A Disastrous Inning Ends Armonk’s Championship Quest

August 26, 2012 Examiner Media Armonk

For three innings late last Sunday afternoon, the Armonk 13-and-under team seemed like it just might be capable of upsetting top-seeded Kent for the WPBA championship at Lakeland High School. The Bobcats had handed the Rebels their only loss of the summer just nine days earlier and now, with the title up for grabs, were in the midst of a scoreless battle halfway through the game.

“The way we had our pitching set up,” coach Angelo Zaccagnino would say later, “going into that fourth inning, I felt very confident.”

But the top of the fourth inning wound up lasting more than half an hour as Kent batted around twice, Zaccagnino made three pitching changes and 14 runs crossed the plate. By the time the demoralized Bobcats finally retired the side, there was little doubt their championship quest had come to an end.

Kent, winners of 17 of its 18 games during the regular season, emerged with a 15-0 triumph in a title game shortened to five innings by the mercy rule. It was a crushing end for an Armonk team that had so recently ended the Rebels’ 16-game winning streak and arrived at Shrub Oak earlier in the day convinced it could compete with the Rebels.

“We basically set ourselves up in the beginning of the playoffs so we would have all our pitchers,” said Zaccagnino. “We used guys ‘x’ amount of innings so we’d have all our pitchers. It worked. It was perfect, and we just didn’t have it today. Our second, third and fourth pitchers just didn’t have it. Just had that one bad inning and we just couldn’t regroup after that.”

Over the first three innings, Armonk starting pitcher John DiMarco had struck out four Rebel batters and yielded only two hits. The Bobcats left a runner stranded at second base in the bottom of the third and then came the disastrous top of the fourth. It began with an infield hit by Brennan McIntyre and when DiMarco proceeded to walk the next two hitters, loading the bases, Zaccagnino summoned Greg Giuliani to pitch in relief.

Unfortunately for Armonk, Giuliani’s first delivery was a wild pitch, enabling McIntyre to scamper home with the game’s first run. Another wild pitch brought in the second run, a bloop double to short right field by Mario Della Valle scored another and then a walk to Ryan C. Walsh loaded the bases again and ended Guiliani’s stint on the mound.

Armonk’s third pitcher of the inning, Louis Filipelli, fared no better as he walked the first two batters he faced, forcing in two more runs. After Eric Morais was retired on a grounder to third for the first out, the next three Rebel hitters reached, including Tom Hogan, who walked on four pitches with the bases loaded. The score was suddenly 8-0 and Filipelli was replaced by Ben Selkin.

Selkin had no more success than his predecessors and wound up surrendering a pair of two-run singles before he finally managed to strike out Mike Hernandez for the final out of the inning. The Bobcats came back to the dugout with their spirits sagging and their title hopes gone.

“When I made the pitching change,” said Zaccagnino about his decision to take out DiMarco, his starter, “I knew I had one of my good guys coming in and I had two more guys right behind him. So I was very confident with that and I thought we were just gonna pull through. But we just couldn’t make a play in that one inning.”

So moments after the game’s final out, the Armonk coaching staff turned its attention to getting the unfortunate numbers on the big scoreboard beyond right field removed as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, it did hurt a little bit to look at the scoreboard,” conceded Zaccagnino. “But like I told my boys, ‘We’re a championship team because we were here today on a championship field. Keep your heads up high. If we play two out of three, maybe tomorrow we come out and kill them. So that’s how you have to look at it.'”

-Andy Jacobs