By STEVE MAZZONE

Sports writer

WOONSOCKET – Just before his team went to bat in the bottom of the sixth inning, Woonsocket High coach John Marsella gathered his troops near the dugout and told them two simple sentences – “Fellas, we need a rally. We need to put some numbers up.”
It took his Villa Novans an extra inning to fully respond to his request, but they did.
Sophomore Wigberto “Bam-Bam” Rodriguez’s walk-off, three-run home run in the seventh inning erased a two-run deficit and gave Woonsocket an exciting 5-4 come-from-behind victory over St. Raphael Academy on Wednesday afternoon. Rodriguez caught a fastball thrown by SRA starter Mike Dolan and smashed it over the deep left field fence.
“It was a meatball right down the middle,” Rodriguez said. “My eyes lit up when I saw it. It felt great. I’ve always come through so far in the clutch. I just take the same approach. It ended up being a good hit.”
Rodriguez’s late-game heroics put the first blemish on Dolan’s record this season, dropping the Saints’ right-hander to 5-1 for the spring. It also erased what could have been a very frustrating loss for the Villa Novans.
St. Ray’s, which dropped to 7-5 in Division I-North, took a 4-1 lead going into the sixth inning, scoring three of its run unearned. Woonsocket (5-7) helped the Saints’ cause by committing a trio of errors in the initial five frames.
“We weren’t as crisp defensively and I think we left runners on second or third in four innings and couldn’t get that two-out hit to bring him in,” Marsella said. “I think that was hurting us a little bit. But Bam-Bam erased all that with one swing of the bat.”
Woonsocket collected eight hits in the game with five of those knocks coming in the final two innings.
“They are a good hitting team. The last time we played them they must have had 10 or 11 hits,” said SRA coach Tom “Saar” Sorrentine, who team defeated the Villa Novans, 7-3, back on April 23. “They stay in there the whole game. That was Dolan’s first loss. We were going with him (the whole game). He just got a couple of balls up late in the game and they got a hold of them and got it.”
St. Ray’s took advantage of the Villa Novans first error in the game, taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning. With one out, WHS starter Cody Mazzarella walked the Saints’ Drew Givens. Givens advanced to second when Mazzarella tired to pick him off, but threw wide to first baseman Mike Ledoux. After another walk to Nick Gaj, Saints’ Ray Johnston (3-for-3, 2 RBI, run) made that error sting when he belted a two-run double into centerfield.
Melvin Torres (two hits, RBI) got one back for the Villa Novans to cut the deficit in half in the bottom of the third. Tyler Brien got on base off his fielder’s choice hit. After Dolan got Rodriguez to ground out to third, Torres took the Saints’ pitcher’s first offering deep into centerfield for an RBI triple.
The Saints again made the Villa Novans pay for a miscue in the fourth when shortstop Matt Silvia couldn’t get a hold of a hard hit by Mike Brooks with one out in the books.  Mazzarella managed to get Alex Collette to groundout for the second out of the inning, but couldn’t do the same for designated hitter Cory Cotter who uncorked a long, run-scoring triple to right field to give the visitors a 3-1 lead.
Johnston would score the Saints’ fourth run in the fifth inning. He got on base with a one-out single - his third hit of the contest - and eventually scored on an error by the Villa Novans.
It wasn’t too long after that the Villa Novans would mount their comeback. It began in the sixth inning when Torres led off with a single and then Mazzarella put runners on first and second with a one-out base hit. With two outs after a deep pop-out to centerfield by Matt Ledoux, Kevin Reyes put Woonsocket behind by a 4-2 margin with an RBI single.
A walk to Silvia and a nice line drive double by Brien to the fence in left in the seventh would set the stage for Rodriguez’s big blast.
“We had zero outs so I knew I didn’t have to do too much,” Rodriguez said. “That gave me a good advantage when I went up to hit.”
The Villa Novan sophomore was hitless before getting his homer, including an inning-ending groundout in the fifth.
“He works hard. He was so frustrated in his last at bat,” Marsella said. “He’s only a sophomore, but we expect good things from him. He puts a lot of pressure on himself. I’m real happy with his approach. He was so relaxed that last at bat. He wasn’t emotional. He put a good swing on a good pitch.”
The outcome of the contest tightens up a tough division in I-North in which six teams have at least five or more wins. Saints has last four of their last five games.
“(Woonsocket) is playing good right now and we are not playing as well,” Sorrentine said. “We lost four of the last five. We started out good early, but we got to started hitting the ball. Everyone is catching up now.”
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St. Raphael 002 110  0 – 4 6 0
Woonsocket 001 001 3 – 5 8 3
Mike Dolan and Domenic DeSano; Cody Mazzerella and Dariel Martinez. 2B – SRA, Ray Johnston. W, Tyler Brien. 3B – SRA, Drew Given. HR – Wigberto Rodriguez.