All three high school varsity baseball teams in this area — East Hampton, Pierson, and Bridgehampton — were doing well going into this week. As of Monday, the Bonackers were 9-0 in league play, having clinched at Amityville on Friday the school’s first playoff berth in a dozen or so years, the Killer Bees, who recently fielded that school’s first varsity baseball team since 1979, were 6-0, and the Pierson Whalers were 6-2.
After having swept three-game series with Islip, Harborfields, and Amityville — the latter by lopsided scores — East Hampton’s road promises to get tougher as it winds up the regular season with Miller Place — a series that was to have begun Tuesday — Sayville, and Mount Sinai. Miller Place and Sayville were also undefeated as of last Thursday, according to Section XI’s website.
“We’ve finally made it,” East Hampton’s coach, Vinny Alversa, said, concerning the sewn-up playoff berth. “When we first began to rebuild the program from the ground up six years ago, developing a playoff-caliber varsity team was our goal. I think the last time an East Hampton baseball team made the postseason was in 2011.”
The Bonackers, with Colin Ruddy, Will Darrell, Hunter Eberhart, and Jack Dickinson all taking turns on the mound, defeated Amityville 16-2, 17-0, and 15-2. The coaches agreed to end the first two games after four innings, though the third, played at Amityville, went the full seven.
Avery Siska hit a grand slam home run in the top of the first inning in game three, Dickinson hit a three-run homer, and Ruddy, who started, struck out 14 in five innings, giving up no hits and no walks.
“Literally, it’s been everyone on the team,” the coach said when asked if he wanted to single out any more players. On the 18-player squad, “Everyone has been coming through, doing whatever it is we ask of them.”
East Hampton was to have played at Miller Place Tuesday, was to be at home against the Panthers yesterday, and is to finish up the series at Miller Place tomorrow.
“Our last nine games will be challenging, though. While we’ve already made the playoffs, we’d like to get a few more wins,” Alversa said.
Bees Are 6-0
Lou Liberatore, who has likewise been working hard to revive baseball at Bridgehampton in the past few years, was happy to report Saturday that his young squad, which is combined with the Ross School, was 6-0, having swept series from Shelter Island and Greenport, though, again, as in East Hampton’s case, it’s likely that the competition will be stiffer in the season’s second half.
“We’re taking it one game at a time,” Liberatore, whose team has yet to play Southold, Pierson, and Port Jefferson, said.
At home on Friday, the Killer Bees completed a sweep of the Porters, playing out the final two innings of a game that had been suspended because of darkness, winning it 15-4, and, with Milo Tompkins, who usually catches, pitching, followed up with a 10-1 win in the second game. It was the first varsity start for the Ross sophomore, who Liberatore says is the team’s “most complete hitter. He hits everybody — he even got a couple of hits off the best pitcher in the league, Shelter Island’s Ben Waife, who’s going to play at the College of Charleston, a D-1 school.”
Pitching-wise, Tompkins gave up one run to Greenport on three hits, struck out nine, and walked five. “He was,” Liberatore said, when questioned about the number of walks, “effectively wild.”
Scott and Kris Vinski, junior twins whose grandfather played for the storied White Eagles semipro team whose batboy was Carl Yastrzemski, are the Bees’ top pitchers. Kris caught Tompkins on Friday and Scott played first base.
Yudai Morikawa, a switch-hitting Ross junior who was the team’s starting shortstop last year when it swept through a jayvee schedule, is expected to return to the lineup soon. Meanwhile, Dylan Fitzgerald, ordinarily the second baseman, had been filling in well for him, Liberatore said. E.J. McAuliffe, a Ross eighth grader, had likewise been ably subbing for Fitzgerald at second, he added.
Southold, which took two of three from Pierson, is next for Bridgehampton. “They’re always tough, well coached . . . it should be a good series,” Liberatore said.
Going Well at Pierson
When this writer said during a telephone conversation Saturday with Jonathan Schwartz, Pierson’s coach, that things seemed to have been going “quite well” for the Whalers, Schwartz demurred. “I wouldn’t say quite well, but they’ve been going well — we’ve got pretty high standards in the program.”
The team’s goal, he said, is to make the playoffs. Pierson was a state Class C semifinalist in 2019 and played in the Long Island championship game last season, losing to the Wheatley School of Old Westbury.
Schwartz has an abundance of pitchers, including Dan Labrozzi, Reed Kelsey, Dom Mancino, Andy Wayne, Braedon Mott, Lucas Iulo, Mason Wheeler, and Paul Roesel, the latter three being relievers. Labrozzi, the team’s number-one, is a senior, as is Kelsey. Mancino is a sophomore. Wayne, Mott, Iulo, Wheeler, and Roesel are ninth graders.
As for the series with Southold, “a very strong team with two excellent pitchers,” Schwartz said, “in the second game, which we lost 7-4, we had 11 hits to their four, but we made some untimely errors.”
The Whalers won the third 26-7, “but it was 6-6 in the fourth when we brought in Andy Wayne,” a ninth grader up from the jayvee, who was the winning pitcher.
The Whalers ended up with 27 hits on the day. “I’ve got the most complete lineup I’ve had in a while,” Schwartz said.
Pierson was to have played a three-game series with Hampton Bays this week, at home Tuesday, at Hampton Bays yesterday, and at home tomorrow.