Andre Chiefs

Medford MA- If the weather improves as expected, the Chiefs will hopefully kick off their 2012 season when they travel to Ferullo Field in Woburn on Wednesday to meet the Mooney Dental Tanners at 8:00 PM.

On Friday, the Chiefs travel to play the Arlington Trojans at Summer Street Field at 7:00 PM and on Saturday they meet the Wakefield Merchants at Lexington High at 1:30 PM. The four game road trip concludes on Sunday when they travel north to meet the Reading Bulldogs at Reading High at 5:00 PM.

The Chiefs home opener is slated for Monday when they host the Wakefield Merchants at Malden Catholic's Maplewood Park at 7:45 PM.

The Chiefs will split their home dates this season, playing day games at Huskins Field on the campus of Tufts University in Medford and weekday night games at Maplewood.

The 2012 Chiefs Roster is expected to be posted soon.

By STEPHEN FREKER 

MALDEN, MA— If you told anyone leaving last Friday night’s “thrill-a-minute”Intercity League playoff barnburner win by the Andre Chiefs over the vaunted Lexington Blue Sox that yes, another game could be just as good, they’d have laughed in your face and giggled all the way home. 

We agree. You would have been dead wrong. 

Because last night’s Game Four was BETTER! In a day and age where, bottom line, a dollar has go farther than ever, rest assured every single person in the ballpark got their money’s worth last night.  

And then some.

 In what goes down as not only an “Instant Classic,” but perhaps one of the best games, period, ever played in Intercity League history, the Medford-based Andre Chiefs won Game Four last night, 6-2, to force a winner-take-all Game Five Tuesday at Lexington High School, 8:00 p.m. start. 

For starters, or should we say, “enders,” the game concluded in only the most dramatic and exciting manner possible, a two-out, walkoff homer in the bottom of the 10th inning. 

Oh, we almost forgot, slugger Mike Andre’s roundtripper was a grand slam, a bases-loaded bomb off Lexington ace Matt Karis to end the game with a peaks-and-valleys finish, with celebration on the Chiefs’ side. 

The wild finish was the second in as many tries for the Chiefs, who won the aforementioned walkoff job Friday on a Mike Barbati single, this, also with the Chiefs down to their last out in the bottom of the seventh. 

Chiefs manager Chuck Andre is ecstatic with the way his team has responded to adversity.“I’m proud of my guys and the way we’ve answered the bell each time we’ve faced elimination in this postseason,” Andre told the Medford Daily Mercury and Malden Evening News last night. “We’ve done it four times and we will come to play (Tuesday).” 

Andre’s son, Mike, who delivered the dramatic, game winning blow, was actually matter-of-fact following the game.“I was looking to get a base hit, any kind of hit, and I really went up there with a clear head and I got the pitch I wanted,” Andre said, who got a1-1 count fastball from Karis and boomed it over the right field fence, into the night. “We’ll be ready to go (tonight),” Andre said. 

While Andre’s gamewinning shot was the exclamation point on the night, the foundation was the unprecedented pitching performance of righthander Jared Freni. A solid performance on the hill which catapulted the Chiefs to a deciding Game Five would have been sufficient from the Chiefs big gun. 

Freni did more. 

Carrying them on his back for the entire night, Freni pulled a “Star Trek,”going where he, and no other Chiefs pitcher has ever gone before — he pitched all 10 innings in the 10-inning win. 

“The thought of coming out never crossed my mind,” Freni said last night. “If we had to go another one, I was out there for the next inning, too.”

Freni’s pitch count is under lock-and-key at an undisclosed CPA’s office on Commonwealth Ave. in Brighton, but we know it wasn’t obscene, somewhere in 120s or so, but 10 innings is 10 innings. 

“That was a first for me, but I really think my fastball was getting better as the game went along,” Freni added, who blew Lexington away in the first inning, buzzing them in the low 90s and then hitting the same note in the ninth inning when they threatened again. 

Justin Crisafulli was the veteran star that he is at the plate, driving in the first two Chiefs runs in first and third innings with singles for a 2-0  lead. 

The Sox answered with two runs to tie it in the fourth, on a pair of hits, a physical error and a mental error by the Chiefs. 

Freni and Karis then locked up in a pitcher’s duel for the next six innings,neither giving an inch. Freni finished with a seven-hitter and 11 Ks while Karis allowed nine hits and struck out eight.

Freni started the game percolating on the mound, gassing it up bigtime with a pair of strikeouts with the Sox nary fouling off a pitch. That might have motivated his mates, as the Chiefs got on the board first with a run in the bottom of the inning, an omen, perhaps, since they scored first in their other series win Friday night. After leadoff hitter Jeff Bercume grounded out, Mike Baillergeron, quiet for most of this series, broke out with a single to rightcenter, followed by a bobble, to end up on second. Vinny Pennell grounded out, pushing Baillergeron to third. He scored on veteran Crisafulli's line shot  single to left field. 

In the bottom of the third, after zeroes tossed by Freni in the second and third innings, the Chiefs extended their lead to 2-0. Nick Leva (2-for-4) led off with single and after Bercume took a called third strike from Karis, Baillegeron, singled to put runners at first and second. Pennell then popped up for the second out, but Crisafulli drove in the second of his two RBIs with a bloop single to right field, scoring Leva for a 2-0 Chiefs lead. Andre grounded out back to Karis to end the inning. 

