ELYRIA — Yogi Berra used to say, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
West’s All-Stars may want to subscribe to Yogi’s philosophy following Friday’s 12-6 Juniors (ages 13-14) Little League district championship loss to East at Vic Janowicz Park.
But Yogi was also quoted as saying “it gets late early,” and when East scored six runs in the second inning, it was simply too much for West to overcome.
“It was a matter of too little, too late,” West’s longtime coach Steve Thompson said. “Early going, (East’s) starting pitcher pitched a beautiful game. He kept his pitch count down, threw strikes and, for some reason, we didn’t hit at all.”
Scott Lamoreaux limited West to just two hits over the 51/3 innings he worked. By that time, East had a healthy 12-2 lead until the big right-hander seemed to tire a little in the evening heat.
“I got off to a little bit of a rough start,” Lamoreaux said. “I wasn’t throwing strikes the way I like to, but when they hit, my defense took care of me.
“Our bats took care of me, too. We played a very good team.”
West made things interesting by scoring four runs in the sixth inning and loading the bases in the seventh before Devin Schultz induced Bubby Santo Domingo to ground into a game-ending force play to shortstop Dustin Stolarski.
“We had better defense,” Lamoreaux said. “Everybody stepped up when they had to.”
His father Tom, East’s coach, couldn’t have agreed more.
“A lot of boys on that West team were on the city championship team,” the senior Lamoreaux said. “A lot of talent. We did what we needed to do.”
Batting around and scoring six runs in the second inning certainly set the tone. East sent 11 batters to the plate with Brandon Easterday’s double really igniting things. West botched Corey Emerson’s sacrifice bunt to allow the first run to score and Matt Briggs delivered a bloop double down the first-base line to score the second.
Stolarski drove in two more with a double to the fence in right-center. Lamoreaux’s sacrifice fly helped his own cause.
“We told our boys every inning we need a run or two,” Tom Lamoreaux said. “Against this team, as you could see, a big hit would bring a couple runs. We told our boys we couldn’t let up.”
Will Poskocil led West with two hits and two RBIs. Had West managed to pull the game out, it would have set up a showdown today, an event the senior Lamoreaux hoped to avoid.
“We didn’t want to go to (today),” he said. “We wanted to be sure we wrapped it up and move on to the next level.”

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