McKee/Staten Island Tech players walk off the field dejected. (Damion Reid)
By the end of the Tottenville half of the second inning, the entire crowd, wrapped around virtually the entire field, had gone silent.
The buzz that accompanied the game’s first pitch had vanished. The Pirates faithful was so surprised it was quiet; McKee/Staten Island Tech’s fans were stunned and suddenly numb.
Tottenville scored four runs in the first and six more in the second, turning the game that would decide the Staten Island crowd into a walk.
“It was pretty demoralizing,” said MSIT catcher Joe Trezza, a phrase which was somehow felt like an understatement after visiting Tottenville won its 26th straight division crown, 12-5, over the Sea Gulls Thursday.
Trezza didn’t even make it through the fateful second frame, his pinky finger swollen and needing ice after it was hit by an errant pitch. The pain in his finger was nothing compared to the carnage the Pirates inflicted on the Sea Gulls and ace right-hander Matt Abramowitz.
The Adelphi-bound Abramowitz beat the Pirates each of the last two years, but he didn’t have it on Thursday. The first four Tottenville (17-1) batters reached. Brendan Farr swatted Abramowitz’s first pitch for a single, Zach Granite walked on four pitches, Thomas Kain plated Farr with a double, and Kevin Krause also walked. George Kantzian’s two-run, two-out single put an exclamation point on the damaging opening frame.
“He was being too timid in the strike zone, trying to be to fine with everything,” Trezza said. “He was falling behind everybody. You fall behind hitters like that, they are going to make you pay.”
It didn’t get better for Abramowitz in the second. Granite led off with a booming triple and scored when shortstop John Duffy couldn’t handle Kain’s routine grounder. Krause walked again. Consecutive errors by third baseman David Kelter and first baseman Ryan Mannello added to the carnage.
“Our game is pitching and defense,” MSIT coach Mike Grippo said. “When your starter goes 1-plus, it’s probably not going to be a good day. He just wasn’t on. I was hoping he would fight through it after a bad start, but he didn’t find himself. He didn’t have his stuff today.”
Relievers Mike Remini and Jason Singer did a fine job in support of Abramowitz, going a combined six innings and allowing just one earned run, and the Sea Gulls (15-3) rallied for five runs. Scott Barnickel had a two-run double and Nick Skomina drove in another with a double. Ian Gutch had a chance to get them within striking distance, but flied out to Granite in deep center with the bases loaded in the sixth. After two of the shakiest innings of the season, innings that hardly resembled Grippo’ disciplined, well-schooled club, MSIT found itself.
It was too late.
Grippo didn’t feel it was the moment or the crowd that got to his players. He’s seen Abramowitz and his kids in playoff contests, where even more pressure was attached to the moment. It wasn’t nerves, he maintained, of facing Tottenville.
It was pretty simple, actually.
“Today the difference was their starter had it, ours didn’t,” Grippo said. “[Pitching] is the name of the game in baseball.”
