Spirit win!

It was a delicious baseball feast last night for North Shore baseball fans, as they were treated to one of the most exciting Spirit victories of the year, then drove home to see or hear the Red Sox most exciting victory of the year. Whether you want to call the Spirit's 7-5 victory over the Worcester Tornadoes at Fraser Field the cake or the frosting is your call, but a fact that is undeniable is that this was a huge win for the North Shore Spirit as they came from behind to snap a 4-game home losing streak and even up this three game series with Worcester that concludes tonight. Bryan Morse got the win for North Shore, gutting out 8 solid innings giving up 4 runs. Alex Herrera pulled a Curt Schilling and came out of the bullpen, having a rocky 9th inning but hanging on to give the Spirit the victory.

It looked bleak early. The Spirit had their chances against Worcester ace Alex Pena, like in the 4th inning when Garret Weir was up with runners on the corners and battled Pena to a 12 pitch at bat, fouling off pitch after pitch, but was finally struck out. And as has often been the case during the Spirit's pockets of struggles this year, whenever they failed to capitalize on a scoring chance, the opposing team came out the next inning and punished them for it, as Worcester combined shoddy infield defense and a Josh Beuregard 2RBI single to put a 3 spot on the board and take the lead. With ace Alex Pena on the hill, things looked bleak for the Spirit.

But this gutty team refused to give up. In the bottom of the 6th, Brian Macchi smacked a two run homer into the night sky to pull to within 1, 3-2. The Spirit put two more men on base with one out but a strikeout by Eric Storey ended the threat and the Spirit once again squandered a scoring chance- and once again, Worcester made them pay. In the top of the 7th, Worcester seemingly deflated any momentum the Spirit gained as Danilo Reynoso hit a home run to make it 4-2. In the bottom of the 7th Travis Oglesby connected for a solo shot to make it 4-3 and set the stage for the big 8th inning rally.

With 1 out in the 8th, Yuri Sanchez reached on a chopper to the shortstop that was mishandled. Garret Weir was then hit by a pitch for the 2nd time in the game, prompting a brief bench clearing incident but no punches or ejections to report. Rob Fischer then stepped up and tied it with an RBI single. Vic Davilla followed that with a hit of his own to put the Spirit on top for the first time , 5-4. Catcher Yohanny Valera's throwing error and a sacrifice fly by Oglesby opened it up to 7-4. In the 9th, Herrera came in to close it instead of McCally. He gave up one run in the inning and saw Worcester load the bases with 1 out, putting the go-ahead run on, but he bore down, and struck out the pesky Bueregard to end it, much to the delight of the crowd at Fraser, who stood and cheered on Herrera to his first save of the year.

The win improves the Spirit to 4-5 for the 2nd half, 3.5 games behind scorching Quebec and Brockton at 7-1.