With one swing of the bat, James Sweeney managed to turn the tide for Cranston Western.

Facing a 3-1 count and deadlocked in a 3-3 tie against city rival Cranston National Budlong, Sweeney unloaded for a solo home run to lead off the top of the sixth inning. Sweeney’s blast gave Western the last lead it would need and opened the floodgates on a seven-run rally that ultimately led to the team’s 10-3 victory.

“I wasn’t really trying to hit a home run,” Sweeney said. “I was just looking for my pitch and trying to do something with it. But once it was gone I just felt really happy for my teammates; I knew how much it meant to our team.”

Sweeney’s go-ahead shot couldn’t have come at a better time for Western. With two runners on base and Sweeney at the plate with one out in the sixth, Western’s Arman Vaziri was thrown out at home trying to score on a passed ball. Teammate Corey Hassell broke from first and attempted to reach third on the play, where he was also thrown out on a double play that ended Western’s threat.

So when Sweeney stepped in again to lead off the sixth, he didn’t plan on letting his teammates down.

“I really wanted to win,” Sweeney said. “It was hard to watch us make that bad play when I was at the plate, and I knew that I wanted to make up for it my next time up. It meant a lot to me that I did.”

“James Sweeney might not be one of the most talented kids that I’ve had, but he just works so hard,” Western manager Gary Bucci said. “And I knew in my heart that his day was going to come where he came through in a really big spot for us. I didn’t know when but, obviously, it was today.”

His home run was exactly the spark that Western needed. Richard Mancini and Anthony Simeone followed with back-to-back one-out walks and came around to score on a three-run home run by Travis Collins. Another walk by Matt Lonardo and back-to-back blasts by Vaziri and Alex Cerbo rocketed Western to its 10-3 lead.

“I was waiting for us to break out against a good team,” Bucci said. “And I’m not minimizing the other teams that we’ve played, but this was the first time we’ve been able to do something like this against real quality competition and I am so proud of them.”

The sudden outburst caught CNB off-guard. After surrendering three runs in the top of the first, Budlong’s pitching had handcuffed Western for just three hits over the next four frames and showed no signs of slowing down heading into the sixth.

“I didn’t have any doubts when we went out there to play defense in the sixth,” Budlong manager Mike McDonough said. “I thought that, whatever Western did, we’d be able to come back at them in the bottom of the sixth. But it’s funny how one swing can change everything. Sweeney hit one out and then so did Collins, Vaziri and Cerbo. They just piled too many on.”

Cerbo and Corey Hassell both homered off CNB starter Anthony Cofone in the first inning to give Western a 3-0 lead. CNB’s Myles Levy answered with a solo shot of his own in the bottom of the inning and Steve Lombardi tied the score at 3-3 with a two-run double in the third.

Levy and Lombardi accounted for all of Budlong’s run production in the game. Nick Croft and Andrew Scuncio, who both had doubles, recorded CNB’s only other hits in the game.

Western enjoyed a more balanced attack as seven players combined to make up the team’s 12 hits. Sweeney led the way with four hits while Collins and Cerbo each had two. Vaziri, Alex Cortalessa and Mac McCann also had hits in the win.

The loss eliminated CNB in the losers’ bracket final of the District 1 tournament. Budlong had advanced all the way through the winners’ bracket before falling to Johnston National in the winners’ bracket final last week. Johnston went on to beat Western for the district championship on Monday.

“We had a good run, even though we wished we could have gone a little further,” McDonough said. “But we’ve been the all-star coaches here since these kids were seven and eight years old. We’ve spent a long time together and one thing that makes this not as sad is that I know that I’m going to see these kids again. I’ll be the guy outside their Babe Ruth games where the other kids will see me there and ask ‘who’s that?’ but my kids will know that it’s just coach Mike checking up on them. This was a great group of kids.”