East Hampton High's baseball team began its season Saturday with a 1-0 win over Kings Park. That same day, the softball team was "mercied" 12-0 by Sayville, a defending state champion. This after having defeated Kings Park 3-1 in its opener.
Colin Ruddy, East Hampton's ace, who has been recruited to play at George Washington University, and who is one of the nation's top 150 high school prospects, didn't allow a run and struck out 10 in the six innings he pitched at the Moriches Sports Complex.
Vinny Alversa, Bonac's coach, said the 6-foot-5 junior right-hander gave up five hits, all singles. "We won it in the bottom of the sixth. Drew Salamy doubled off the 15-foot-high fence, missing a home run by two inches, and then Carter Dickinson drove in Drew with a single up the middle." Dickinson, an eighth grader, had been playing first base.
It wasn't over, though. In Kings Park's last at-bat, with Jack Dickinson on the mound, two runners had to be thrown out at third before a flyout to center field ended it.
"It was a really good game," said Alversa, whose team had its way in a season-opening scrimmage with Pierson here last Thursday.
Ruddy, whose absence from Newsday's Long Island "Top 100" on Sunday baffled his coach, did not pitch in the scrimmage, though he did hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the first inning, after which he left to attend a National Honor Society ceremony at the high school.
Avery Siska started, giving up a home run after striking out two. With East Hampton up 4-1, Charlie Condon, a 6-7 left-hander, came on in the second inning. By the time Condon, who struck out seven and allowed no runs in three innings of work, handed the ball to Will Darrell, the Bonackers were up 7-1. Darrell went the rest of the way. Jack Dickinson and Salamy also hit two-run homers that day, and Darrell doubled in a run.
Throwing Smoke
As for softball, it looks as if it will be a fight for second place in League V. Sayville, the odds-on favorite, went undefeated in 2019, winning league, county, Long Island, and state championships behind the pitching of Mallory Kinahan, who is now one of the Golden Flashes' nine seniors.
Kinahan, a hard-throwing lefty, threw smoke from the get-go Saturday. She struck out 10 of the 16 batters she faced -- mostly on risers out of the zone, though she could pull the string too -- before the umpires put an end to it with the visitors ahead 12-0 after five. Only Katie Kuneth, the freshman center fielder, got a hit off Kinahan, a hard line-drive single up the middle in the bottom of the fourth.
"We'll get it," Annemarie Brown, the team's coach, said afterward. "We've got some work to do. We're going to work on shortening up our swings for one thing."
An infield throwing error with two outs led to the visitors' first run. A double play and a strikeout notched by East Hampton's sophomore pitcher, Caroline DiSunno, got the Bonackers out of the second inning, but the third proved to be costly as Sayville scored six runs on seven hits, two r.b.i. triples and a two-run double among them.
A three-run double to the fence, an infield error that allowed a run to score, and an r.b.i. triple to right field made it 12-0 Sayville going into the bottom of the fourth.
As for the good news, Brown said, concerning the season-opening 3-1 win over Kings Park, "We had some great clutch hits, one really big one by Ella Grenci, and some good defensive plays. We scored our last two runs in the seventh."
Brown and her assistant, Melanie Anderson, have only one senior, Grenci, the first baseman, in the lineup, but despite the tender ages, it looks as if, Sayville aside, the Bonackers will do well this spring.