KEENE — The Keene Swamp Bats moved one game away from winning their third New England Collegiate Baseball League title by riding a late-inning offensive flurry and a standout relief effort by David Mahoney to beat the Laconia Muskrats, 10-3, Tuesday in the first game of the best-of-three championship series.

A crowd of 1,015 at Alumni Field watched.

Game Two in the first all-New Hampshire final in NECBL history moves to Laconia tonight. Game time at Robbie Mills Parks is 6:05 p.m.

The Swamp Bats scored five runs over the fifth and sixth innings to break open the game.

Brett DeLoach’s playoff-leading fourth homer to open the inning and a two-run shot by Esteban Gomez highlighted a three-run fifth, while a costly one-out error by Laconia set up a run-scoring single by Kevin Brown and a sacrifice fly by David Lyon in the sixth.

Alex Chittenden capped the flurry with a solo homer in a two-run eighth.

Laconia, a second-year franchise in the finals for the first time, was the hottest team in the postseason. After squeaking into the playoffs with an 18-24 record, the Muskrats ran off four straight wins to work their way through two rounds in the Eastern Division bracket and into the championship series.

Better yet, the Muskrats had ace Justin Wiley on the mound to face the Swamp Bats, the top seed coming out of the Western Division at 28-14.

However, the Swamp Bats touched the lefty for three runs with two outs in the second inning on a two-run single by Curt Powell and a run-scoring single by Chittenden. Wiley was lifted after the fifth inning.

Laconia answered with a single run in the third and chased Keene starter Tyler Skulina in a two-run fifth inning. And, for a brief moment, the Muskrats thought they had even more.

With two on and one out in the fifth, cleanup hitter Chris Constantino launched a shot down the left field line that was originally called a home run. After a conference between the three umpires, the call was reversed and the ball was ruled foul.

Constantino regrouped to line a run-scoring single up the middle that knocked Skulina out of the game. Dylan Kelly followed with a sacrifice fly off Mahoney to tie the game. It was the last blemish on Mahoney’s line.

The lefty from UConn retired the first five batters he faced and ended up going 2 2/3 innings, allowing two hits with no walks and three strikeouts. Brad Monroe of Hampton, a right-handed junior at Southern New Hampshire U., worked the final two innings, racking up his third strikeout to end the game.



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NOTES: The Swamp Bats won their last title in 2003, which capped a streak of four straight trips to the finals … Powell is 14-for-32 in the postseason and has 12 hits in his last five games.