Defending champion Long Island Tigers rally past JF

The pop sound emanating from a wooden bat makes the National Amateur Baseball Federation World Series seem more like real baseball than the ping sounds vibrating off aluminum weaponry used in high school, college and other leagues.

When Mike Turo Jr. delivered the game-winning RBI single to center in the bottom of the seventh inning of their game against Forest at Forest Middle, it was a sound as pure as pine to the ears of the Long Island Tigers, the defending NABF high school World Series champions.

When the relay home from Forest center fielder Christian Sanderson to first baseman Buddy Stanley arrived a split sec-ond late to catcher Antonio Fazio, allowing Max Rosing to score the winning run from second for a 5-4 triumph, it may have felled Forest’s chances of advancing out of its pool to Sunday’s 16-team championship bracket.

“It’s tough to lose a game like that in the bottom of the seventh inning,” said Forest coach Tim Sanderson, whose team committed four errors in an 8-0 tournament-opening loss to Putty Hill out of Baltimore in the morning. “But to play as well as we did in the heat of the day was pretty cool. We pitched real well and our defense made plays behind them.”

Jason Stafford started the game for Forest and shut Long Island down through the first three innings, striking out three before giving up three runs in the fourth. The Tigers seized a 3-2 lead on Eddie Martinez’s double to center off reliever Ben-ton Flynt that Sanderson nearly caught with a diving stab.

“To me, getting (Stafford) out of the game was to our advantage because he was very tough,” Long Island coach Mike Turo Sr. said. “He’s got kind of a jerky motion that worked.”

The wooden bats may have taken some pop out of Forest’s offense, as it managed just six singles and struck out seven times against Putty Hill pitcher Curt Randall, who went the distance. Putty Hill racked up 11 hits, all singles, including a 4-for-4 outing by Alex Dawson, who scored three runs and drove in another.

Against the Tigers, the Cavaliers racked up 10 hits, including RBI doubles by Kevin Carlin in the third and Cody Arthur to left center in the sixth, lifting Forest to a 4-3 lead. But, as it did in the second inning, Forest failed to break the game open, leaving the bases loaded after Kyle MacGowin relieved starter Greg Gonzales. He walked Carlin before striking out Stanley swinging and Rob Carpinelli looking to squealch the threat.

“We left a lot of runners on base,” Fazio said. “We had 12 left on before the sixth inning (and 15 for the game). We’ve got to hit the ball with runners in scoring position.”

“We kept generating opportunities to score, and that’s a big deal when you’re playing the defending champions,” Sander-son added. “All of our kids who pitched today are 15 years old except the starter, who’s 14. Most of their starters are 17.”

But Long Island, which started the season at 1-9 and is now 18-15 after winning its first two games on Friday, doesn’t fea-ture a single player from last year’s 17-and-under team, that beat the Delco Diamonds in the championship game.

Turo Sr. has 33 years of high school coaching experience and more than 800 victories at James Monroe Campus High School in the Bronx, N.Y., where he coached Danny Almonte for four years. Almonte, the Dominican Republic-born pitcher whose Little League team was disqualified after he pitched in the 11-12-year-old World Series as an overpowering 14-year-old, won Turo’s 800th game with a complete-game shutout in 2004 as a 17-year-old senior and just finished his senior year at Western Oklahoma.

Turo Sr. was impressed with Forest’s performance and style of play, even in the defeat.

“This team, they’re scrappy,” he said. “Coming to play a host team is hard. They kept making the plays.”

He said the Cavaliers made him do plenty of coaching.

“We had to do a lot of things to manufacture runs, stealing five or six bases to put the pressure on them,” Turo Sr. said. “You have to learn how to bunt the ball and play small ball, especially when you’re playing a scrappy team like that our you’re not going to win.”

The Tigers improved to 2-0 after rallying from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Tri-County Bees 7-4 in their first game at Liberty University, with Martinez driving in two runs with two hits.

Forest must beat both the Tri-County Bees at 11:30 a.m. and the Virginia Barnstormers at 4:30 p.m. at home to have a chance to advance to Sunday’s single-elimination tournament play.