LYNN — The 24th Agganis All-Star baseball game was a one-sided affair after the North team’s bats came alive to give them a 13-1 win over the South squad on Sunday afternoon at Fraser Field.
Spencer Brown (Beverly) was 2-for-4 with three RBI including a home run in fourth inning. The performance earned him MVP honors for the North squad.
“It’s my last high school game so it meant a lot to me,” Brown, the co-MVP of the Northeastern Conference, said. “To be able to come out here and play with some of the best players around was great.”
Cooper Marengi (Lynnfield) also added a home run and went 2-for-4 with two RBI. Tyler MacGregor (St. John’s Prep) was 3-for-4 with two RBI. Josh Cerretani (St. John’s Prep) and Brett Blackwell (Methuen) also added an RBI.
“It’s an honor to be asked to do this and be apart of this with these guys,” North coach Ryan McCarthy, of Triton, said. “It’s nice to set a lineup and know you have 15 guys who love the game.”
Jason Calichman, who stepped down as head coach of the Swampscott baseball team last week, was tabbed to direct the South squad. Calichman said Sunday’s game was a tough moment for him.
“It’s definitely bittersweet,” Calichman said. “I was really thankful to get to be here and see these guys compete one more time.”
Things started early for the North after Matt Collins (Beverly) reached on a single in the first inning. An error later in the inning on a bad throw to first base allowed Collins to come all the way around to score and put the North up 1-0.
The South responded in the top of the second thanks to an RBI groundout by Briston Maynard (Lynn English) to tie the game at one.
In the next half of the second Tom Lapham started things off with a triple. Lapham was driven in by Cerretani later in the inning. An error and a tag up on a fly ball brought Lapham to third base where he was driven in on an infield single by Blackwell to give the North a 3-1 lead.
The lead was extended by Brown’s solo home run in the fourth inning and the North really blew things open with a total of six hits and three walks in the sixth inning to extend the lead 11-1. The inning included a single by Collins, an RBI double by MacGregor, a triple by Brown that drove in two runs, and a two-run home run by Marengi.
The teams played the bottom half of the seventh inning in order to give a the South an opportunity for another pitcher. The extra half-inning gave MacGregor the chance to add two more runs on an RBI single.
A handful of pitchers helped secure the win for the North team including David Furtado (Bishop Fenwick), Andrew Manni (Masconomet), and Brady McGarry (Billerica). McGarry struck out four batters in the last two innings and only allowed one baserunner after hitting a batter.
Pitchers for the South team included Joey Baez (Salem), Devin Curley (Lynn English), and Stefano Mitsakis (Winchester).