Latrobe Legion advances to district final to face Bushy Run

Stop Jason Bush if you’ve heard him say this before: “A lot of people have baseball teams. No disrespect to anybody else, but I think we have a baseball program.”

The Latrobe American Legion coach continued to abide by that axiom Sunday at Latrobe High School as his two-time defending champion Jethawks rallied for four runs in the fifth inning and came away with a 5-1 victory over Murrysville to clinch a best-of-three semifinals series in the District 31 League playoffs.

No. 3 Latrobe advances to play top-seeded and regular-season champion Bushy Run in the league championship game at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Penn-Trafford High School.

Bushy Run also secured its best-of-three semifinals series Sunday at Pitt-Greensburg with a 17-4 rout of No. 4 Hempfield East, which will face No. 2 Murrysville in the consolation-round game for third place at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Haymaker Park.

All four teams entered the semifinals already having qualified for the American Legion Region 7 Tournament beginning Saturday at Bald Eagle Area High School.

While Bush, who also serves at Region 31 director, couldn’t confirm if any team has won three consecutive league championships, he is happy to know that Latrobe has earned a shot.

“It means a lot,” he said. “After winning back-to-back titles, I think some people were kind of writing us off this year, saying maybe we’d be down or maybe we needed to rebuild a little bit. It couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re still here. What a great opportunity we have to do something we’re not sure has been done at least for a long, long time.”

Lou Amatucci was 3 for 3 and scored a pair of runs, and Latrobe broke a 1-1 tie with four runs in the fifth inning to back Haden Sierocky’s six-hitter.

Sierocky struck out six and walked three. With one out in the seventh inning, the left-hander snagged Max Bernadowski’s hard line drive and flipped to first to double off Austin Kerns and end the game.

Latrobe sent eight batters to the plate in the fifth against Bernadowski, who struck out five and walked two. The Jethawks got back-to-back RBI doubles from Logan Bradish and Vinny Amatucci after Lou Amatucci singled home a run.

Erick Batista doubled to lead off the Latrobe rally before Bernadowski struck out Jack Stynchula and Leo Bazala. But, Bazala reached on a wild pitch before Batista scored on catcher Brandon Smith’s throwing error on a pickoff attempt at second.

The Amatucci brothers and Bradish followed with three successive RBI hits to give Latrobe its four-run cushion.

“My teammates put up a big inning and helped me to control my stuff on the mound and lock back in,” Sierocky said.

Even though Latrobe’s roster is made up mainly of players from Latrobe High School, Sierocky has felt at home, despite coming from neighboring Ligonier Valley and joining Latrobe before the start of the 2022 season.

“I’m like best friends with all these guys,” he said. “It’s been a great two years and I love every one of them.”

Latrobe took a 1-0 lead in the first as Lou Amatucci, who recently was moved into the leadoff spot, doubled. He advanced to third on Bradish’s groundout and scored on Vinny Amatucci’s groundout.

“He pretty much manufactured a run in the first inning,” Vinny Amatucci said of his younger brother, a rising senior at Latrobe. Incidentally, Vinny just completed his freshman year as an infielder at Saint Vincent, and while he played sparingly — he batted .111 (1 for 9) in just nine games — he said the experience already is paying off.

“I’ve learned a lot being there,” he said. “I know I’ll get some opportunities. Right now, I’m just getting used to the college game. It’s been a lot of fun so far.”

Against Murrysville, Vinny Amatucci was 1 for 3 with two RBIs.

Murrysville tied it in the top of the third when Bernadowski doubled, Cole Brinker, who had two hits, reached on a bunt single and Blake Bertucci drove home Bernadowski with a single.

Two innings later, Latrobe took control, aided by Smith’s errant throw.

“It rattled (Bernadowski), but we’ve got to overcome that,” Murrysville coach Bob Bozzuto said. “We were just a little bit tired.”

Latrobe opened the series on Friday with a 14-4 victory over the host Eagles at Haymaker Park.

“They’ve been together for a number of years,” said Bozzuto, who took over at Murrysville this season after 10 seasons as either an administrator or manager of the Washington Wild Things in the independent Frontier League.

“Latrobe is tough to beat. They play together and they’ve got some old kids that are playing. Jason does a great job. We’ve got to get better during some tough times. If our kids would make the commitment to play, guess what, this is all different. But you’ve got to persevere, and we didn’t do that. I’m still proud of my team.”

The victory was the 10th consecutive for Latrobe since Bush shuffled the team’s lineup, moving Lou Amatucci to leadoff from the second spot, Bradish to No. 2 from No. 3 and Vinny Amatucci to third from the cleanup spot.

Meanwhile, Batista dropped from the leadoff batter to No. 6 in the order, where on Sunday he produced a double, a sacrifice and run scored.

“We struggled for a brief period, so we decided to shuffle the lineup a little,” Bush said. “Lou hit up high in the high school season, and we moved him up to the 1 spot about two weeks ago and he’s just continued to roll and roll. He causes havoc on the bases, moving up on wild pitches and stealing a bag here and there. He can hit a ball almost out of the ball park and end up with double.

The new arrangement has suited the Jethawks well.

“Just a simple change. That’s what the team needed,” Lou Amatucci said. “We were going through a rough patch a couple of weeks ago, and we needed to change things up, simplify things, just play loose. That’s what we did. We moved a couple of people around, and we’re just playing more as a team now.”

Bushy Run 17, Hempfield East 4 – Bushy Run didn’t waste any time in Game 2 of the District 31 American Legion semifinals, scoring seven runs in the first inning and rolling to an easy win to sweep the best-of-three series at Pitt-Greensburg. Bushy Run rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win Game 1 with a walk-off, 4-3.

Bushy Run used four singles and five walks to score seven runs in the top of the first inning.

Hempfield East four scored runs in the bottom of the first inning, highlighted by Connor Burkey’s double.

Bushy Run continued to pile on the runs, scoring three runs each in the second, third and fifth innings.

Ian Temple drove in four runs on two hits. Carmen Metcalfe drove in three runs on three hits, including a double.

Jason Sabol had two RBIs with a triple and double, Matt Lichota drove in two runs with a triple and single, and Chuck Fontana Jr. added a double.

Paul Schofield contributed to this report.