Update, May 25, 12:30 p.m.: The East Hampton High School baseball team was eliminated from the county Class A tournament on May 18, losing 4-1 at fourth-seeded Sayville, thus finishing the season at 10-11.
Hunter Eberhart, who usually has pitched in relief this spring, started for the Bonackers, and did well, throwing only 67 pitches in the six innings he worked. Sayville scratched out two runs in the bottom of the first inning and one in the second. The Bonackers’ Nico Horan-Puglia hit his third home run of the spring in East Hampton’s fifth. Sayville replied with a home run of its own in the bottom half -- “the only hard-hit ball off Hunter all afternoon,” Vinny Alversa, Bonac’s coach, said.
Concerning East Hampton’s at-bats, he said, “We were hitting the ball, but right at people.”
Alversa will lose his entire outfield -- Will Darrell, Egan Barzilay, Calum Anderson, and Danny Lester -- to graduation, along with Eberhart and another starting pitcher, Jack Dickinson.
Originally, May 18: Vinny Alversa, East Hampton High's baseball coach, said following the 13-5 win here on May 17 over Comsewogue that he couldn't remember the last time a Bonac baseball team had won a playoff game. The season of 1994, when the Ross Gload-led Bonackers went all the way to a county small schools championship, comes immediately to mind, but then memory dims.
Seeded sixth in the county's Class A double-elimination bracket, East Hampton had come very close to winning at third-seeded Miller Place the day before, but bowed 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning after having taken a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the seventh.
"It was there," Alversa said, shaking his head. "We scored two runs in the top of the eighth, but they came back to win it in the bottom half."
On May 17, thanks to run-scoring hits by Mason Miles, the freshman third baseman, and Carter Dickinson, the big sophomore, who was catching that day, East Hampton jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning. Comsewogue pulled to within one in the bottom of the third on a three-run home run over the fence in left-center field, only the second homer hit in "the Clam Yard" this spring.
Will Darrell, who had pitched and hit the Bonackers into the playoffs via a 3-1 win over Eastport-South Manor here on May 10, led off East Hampton's third at-bat with a double to the fence in left center, but wound up stranded on third as Hudson Meyer, with the bases loaded and two out, was caught looking at a third strike on the outside corner.
Jack Dickinson, the starting pitcher, sandwiched strikeouts around an infield single in the top of the fourth, and East Hampton went to work again in the bottom half, rallying for five runs with two outs.
Tyler Hansen and Nico Horan-Puglia received walks to begin it. Carter Dickinson then grounded into a 6-4-3 double play with Hansen pulling in at third. Comsewogue's pitcher then intentionally walked Darrell, after which Egan Barzilay received a free pass and Kieran Conlon, with the bases loaded, singled up the middle for a 6-3 East Hampton lead. Miles followed with a run-scoring single through the left side, and Calum Anderson, who hits ninth in the lineup, doubled in two more before Meyer grounded out pitcher-to-first.
That 9-3 lead effectively put the game away. The visitors got one back in the top of the fifth before Dickinson, with the bases loaded, struck out the last two hitters to face him, retiring the side.
The Bonackers scored four more runs in the sixth, with Meyer and Horan-Puglia getting the r.b.i.s. Jack Dickinson came out to applause with one out and a runner on first base in the top of the seventh, and Zach Dodge was brought in by Alversa to finish up.