He faced 21 batters and retired 21 batters in the Tanners’ 6-0 win over Revere at Bezemes Field Saturday morning.
The game was a pitchers’ duel until the sixth inning when Peabody scored five runs to cap the win.
Defensively, D’Angelo had a little help from his friends.
In the top of the fourth inning, Chris Gillen and Jake Doherty saved a hit with a bang-bang play on a grounder to third. Gillen fielded the ball, but his throw was a bit off the mark on the home plate side of the first base bag.
“Doherty made a circus play, taking the throw and was pulled off the bag, but he reached back and tagged the guy to get the out,” Peabody coach Mark Bettencourt said. “It was just a great play.”
In the top of the sixth inning, it was right fielder Nick Palma’s turn to play hero.
“Not only did he have a great day at the plate, going three-for-three with two RBI, he made an incredible diving, shoestring catch to keep the no-hitter and perfect game alive,” said Bettencourt. “That was another really big play that stood out.”
Ultimately, however, it was D’Angelo who got the job done, but it was nerve wracking to say the least.
With two outs in the top of the final inning, he threw three straight balls to the 21st batter he faced, third baseman Matt Cravotta.
“Things had been really quiet on the bench, nobody was saying anything and everybody was just leaving Alex alone as you always do when a no-hitter, let alone a perfect game is on the line,” said Bettencourt. “When the count was 3-0, we all thought, oh, no, oh no, we couldn’t believe it.”
D’Angelo buckled down and threw a strike. His next pitch was also a strike that was fouled off to bring the count to 3-2 and set the stage.
“He (the batter) tapped the ball back to Alex and that was that,” Bettencourt said.
To put it all in perspective, in 140 years of Major League Baseball in more than 210,000 games, only 23 pitchers have thrown a perfect game, and nobody has ever done it more than once.
In Peabody, however, perfection isn’t as rare as you might think.
On April 29, 2014, softball pitcher Shelbi Wilson, now a sophomore on the Wheaton College softball team, faced (and retired) all 21 Gloucester batters in a 9-0 Tanners’ win in an outing for the ages, the only perfect game coach Butch Melanaphy had witnessed in his tenure.
“Nobody realized what she had done and that includes Shelbi,” said Melanaphy with a laugh. “They were all in shock when they found out at the end of the game. Watching the way she pitched today was truly unbelievable.” Wilson struck out eight, and received some help from an airtight defense.
D’Angelo finished with only five strikeouts, but like Wilson, was aided by a perfect defensive effort to pull off the incredible feat. Bettencourt said it was a total team effort with every fielder on the team except one, center fielder Jake Zeuli, making a putout.
“To be honest, we were planning to split the game,” Bettencourt said. “We hoped to get four innings from Alex and have Will Diezemann finish up. What was really impressive was that Alex had only five strikeouts so we had to make 16 plays in the field for outs.”
While perfect games are rare, Bettencourt knows a thing or two about them, having witnessed two in the last two years, the first one tossed by his 9-year old daughter Abigail two years ago in the semifinals of the state Little League state championship softball tournament.
“That game against Assabet Valley was the only other perfect game that I have ever been witness to as a coach or player,” he said.