Alemany’s Streak Falls Apart, 10-4

Alemany High’s 10-game winning streak came undone Tuesday afternoon in a 10-4 loss to St. Francis that was reminiscent of three straight Indian losses at the start of the Del Rey League season.

Alemany Coach Jim Ozella found little to like as he watched his team’s comedy of errors, which included a blown sacrifice bunt, a base runner who ran into a double play, and a two-out pop fly that landed 15 feet in front of home plate to score two St. Francis runs.

“We stunk all around,” Ozella said. “Our team thinks their season is over after winning 10 games in a row, but this was the most important game of the season for us. We had to come up with a clutch performance and we came up with a terrible performance.”

With the score tied, 1-1, St. Francis (10-6, 5-2-1 in league) jumped on Alemany starter Brian Rosselli (5-3) for five runs on five hits in the fourth. Nick Petek started the rally with a one-out single and later scored on a single by Joe Garafalo for a 2-1 lead. Rosselli retired the next batter on a fly out, but then allowed two singles and a double as St. Francis built a 6-1 lead.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, the first three innings were a 9 and the fourth was a 1,” said Rosselli, who allowed six runs on nine hits in four innings. Alemany (16-6, 4-4 in league), trailing, 10-1, scored two runs in the sixth on doubles by Jon Beauchemin and Sean Sosa and a run-scoring ground out by Mark Scott. In the seventh inning, Enrique Martinez required relief help from Ray Larsen after Alemany put together a walk and three hits, one of them a run-scoring single by Mike Gartlan.