The Neal Heaton-led LI Road Warriors entered tonight’s Hamptons League championship game needing one win to take home the title against the Westhampton Aviators. The Road Warriors took care of business wrapping up the title with a 5-3 victory.
LI jumped out to a lead again early, this time in the third inning. Yesterday’s hero would deliver once again for the Road Warriors. Jordan Folgers would come up with one out in the third, after Garrett Heaton and Sean Rausch would get a base hit and a double back-to-back. Folgers found another fastball right in his wheelhouse and knocked a towering shot to left center giving his team a 3-0 lead with one out.
“I keep telling people, we have great ball players on Long Island,” said Head Coach Heaton. “We have five D-1 guys, they have, I think, fifteen or sixteen. It just goes to show you that we have guys here that can play baseball and play with anyone in the country.”
LI would score a fourth run in the third after Michael Veit, who went 3-for-4, laid down a perfect bunt single and Ben McNeill would follow with a double in the gap. This would give Rob Weissheier another chance to help his team. He would come up clutch, hitting a fly ball to center that reached the warning track, scoring Veit from third easily. Weissheier would drive in LI’s fifth run as well with a double in the fifth.
Luckily for LI, four runs was all they would need thanks to their LHP Shane McDonald. The hard-throwing lefty would throw a gem but was forced out of the game due to pitch count. He allowed just one run in the fourth after Cam Climo started a two-out rally with a double. AJ Montoya followed with a single and just like that the Aviators were within striking distance. McDonald, however, would showcase his skills and frustrate the Aviators for the duration of his seven innings.
“It’s huge, I have grown up and lived here my whole life,” McDonald said. “I played for the Ospreys a couple summers ago but this was definitely different and more meaningful, and it was really cool to win the whole thing.”
The 2017 Fordham graduate would fan 12 batters in his seven innings of work allowing six hits and walking just one batter. The Chaminade ’13 grad dealt with an injury in his junior year and will be playing his redshirt season at Southern New Hampshire University. As a senior at Fordham he worked out of the pen doing exactly what he did as a starter for LI. He struck out 35 and only walked nine in 32.2 innings pitched.
“We were feeling good [with an early lead] but this team, they hit. We knew no lead was safe especially today,” Heaton said. “A couple of miscues in the infield and before you know it, with their big hitters, they could tie it up in a minute.”
Luckily for the Road Warriors, they tacked on another run in the fifth to bring their lead back up to four runs. This cushion would prove to be just enough for LI, as they ran in to some trouble in the eighth inning. Their relief pitcher, Pat McCabe struggled to find the plate allowing a run before recording an out.
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LI would then call upon Matthew Buckshaw to get the job done with the bases loaded and none one out late in the game. A funky broken bat comebacker line drive caught everyone off guard, except Nick Bottari, who would end up tagging and scoring on the play after Buckshaw sailed the ball into center field attempting to double up Matt Hansen at second. Now the winning run came to the plate for Westhampton, and he walked to load the bases.
Buckshaw, however, would dig deep and strike out the next batter, and earn a fly ball out to escape with minor damage. He would end up converting a six out save retiring Westhampton in order in the ninth inning.
The two powerhouse teams made for an extremely exciting match up. The team of Long Islanders showed that they can hang with the best of them winning the best of three championship series against last years champs, 2-0.
