Kneeland's recovery good news for Bentley

Knee surgery was supposed to put an end to athletics for Briana Kneeland, but after recovering and strolling onto the softball team at Bentley College, the Falcons' senior outfielder was named to the All-Northeast-10 Conference third team.

The Winthrop native hit .298, racked up the second-highest RBI total in school history (31), and could have threatened the record if not for an injury that kept her out of six games.

Once an all-star soccer player at Winthrop, Kneeland tore an anterior cruciate ligament in high school. She recovered from the injury well enough to try out for the Bentley squad, which was struggling at the time but bounced back this season with Kneeland's help.

She was one of three players to make the all-conference team after the Falcons put together a turnaround season. The Falcons went 20-24 overall (the second most wins in the history of the program) and 13-15 in the conference. Lynn native Michele DeGregorio, now a Winthrop resident, earned conference coach of the year honors.

After coaching 12 seasons at Merrimack College and winning a Division 2 national title in 1994, DeGregorio inherited a seven-win team when she arrived at Bentley in December 2005, and had the Falcons in the hunt for a playoff spot within three seasons.

With a little more than a week left in the season, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst baseball team showed some signs of life, taking two of three games in a weekend series against Dayton. Peabody High product Kyle Multner went 4 for 12 in the series, keeping his average at .328, third-highest on the team. Multner, the ace for the Tanners team that reached the Division 1 North final last year, has also hit three home runs as a freshman outfielder for the Minutemen.

A nugget from Globe Red Sox writer Gordon Edes from the Sox' recent three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays, whose manager, John Gibbons, a Beverly guy, is trying to figure out a way to dig his team from the bottom of the AL East:

Little wonder Jays manager John Gibbons didn't get the reception he quite expected when he paid a visit to his 96-year-old grandmother, Mary Boyson, at a North Shore nursing home on the eve of the team's visit here.

"She's still pretty sharp," Gibbons, whose parents live in Beverly, told Toronto reporters. "She asked me, 'What's wrong with your team?' I said, 'That's a good question.' Then she said, 'Are you going to get fired?' That's another good question. I didn't expect her to hammer me.

"I thought she'd give me a hug or something."