Revere baseball rides hot streak, eyes postseason

By Dom Nicastro

The Revere High School Patriots baseball team knows exactly what’s in front of it: six more games to go. Three wins are needed to make the postseason. That’s where the Patriots stood after 12 games and a 6-6 record. Like their record, their play has been up and down but mostly competitive. Lately, it’s been good times, with three wins in their last four games.

“I just think in any of the facets of the game, we’re looking for growth,” Revere coach Mike Manning said. “We’ve actually been focusing on really trying to clean up our baserunning. We’ve had a lot of baserunning lapses, and our approach hasn’t been great. We’ve been working on cleaning that up. We’re working on improving our hitting, and we are seeing some people kind of snap out of some funks that they had in the early part of the season. We’re excited to be getting healthier, too. We’ve had some guys out of the lineup due to injury, so hopefully, it looks like we’re getting back to almost full health. We’re just competing and not giving up.”

Revere got its most recent victory against Chelsea (13-2), completing the season sweep of the Red Devils. Danny Hou had his first hit in that win. The team had a scheduled game against Malden Wednesday, May 8, but likely was looking at a rainout.

Before that, the team also beat East Boston, 13-2, in a non-league affair that was called after five innings because of the mercy rule, just like Chelsea. Senior Ollie Svendsen was lights out on the mound with five innings pitched, no earned runs, and eight strikeouts.   Senior Kyle Cummings went 2-for-4 with a home run, three runs, and five RBIs, and sophomore Dom Bellia added two RBIs and two stolen bases.

“That was a true team win,” Manning said. “Everyone on the team was able to make it into the lineup and contribute, which is always great for us.”

Revere before that traveled to Medford, where it won a game in extra innings that began in Revere early in the season. It was 3-3 in extras when they called the game earlier in the season due to darkness, and Revere won the continuance, 4-3, thanks to Brendan Sack’s walk-off double in the ninth to finish the suspended game. Svendsen began the inning with a hit, and Cummings walked to set up Sack’s dramatics. Svendsen also got the win on the mound with a clean inning.

In Game 2, Revere lost an early 5-0 lead. Cummings was his hot self at the plate, with four hits and a homer.

“That first game was pretty exciting,” Manning said. “In the second game, we got off to a really good start, but Medford just kept tacking on runs, and we ended up losing 11-5.”

Revere before that had suffered a 6-4 loss to Greater Boston League rival Lynn English, which hit a pair of homers.

“Every game is important at this point,” Manning said. “We’re kind of playing for our tournament lives and taking it one game at a time.”