Baseball: Delaware County powerhouse hits the ground running

PHILADELPHIA >> Don DiLoreto looked at the Delco lineup with an empathetic eye Tuesday. The Harriton junior pitches for the Rams, but he’s on the Delco Carpenter Cup squad strictly as an outfielder. When he considered the lineup of league rivals assembled in South Philly, a thought went out to the Philadelphia Public League pitching staff.
“Whenever I face any of these guys, it’s just so hard,” he said. “Every team in the Central League has their powerhouses, and it seems like we’re all a bunch of well-rounded hitters.”
The Delco hitters strafed Pub pitching for 16 hits in a 15-1 win in the first round of the 31st annual Carpenter Cup at Richie Ashburn Field at FDR Park. For as much as nine Pub errors contributed to nine unearned runs, the Delco bats never relented, powering their way to a place in Friday’s quarterfinals. That game at 12:30 p.m. will be against the winner of the Inter-Ac/Independents and Delaware North, to be played at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Delco scored in every inning save for the second, chipping out ones and twos until the final tally was a monstrously crooked number.
The first platoon, which logged the game’s first five innings, bequeathed a 6-1 lead. The second group, led by DiLoreto, tacked on the other nine, including seven combined in the eighth and ninth against a flagging Pub side.
DiLoreto shone, going 3 for 3, a homer shy of the cycle with three RBIs and two runs scored. Each time he drove in Haverford’s Dylan Resnick, who went 2 for 3, one of several bouts of instant chemistry between new teammates that emerged from the first pitch.
Some of the connections were ready-made, including four members of Marple Newtown’s team that a day earlier had been eliminated from the PIAA Class AAAA semis who drew starts. Freshman Alden Mathes went 2 for 3 in the leadoff spot and scored twice, driven home by an RBI triple supplied by fellow Tiger Ricky Collings two batters into the game. Scott Hahn added two hits, as Delco’s most potent lineup during the season passed on its prowess to the all-star squad.
“We all kind of know each other, how the league is going,” Hahn said. “We pretty much got the best players in the Central League to form a team. And our lineup’s just incredible.”

Delco didn’t just bash its way to the quarters. Except for a lackadaisical bottom of the ninth, they committed just one error, and even in that sloppy final frame, Strath Haven’s Will Carey worked out of trouble without surrendering a run.

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