It was a tumultuous 2019 season for Bellport. They fell to 4-11 in league play and were without legendary head coach Bill Batewell, who was on medical leave.
In his absence, longtime assistant Joe Murphy was at the helm. He has been with Batewell for 41 seasons beginning in 1979 as a volunteer coach on JV level at Sachem, then as the 8th grade coach in 1980, freshman team in 1981 and 1982, JV for 15 years and then varsity assistant since then.
He noted that they had some bad luck, losing three one-run ballgames including two to League Champ West Islip by the scores of 1-0.
“We were in a lot of games, we pitched well we just did not hit well,” he said, adding that the team batting average was under .200. They had one All-County player and that was Andrew Veit, who is currently playing at St. Peter’s. He led the team in hitting at .316, SLG (.421) and OBP (.422). Two-time All-League infielder Brennan Beatrice also graduated as did Justin Maler, who is playing at SUNY Oneonta.
They are working hard this off-season to improve those offensive deficiencies.
“I told them ‘look we need to get bigger and stronger’ and they seem to be doing that – we are training at Baseball Heaven twice per week for two hours,” he said. “We are looking to improve on last year,” he added.
Murphy admitted that this season might be a bit of a rebuilding season as most of their seniors did not receive a ton of playing time last year. One senior that they are certainly counting on is Christian Roundtree, who “ended the season very hot.”
The silver lining is that they are building for the future.
“We have some 9th and 10th graders that will be up. We are a relatively young team,” he said.
League 4 has always been strong and that is even truer this season as Smithtown East drops down from League 3.
“West Islip and Smithtown East don’t rebuild, they reload. Deer Park is returning some All-League talent, North Babylon lost a bunch of talent but they have a great coaching staff. East Islip is an outstanding program. There will be no easy games. You need to be ready to play – there won’t be anybody you can slap around for three games,” he said.
They will have scrimmages against West Islip and Ward Melville before opening up on March 30 at West Islip.
