When, after McMahon’s had won its second-straight East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball championship at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett last Thursday, it was noted that one glove remained on the infield grass, from among the many that had been hurled aloft following the Clubhouse’s last out, John Pizzo, who had led McMahon’s at the plate that night, said with a laugh as he went to fetch it, “It’s mine — I left it all on the field.”
Indeed McMahon’s shortstop and leadoff hitter had, hitting a three-run home run to put McMahon’s up 5-3 in the bottom of the second inning, and hitting another — again with two runners on — in the bottom of the fifth for a 12-6 lead. He also drove in a run in the third, giving him seven batted in for the game.
That Pizzo was able to do the damage he did was owing in part to several reliable bottom-of-the-order hitters, namely Keeler Otero, Ryan Joudeh, and Jamie Wolf, who set the table.
Not to mention the steady high-arc pitching of Otero, who held the Clubhouse scoreless in the second, third, sixth, and seventh innings. Nor the fact that Tom Thorsen hit a home run also, a two-run shot in the second that scored Pat Silich ahead of him.
McMahon’s won the first and second games of the best-of-five series, lost the third, and took possession of the 2021 playoff trophy with last Thursday’s 13-6 victory.
The Clubhouse, however, got on the scoreboard first, plating three runs in the top of the first inning, with Joe Sullivan, Hayden Ward, and Keith Steckowski getting the r.b.i.s.
McMahon’s got two back in the bottom half, Maykell Guzman, the cleanup
hitter, driving one in with a blast off the fence in right-center field, and one coming home during a force play at second.
With the arrival of Andrew Foglia, the Clubhouse’s chief home run threat, Ray Wojtusiak, the team’s player-manager, immediately yielded the 10th slot in the lineup to him. But Foglia, though he hit the ball hard, was to be unlucky that night, grounding out to Silich, McMahon’s sure-handed third baseman, in the top of the second, flying out deep to the left fielder, Brendan Hughes, in the fourth — his leaping catch saved two runs — and lining out to Silich for the next-to-last out in the seventh.
It should be said that both third basemen, Silich of McMahon’s and Steckowski of the Clubhouse, were terrific, as was Hughes, who made several sliding shoestring catches. He was burned once, though, in the fourth, when the Clubhouse’s 65-year-old pitcher, Rob Nicoletti, drove the ball over his head, a double that pulled them to within 9-5.
A home run by Sullivan made it 9-6 in the top of the fifth, but the Clubhouse was to come no closer thereafter, Pizzo’s second three-run homer, in the bottom half, pretty much sealing the win, and the championship.