Players With Local Ties Make Big Impact For Harwich During Championship Run

BOURNE – Harwich Mariners manager Steve Englert is a Boston guy through and through.

He was born at Faulkner Hospital in Roslindale and fell in love with baseball while playing in the Parkway Little League and as a high school student at Catholic Memorial. He studied at Boston College then returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach for 12 seasons under former BC coach Pete Hughes.

It’s no surprise that Englert routinely aims to fill his roster with players that have ties to his hometown and the surrounding region, and this year’s Mariners squad had plenty of New England connections that helped lead the team past the Bourne Braves, 4-3, to capture the Cape League championship on Monday night.

“The Cape League is something special, especially for those guys that grew up in the area,” Englert said. “Most of them came down here and watched games as little kids, so they really appreciate what this league is all about.”

Six players on Harwich’s championship roster are Massachusetts natives, while nine play at colleges located in the Bay State.

Four Northeastern players — outfielder Cam Maldonado and pitchers Jack Bowery, Cooper McGrath and Joseph Hauser — suited up for Harwich alongside shortstop Sam McNulty (Boston College), pitcher Jason Finklestein (Babson) and pitcher Danny Macchiarola (Holy Cross). Two pitchers from UMass Lowell, Michael Simes and Kevin Zarnoch, were also a part of the championship team.

“It’s unreal,” said Zarnoch, a Dorchester native who earned the role of team closer. “It’s great to play with guys from all over the country, but when you’re with guys that you have so many similarities with, it’s really easy to mesh. The Northeast grit is something different.”

Zarnoch and Bowery became fixtures for the Mariners out of the bullpen in the late innings throughout the team’s championship run, while Maldonado was a staple in the lineup and drove in what proved to be the winning run with an RBI double that gave Harwich a 4-2 lead in the seventh inning of Monday’s winner-takes-all Game 3 in Bourne.

Although Maldonado grew up in Wolcott, Conn., the Cape was foreign to him prior to this summer. He didn’t spend any time over the bridge as a youngster, so this summer was full of firsts each step of the way — including celebrating Harwich’s sixth league title and first since 2011.

“I played in the NECL last year and this is a whole lot different,” Maldonado said. “It’s the best players in the country, so it’s obviously something you can’t take for granted. It’s similar competition from Northeastern to here, but obviously this is wood bat so it’s different. It’s a different experience and I’m glad that we could go all the way.”

For much of the summer, it seemed as though the Mariners would find themselves on the outside of the East Division playoff picture. Although the team was among the league’s worst for much of July, the players dug in and started meshing together during the final weeks of the season.

That chemistry paid dividends in the postseason, as Harwich finished with a 5-1 playoff record en route to the title.

“I feel like our chemistry just got a lot better throughout the season,” Maldonado said. “In the middle, we had little rough patches, but then we got to know every single one of the new guys and that really made our chemistry get better and it brought us together.”

Zarnoch said he could sense it was going to be a special summer from the moment he arrived in Harwich.

“This is an experience and a memory I’ll never forget, and I knew that from the jump,” he said. “They counted us out, but we just stuck with it and played our behinds off.”

For Englert, one of the league’s most accomplished managers, winning with so many players from Boston and New England made this year’s title even more memorable.

“I’m over the moon for those guys,” the manager said. “I can’t say enough good things about them.”