It would’ve been easy to give up on the Bonackers after they lost their first seven games of the season, but cue Journey. This team simply won’t stop believing. On Saturday, the boys swept their second straight series, beating Harborfields 3-2, 6-1, and 5-3 to keep their playoff hopes alive and improve their league record to 7-8.
“We’re cruising along here. I wish that we had played like this in week one and two,” Vinny Alversa, the head coach, said after the win. “If we had that from them — the control aspect — somewhere along those first two series, we probably would’ve won one or two games and we’d be in a whole different situation, a little less pressure, but these guys are responding well and whatever happens, it doesn’t matter. They could’ve laid down and died and won three games the rest of the way, but they’re fighting.”
It’s hard to explain why the boys came out flat, why their pitchers — who were excellent last season — faltered this year. Taking a page from the late, great Yankees’ announcer John Sterling, who died early this month, Alversa said, “That’s baseball!”
But last week, in the series against Harborfields, Bonac really turned up the heat, especially their pitchers.
Jackson Carney was the starter in the 3-2 win on May 5, allowing just one hit in five innings.
Finn O’Rourke struck out 15 batters in the 6-1 victory on May 8. He also hit a double, driving in Livs Kuplins and Trevor Meehan to get the offense going. Mason Miles piled it on with a two-run homer.
Meehan pitched in Bonac’s 5-3 win the next day, a tough 9 a.m. start after getting back to East Hampton at 12:30 a.m. that morning, too late for the team’s usual McDonald’s run. The short rest and lack of Big Macs didn’t appear to be a problem, though; the boys were cheering louder than ever, hanging out of the dugout to root for their hitters.
“A lot of the guys who aren’t playing, they’re up on the fence cheering. They want it too. Right now that’s their role. It’s turning out to be a really good group,” Alversa said. “They’re really starting to dig in and believe, and it’s just — they just have to grind teams out. We’re not going to blow anybody out of the water. We’re going to grind you and grind you and hopefully you make the mistake first and we can capitalize on it. It’s kind of the way it’s been, along with some timely hitting.”
However the season ends up, whatever their record, “I’m proud of them,” the coach said. “They could’ve just laid down and said that’s it. But we’re playing meaningful baseball. Last week of the season playing meaningful baseball.”