Lexington awoke in the top of the fourth inning and scored a pair of runs to forge a 2-2 tie. Steve Gath reached base on an error by Andre at third base. He stole second, then scored on a double to leftcenter by catcher Jeff Vigurs, the Sox first hit of the game. Matt McEvoy then beat out an infield single to the right side when first base was left uncovered by the Chiefs after Mike DiCato had to vacate the bag to field the grounder. Freni struckout Ross Curley, looking, for the first out of the inning, but Vigurs came across with the tying run on a passed ball for the 2-2 score. Tom Haugh grounded out back to Freni and the Chiefs hurler left runners at second and third with perhaps the biggest strikeout of the night, a swinging by Sox veteran Pete Frates. 

Andre's next best threat was in the bottom of the fourth when DiCato was hitby a pitch, as he emulates Don Baylor with his fifth hit by pitch of the postseason, he moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Friday's hero, Barbati, but after a walk to Matt Boleski, was stranded on a flyout to rightfield by Leva and a caught looking strikeout by Bercume. 

From the fifth inning through the end of the regulation seventh, it was "too much Freni" from  Chiefs mound...and "too much Karis" ...when the Sox righty was on the mound. Freni retired the next nine in a row, including a heat-seeking missile of a fastball to whiff Lexington High star slugger/manchild Chris Shaw (6-3, 220) to erase the Sox in the bottom of the seventh.

DiCato singled in the sixth, but was stranded. Karis needed a measly seven pitches to get the Chiefs in order in the bottom of the seventh. 

In the top of the eighth, with neither pitcher budging in "overtime, Lexington made some noise when Justin Wright led off with a single and went to second on a broken bat single up the middle by Lexington veteran slugger Dan Graham. With nobody out, Gath popped out to first on an infield flycall. Freni then bewildered Vigurs with a saw-you-off changeup for a strikeout and McEvoy grounded out to Barbati at second to strand both runners in a strategically pitched inning for Freni. 

Karis bounced the Chiefs, 1-2-3 in the bottom of the eighth.

 It was Freni's turn for another 1-2-3 inning in the top of the ninth, as he K'ed Curley and Haugh and then got pinch hitter Wil Marcal, a recent Lexington High graduate, to ground out to Barbati at second. 

It was three-up and three-down for the Chiefs again in the bottom of the ninth and it was Lexington's turn to threaten again in the top of the 10th, still facing Freni, as the big righthander returned for another go-round, his self-admitted first time ever pitching into the 10th inning. Frates blooped a single to rightcenter to lead off the inning. Wright, Lexington's team-leading hitter then unselfishly laid down a sacrifice bunt to advance Frates to second. With first base open, manager Chuck Andre opted to put Graham on intentionally. Freni bore down and got Gath to pop out and Vigurs to ground to Baillergeron at shortstop for the final out, as the Blue Sox stranded two more baserunners. 

The Chiefs got real vocal as the bottom of the 10th began and it paid off in spades for the Medford-based team. Leva lined a single up the middle to start the inning, his second leadoff hit of the night. Malden Catholic three-time All-Scholastic Paul Yanakopulos, who was yanked from the starting lineup due to food poisoning before the game, was called in to pinch run for Leva. Bercume failed at two consecutive sacrifice bunt attempts and then slapped a grounder to shortstop, erasing Yanakopulos at second for the first out. After Baillergeron popped out to Haugh at first base, Pennell stepped up and delivered his biggest hit yet as a Chief, a line shot in the leftcenter gap, pushing Bercume to third. With two out, Sox manager Rick DeAngelis chose to walk Justin Crisafulli to load the bases for Andre. On a 1-1 count, Andre turned and absolutely crushed a 1-1 fastball from Karis over the right field fence. 

A game winning homer and a grand slam no less!  

Chiefs win, 6-2.     

By Bruce Hack 

Lexington, MA- The Lexington Blue Sox became the first team in Intercity League history to win five consecutive championships with a 10-0 win over the Chiefs in Game Five of the ICL's Championship Series.

Drew Brzozowski threw a complete game three hitter for his second win in the finals. In 2009 he won the title game 8-1 for the third straight title for Lexington. He struck out five and walked two and in his two starts in the finals gave up one run in 14 innings.

Jeff Vigurs paced the 10-hit Lexington attack with a 4-for-4 game and three RBI. Justin Wright and Dan Graham each had two hits. Wright, Graham and Steve Gath each scored two runs.

Chiefs' starter Tim Dunphy took the loss going four plus innings. The veteran lefty gave up seven hits, six runs, four earned, three strike outs and walked one. It was his second loss of the finals. Both came against Brzozowski in a matchup of former Brandeis pitchers.

Lexington was the fifth team to have won four straight ICL titles. The Blue Sox joined North Cambridge who won from 1960-63, the Chiefs who won from 1968-71, the Augustine A's who won from 1981-84 and the Melrose Rams winning in 1986-89. North Cambridge had a chance at five straight, but lost the championship to Winchester in 1964 and then won in 1965 over Reading to make six consecutive finals appearances.

Lexington won its ninth overall championship, its seventh in the last eight years and eighth in the last ten years.