East Hampton’s 12-U Little League baseball team, which had suffered a recent 14-0 defeat at the hands of the North Shore Nationals in the District 36 playoffs, fought its way into the district final by besting the North Shore Americans 8-3 last Thursday, an impressive win given that the Americans were arguably North Shore’s stronger entry.
The Nationals prevailed 5-0 over the Bonackers in Sunday’s final, which was played in Riverhead. Rob Posillico, the team’s manager, said in an email Monday morning that “it was a 2-0 game all the way to the fifth. Griffin Page was phenomenal on the mound. At the plate we had some hard-hit balls, some straight to the fielders, some gap shots that their center fielder made some excellent plays on. We just couldn’t get runs across the plate.”
“There has to be a winner and a loser, and today was just North Shore’s day. Bottom line is I couldn’t be more proud of this team! These boys are great ballplayers, and, more important, great young men. They were humble in victory and gracious in defeat throughout the playoffs. The future is bright for East Hampton baseball.”
As for his charges’ 8-3 win last Thursday over the North Shore Americans, Posillico said that “it was another great team win, with solid pitching backed by great hitting and flawless fielding. Not a single error was made. Going in, we knew we had to be close to perfect, and we were.”
In addition to Griffin Page, the 12-U roster comprised A.J. Gosman, James Balnis, Robbie Posillico, Connor Cashin, Caelan Ferguson, Aiden DeLalla, Jack Helfand, Hudson Thomas, Dixon Bennett, Hudson Bohnsack, and Henry Barbour.
Meanwhile, East Hampton’s 10-U team also fought its way into a district championship game — which was to have been played Tuesday — by way of a dramatic 12-11 walk-off win here Saturday over North Shore. Of that game, Sean Kinney, one of the 10-U team’s coaches, said in an email, “Luca Cereda, Colin Stone, Sawyer Prado, and Ryder Abran all pitched for us. In the bottom of the sixth inning, Wyatt Wirth wound up on second base after hitting a ball down the third-base line, stole third, and then came home with the winning run on Luke Cinelli’s walk-off hit.”
North Shore led 11-2 after three innings, but Kinney’s crew came back, scoring five runs in the fourth, two in the fifth, and an all-important three in the sixth while East Hampton’s pitching shut the visitors down in the top of the fourth, fifth, and sixth.
