Sayville’s Andrew Law had, with smooth if not overpowering deliveries, made his way through East Hampton’s lineup twice with no damage going into the bottom of the seventh inning of last Thursday’s high school baseball game here.
Jack Dickinson, a harder thrower who started on the mound for the Bonackers, had been almost as stingy as Law, though the visitors parlayed a lead-off single, an infield error, and a sacrifice fly into a run in the third, a 1-0 lead that was to hold up until East Hampton’s explosive last at-bat.
Inning-ending double plays had taken East Hampton out of the second and fifth. Will Darrell, the winning pitcher in a 4-1 nonleague win over Hampton Bays on March 27, singled to lead off the bottom of the second, and, with Calum Anderson up, stole second. After Anderson struck out on a curveball, Hudson Meyer bounced a grounder toward the left side of the infield. He was erased on the throw to first, and the relay back to third arrived in time to catch Darrell too, as he slid in.
With one out in the fifth, Meyer singled, but Law’s toss to first after spearing a subsequent hard-hit line drive off the bat of Jack Dickinson easily doubled up East Hampton’s second baseman.
When Dickinson yielded to Hunter Eberhart with two out in the top of the sixth — and with the score still 1-0 Sayville — he had given up one run, three hits, all singles, walked three, and had notched six strikeouts.
Eberhart hit the first batter to face him, Gavin Acker, Sayville’s sixth hitter, but fanned the next one, Ethan Alcantara, on three straight pitches, ending the frame.
The Bonackers went down in order in their sixth. Eberhart got two quick outs in the top of the seventh before the leadoff hitter, Ryan Hillery, beat out a grounder to short. With Kyle Messina up, Hillery stole second, but Eberhart, having got ahead 0-2 in the count, retired Messina — and the side — on a flyout to left.
Which brings us to the bottom of the seventh. Carter Dickinson, Jack’s younger brother and the team’s first baseman, grounded out short-to-first to lead it off, but the cleanup hitter and catcher, Nico Horan-Puglia, caught everyone’s attention with a one ball, two strike line-drive double that landed inside the left-field line — the first extra-base hit of the day. All of a sudden, the crowd came alive.
Darrell, a left-handed hitter, followed with an infield single to the right side that allowed Horan-Puglia to move up, putting runners at the corners for Anderson and prompting Sayville’s coach to go out to the mound, where it was decided, following some discussion, that Law should remain in the game.
Anderson bunted with the count 2-1, but it rolled foul. The 2-2 pitch he drove to center field, a double that drove in Horan-Puglia from third with the tying run and allowed Darrell to reach third with the potential game-winning run. Amid the din, the visitors’ coach went out to the mound again, and this time Law came out, yielding to Chris Spatenga, a slim, hard-throwing lefty.
Meyer, the first to face Sayville’s reliever, was issued an intentional walk, loading the bases with one out. Would the Golden Flashes turn a third inning-ending double play? Would Jack Dickinson, the eighth hitter in the lineup, who had struck out with the count full in the third and had lined into a double play in the fifth, get a hit?
With the count 2-2, East Hampton’s captain drilled a Spatenga fastball toward the left side of the diamond. The throw to second forced Meyer as Darrell was running as fast as he could for home. As Darrell slid into home plate on his chest, Sayville’s first baseman was watching the throw from second sail way over his head.
Wonderful to tell, East Hampton had won 2-1.
“Only persist,” a shivering but delighted spectator said to Alversa as his charges celebrated.
The coach agreed that “it was a good win — they’re a very good team.”
The electrifying comeback presumably eased to some degree the sting of the 9-0 loss the day before at Miller Place, a game in which the Bonackers committed five errors and in which the starter, Carter Dickinson, gave up only one earned run.