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Patriots host first-round
playoff game, win big
WMHS Baseball
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The Ward Melville baseball team hosted their first home playoff game in over 30 years on Tuesday, May 19. The Patriots, winners of the League I title, only the second such honor in school history, drew a large crowd of fans, college coaches, professional baseball scouts and players from other high schools. About 80 grown men, some holding speed guns, watched Patriot left-hander Steve Matz take his warmup tosses behind the backstop. Matz, a senior, was once again brilliant on the mound, going the distance for a 5-0 Class AA win over Walt Whitman.
The rangy lefty fanned 11 batters while walking two and allowing the Wildcats only two hits. His fastball hit 93 mile per hour on the speed gun in the first inning and was still humming along at 89 miles per hour with two men on base in the seventh inning. Matz also went 2-for-2 at the plate with an RBI and two runs scored.
Senior shortstop Jeremy Delgado played the field smoothly and went 2-for-3 with an RBI on his second
inning double.
At third base senior Pete Gelsomino wore a mask to protect his recently broken nose. "It was definitely different to try to see with the mask," Gelsomino said. "I couldn't look directly down, so I had to pick up the ball further out in front of me."
Gelsomino handled four tough chances at the hot corner and never flinched, stuck his face right back in there. He added an RBI single to the Patriot attack.
The third-seeded Patriots took a one-run lead in the first inning and added three more in the second inning. The pitching and defense was so good Melville needed nothing more.
One scary moment for the Patriots came in the bottom of the second inning when junior Tom Spero was hit in the head by a wild pitch. After convincing Patriot athletic trainer Kevin O'Leary he was uninjured, Spero was awarded first base and later scored on a balk. With the win over Whitman the Patriots will host another playoff game on Thursday at 4 pm against the Longwood Lions, who
defeated William Floyd 6-0.
"We had a nice crowd today, lots of support," said Ward Melville head coach Lou Petrucci. "And no bad hops on a good field. Now we have another home game on Thursday. But we've got to stop making base-running errors and start doing the little things right. This is game 23 for us. But we want to keep playing until June."
Gelsomino said of this League I championship season and the chance at a Suffolk County championship: "Right away in the beginning of the year we had hope. Once we swept the top two teams we thought we could do something special."
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