Flyers Baseball Takes First Game of Finals from St. Dominic’s

Ask any baseball coach if they would rather be up one game in a best-of-three playoff series and the answer will inevitably be yes.

Rick Garrett happens to be on the other side of the equation, finding himself and the St. Dominic Bayhawks one game away from handing the NSCHSAA championship after an 8-2 win for the Flyers Sunday afternoon at NY Tech in Old Westbury.

“We have these one games and then we come back and we play really well for the next two,” said Garrett, who knows that anything can happen in a short series where momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitching.. “Just look at the season.”

Those games involved the Bayhawks taking two of three from the Flyers during the regular season save for a 6-4 win off the right arm of senior Eric Truss.

“They’re aggressive hitters, they were swinging at the first pitch all day, he knew  that,” Chaminade coach Mike Pienkos said, adding that the only mistake from his starter was an 0-2 fastball to the back of Bayhawk shortstop Tommy Grillo to start the second. “He’s a gutty kid, he never panics.”

Truss (8-0) had kept St. Dominic’s to two runs through six, one of them earned off the bat of centerfielder Steven Goldstein that he drove over the 315’ mark in right field for a homerun to cap off a a 3-3 day.

“You can’t take anything away from that young man, he’s one of the best players in the league… but, hey, we got through the rest of the lineup pretty well,” Pienkos said.

St. Dominic’s had made it difficult for themselves the entire day, rattling off four errors, three of them in the second inning alone that led to three Flyer runs.

“Anytime you want to give us 3 runs like that we’ll take it,” Pienkos said. “They beat us earlier in the year on two bunts. We beat them today on a couple of bunts. It’s a key weapon, you’ve got to be able to bunt in our league.”

Chaminade didn’t even get its first earned run until a trademarked breakout in the seventh highlighted by two successful bunts and an error on reliever John Mione.

“I think it was a little of the big game. I think some of them just made some mental mistakes today,” Garrett said of his team’s performance. “We killed ourselves, our pitcher didn’t hurt us; we just had some really stupid errors.”

Those bunts and the hit parade also saved the Chaminade bullpen for lefty Kevin Weisheirer who earned the decision in the and will try to repeat the same performance.

“It’s going to be a tight ballgame all the way through,” Pienkos predicted.

Anything can happen.