For the first time in 30 years, an East Hampton High School baseball team will play for a county championship, at 3 p.m. on Saturday at the Middle Country Athletic Complex in Selden versus undefeated East Islip.
Should East Hampton win Saturday, it will have to play East Islip again, at the same place and at the same time, on Sunday.
Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer’s Bonackers advanced to the AA double-elimination tournament’s final by virtue of a thrilling extra-inning 7-3 win Tuesday evening at top-seeded Eastport-South Manor, which had bested East Hampton in each of the teams’ four previous meetings, beginning with a three-game series sweep in April.
Following that sweep, Alversa — whose team was not at full strength in that series, the chief absentee being its catcher and cleanup hitter, Carter Dickinson — said he would not be nervous should his team meet the Sharks again. They did, in a first-round playoff game on Friday. But Eastport, which entered the postseason undefeated, prevailed again, by a score of 7-6, a result that prompted Alversa to say that, given five errors and two balk calls at critical moments, “we beat ourselves.”
It was a different story Tuesday. Carter Dickinson’s father, Paul Dickinson, whose wife, Nicole, keeps track of East Hampton’s stats, said by phone yesterday morning that the Bonackers jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Mason Miles walked after Tyler Hansen and Hudson Meyer had struck out. Dickinson then drove the first pitch he saw off the fence in center field, a mammoth double that advanced Jackson Carney, who was pinch-running for Miles, to third. A subsequent passed ball plated Carney. “And then there were a lot of zeros until the fourth.”
Finn O’Rourke, who had been floored by the flu in the April series, started for East Hampton on Tuesday. The hard-throwing right-hander almost went all the way, giving up just one run, in the fourth, before Hansen relieved him in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, two out, and the potential tying run at the plate.
Hansen had broken the game open with a bases-loaded double in the top of the ninth that treated East Hampton to a 5-1 lead, after which Meyer and Miles walked, loading the bases for Dickinson, who drove in two more runs with a hard-hit grounder through the right side of the infield.
Bonac fans’ blood pressures were to soar, however, in the bottom of the ninth. With 6-to-3 groundouts having bracketed two singles, and with runners at second and third, O’Rourke issued a walk to load the bases. A subsequent single drove in one run, leaving the bases full. After the Sharks pulled to within 7-3 as the result of a full-count walk, Alversa brought in Hansen with the bases still loaded. Hansen, uncoiling, caught the batter looking at a 3-2 fastball that sealed the big win.
