RallyNorth.net

Riordan the right man on this night for Masco

Sunday, June, 08 By Phil Stacey
Sports editor

LOWELL | It was five minutes before 11 p.m. Saturday night when James Riordan finished his conversation with a reporter, looked around LeLacheur Park and realized there wasn't another member of his Masconomet Regional baseball team in sight.

As Riordan turned to walk off the field and search for his mates, his head coach, Joe Marchesi, came running around the corner and yelled to his senior left-hander, "(The bus) had just started to leave when we realized you were still here."

Safe to say, that's the only time anyone could have forgotten Riordan and what he meant to the Chieftains on this night.

Although he didn't get credit for the win, smash the game-winning hit or score the contest's only run, you could easily make a case that Riordan, the 6-foot-1, 175-pound senior southpaw, was Masconomet's MVP Saturday night. All he did was gut it out for six-plus innings, throwing shutout baseball and enabling his teammates to stay deadlocked with favored Danvers in this, the Division 2 North final.

Fittingly, Riordan caught the final out of the game, being the final cog in a pretty 4-6-3 double play that ended this epic contest after eight innings, 1-0, and giving Masconomet its first North crown in eight years.

"In my three years here, that's the best I've ever seen him pitch," Masconomet senior second baseman Cam Greeley | who scored the game's only run on Kyle Shepard's RBI double in the top half of the eighth | said of Riordan. "He was so gutsy. No matter what happened, he didn't allow himself to get rattled."

His final stat line | 6-plus innings, two hits, five walks and three strikeouts among his 96 pitches | doesn't begin to tell the story of what Riordan meant to his team.

Like a tightrope walker who wobbles occasionally as he makes his way across the high wire but never falls off, Riordan toed a fine line Saturday night, never slipping off. He left Danvers runners on second and third in the first inning, fanning Danvers' John Gikas on a 2-2 curveball to end the threat. He left two more Falcons stranded on the basepaths in the third before settling down, retiring nine straight before a two-out walk to Jeff Eldridge in the sixth.

Six times the Topsfield resident went to a 3-2 count on a Danvers hitter. Four times he managed to get the out, including big strikeouts of Greg Ladd on a second inning fastball, and getting Chris Perry to swing through a curveball to end the sixth.

"I was trying not to think too much. I just wanted to get in my zone and stay there," said Riordan, his Irish red hair spilling out of the back of his red Masconomet cap.

"I wanted to get out there and pump strikes, knowing my 'D' would make the plays behind me. I wasn't worried about getting strikeouts or what Danvers was doing or anything like that; I didn't want to outthink myself. Just go out and do my job each inning; that's all I was thinking about."

The Plymouth State-bound Riordan was certainly the less heralded of the two starting pitchers Saturday night. He was matched up against Danvers ace Bobby Dean, the flamethrowing righty who not only came into the game with a Division 1 scholarship to Vermont to fall back on, but also the fact that he had never, ever lost a high school game, coming in a perfect 16-0 over three years.

Dean certainly lived up to his billing. He went the full eight innings, throwing 127 pitches (79 strikes) and allowing just three hits, three walks (one intentional) and a dozen strikeouts. He hit 90 miles per hour on the radar gun several times early on, and was still throwing 88-89 mph in the eighth inning.

The one time Dean was victimized came in the eighth, when Masco cleanup hitter Kyle Shepard roped a clean double into the left-center field cap, scoring Greeley from second. Riordan, who had given way to sophomore closer Evan Bunker the previous inning, then watched as his younger teammate shut the Falcons down in the eighth.

"What a heck of a game by Riordan," said Bunker. "He pitched so great for so long and got us to the point where we were able to score. What a gutsy job by him."

The victory was sweet for Masconomet (19-5), not only for giving Dean his first (and only) high school defeat, but also for winning the North title after falling to Belmont in the same game (even sitting in the same dugout), 3-1, a year ago.

It was doubly sweet for Riordan, however. He knew he had pitched poorly in his only other tournament start the previous week, going a little over one inning before being yanked in favor of fellow senior hurler Dan Duval as the Chieftains rallied to beat North Andover, 9-6, in the quarterfinals.

"Duval came in and saved me that day," said Riordan, "and I was hoping I'd get another chance to prove myself. I'm glad Coach Marchesi had the confidence in me again. I wanted to show I could do much better."

Much better? That's an understatement.

All Riordan did was pitch the game of his life and put his team one step closer to their ultimate goal of calling themselves state champions.

Nobody, not even the Masconomet bus driver, will forget that.

Additional stories:

• Shepard's clutch hit lifts Chieftains past Danvers for North title