by Vinny Amodeo
On the back of senior Nick Lucchese, the North Shore Vikings pulled out a comeback win this afternoon against Jericho by the score of 4-3.
A three-run fifth inning propelled the Vikings after a fairly dull offensive performance for most of the day. The inning was kicked off with a one-out single by freshman pinch-hitter, Matt Lewin. Lucchese, drove a double to right field, putting runners on second and third and setting up a turn of events for the following batter.
Centerfielder, Frank Castiglione, wiffed on a squeeze bunt attempt, forcing Lucchese and Lewin guessing between bases in a double pickle. Jericho chose to go after Lucchese, which temped Lewin to race home. Lewin was out at the plate, but allowed Lucchese to advance to third.
June 5th at Dowling College!
Castiglione redeemed himself with a RBI single, driving in Lucchese. The following batter, Francis Dromm, drove a double scoring Castiglione and tying the game at 3-3. Senior first baseman, Jack Lincoln, drove in what would be the winning run immediately after with a single.
Nick Lucchese, ‘the sandman’, took over the game after one out was recorded in the top of the sixth inning and completely shut down the Jericho offense for the remainder of the game. He solidified a comeback victory for the Vikings, while the fan section was deeming the game over right as he took the rubber.
“Great feeling, nothing better,” said senior Nick Lucchese. “Being on a team for four years, the Vikings, all we do is come back. We are never killing teams, we always come back and we always win.”
North Shore, while never losing their confidence, found themselves down for most of the game as Jericho took an early lead in the second inning. A leadoff single by Nico Doria led to a tw0-out RBI hit by Stephen Balko, and put Jericho up 1-0.
The Jayhawks would extend their lead in top of the third after North Shore tied it in the second, and almost took a 2-1 lead before Jack Josephy robbed a HR off the bat of Jack Lincoln. Jericho strung together three hits and a few sacrifice bunts to add two runs in the inning and take a 3-1 lead into the bottom half.
This lead would stick until North Shore’s fifth inning rally, as the Jayhawks starter, Sal Cammisuli, threw a respectable game allowing three earned runs in five innings on seven hits. Matt Herzog, the second baseman, came in for relief in the sixth and sat North Shore down in order.
“Jericho is an unbelievable team, very well coached,” said head coach Scott Lineman. “They played their hearts out, they really did, and they got ahead on us but we battled back. It wasn’t easy and Sal did a great job. We hit him hard a couple times right at guys, but our guys stayed confident, kept swinging, tried to hit the ball hard and in the fifth inning we finally put something together. We faced adversity a couple of times this year, we always just try to stay positive and face it head on.”
Senior hurler, Max Scott, also faired well and kept the Jericho offense at bay allowing five hits, while giving up three earned runs on 5 1/3 innings pitched.
“We played Vikings baseball, the way we played all year,” said Lineman. “Good pitching, solid defense and timely hitting. We said ‘be us’ and ‘don’t change a thing’ and we’ll be OK.”
North Shore moves on to the next round the of playoffs, while Jericho’s season has come to a close.
