There was good news pretty much all around last week for ball teams here whose players range from pre-teens to middle age.
First, the Little Leaguers. John Grisch’s 11-12-year-old boys traveling all-star team won both games it played this past week, bageling its Southampton peers 9-0 — a game in which Declan Balnis hit the first over-the-fence home run that’s been seen at the new Stephen Hand’s Path fields this season — and eked out a 4-3 victory over Westhampton Beach, the defending District 36 champion, thanks to a walk-off blast in the sixth inning by Colin Grisch that scored Scott Abran from third base with the winning run.
Elias Wojtusiak started on the mound for the young Bonackers, but Aiden Stone came in to relieve in the second inning after the Hurricanes had jumped out to a 2-0 lead. Stone went the rest of the way. The win improved the 11-12 boys to 2-0. They are to play Sag Harbor on Bridgehampton’s Little League field today at 5:45. North Shore is to play here at Stephen Hand’s Saturday at 10 a.m., a game that will cap pool play.
East Hampton’s 11-12-year-old female all-stars, coached by Steve Centalonza, were also 2-0 going into this week, having routed Moriches Bay 21-1, and shut out Eastport-South Manor 13-0. The girls, whose frontline pitcher is Dylan Centalonza, an effective windmiller, were to have played Monday at North Shore. The girls’ tournament is double-elimination; the boys’ semifinalists will have emerged from pool play.
Jumping ahead age-wise, the Sag Harbor Whalers, the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League’s defending champion, despite missing five stalwarts — Mark Henshon, Dan Kerr, Olivia Pichardo, Brett Borcherding, and Tucker Genovesi, the latter two East Hamptoners — who were playing in Virginia with Prospect League teams, shut out the Westhampton Aviators 4-0 at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Sunday, improving to 5-4 on the season. The pitchers were Cole Forcellina (five innings) and Steven Mazza (two). Lucas Pierce and Keano Suarez drove in runs.
The team is coached by Jake Tobin, an assistant baseball coach at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and Bianca Smith, who, when hired by the Boston Red Sox in 2021 to work with its rookie team in Fort Myers, Fla., became the first Black woman to serve as a professional baseball coach.
The Whalers’ coaches and their players — the roster numbers 28 — are overseeing four-day camps and free Sunday morning clinics from 10 to 11 a.m. at Mashashimuet Park this summer. Camp applications can be downloaded online at bit.ly/3r4O9ag. The Whalers next play at home on Sunday at 2 and 4:30 p.m. against the Southampton Breakers and on Tuesday at 11 a.m. against the Shelter Island Bucks.
Rather than win, win, win, Tobin has said that player development is his chief concern. On his team, he has said, “Everybody plays.”
Jumping ahead even further age-wise, to the Hamptons Adult Hardball league for over-30 players, Tim Pilinko, player-manager of the defending-champion Harbor Kraken, said Monday that his team lost its first game of the season to the Southampton Brewers Sunday. The loss, “only our third or fourth one in three years,” according to Pilinko, dropped the Kraken to 6-1.
The Kraken’s roster includes at least a half-dozen East Hamptoners: the Abran brothers, Jim and Scott, Dylan Field, Andrew Rodriguez, Steve Turza, and Steve Petrocelli among them.