by Vinny Messana
Baseball is a game of inches, and it was evident in the sixth inning between Next Level and Knights Nation MXE. With runners on second and third and one out, Chris Critchley grounded one to shortstop. Knights’ runner JJ Palumbo was running on contact and had a good jump. Next Level SS made an accurate throw to home and it was a very close play. To the naked eye, it was tough to tell but the umpire called him out at the plate. Upon further review, the runner appeared to have gotten under the tag but without the benefit of review, this was simply an out. The next batter grounded out to SS to end the inning to keep the score at 2-1.
Next Level added an insurance run in the home half of the sixth to end with a final of 3-1. The play was a critical moment since the Knights appeared to be taking good at bats and hitting the ball well. The leadoff batter of the inning smoked a line back to the mound but reliever Shane Linett made an outstanding play to snag it somehow. The next batter, Nicholas Mirabile, hit a bloop single to right field and he moved to scoring position on a walk to Zach Rosenzweig. Sean Seligman crushed a double to left field that scored Mirabile and probably should’ve scored the pinch runner, Palumbo, but he wound up at third. The play at the plate gave them a chance to still tie the game so it took the wind out of the sail. Once the inning was over, it was going to be difficult to overcome that.
Credit to Next Level who played sound defensively, and they added that insurance run in the bottom of the sixth on a wild pitch to score Hardiman, who led off the inning with a well-struck double to right field. Shane Linett went back out for the seventh and he fired a 1-2-3 inning to nail down the save and improve Next Level to 2-0 in the tournament.
Hardiman got the start in this game and he was terrific. He struck out five batters over five shutout innings, sitting in the low 80s with his fastball and showing command of his curveball and change up. He left with a 2-0 lead. There was one critical moment in the fifth. After a two-out error by Hardiman kept the inning alive, Nicholas Delvecchio, blooped a single to right field to put the runner in scoring position. Or so it seemed. The Next Level coach called time to show the bat to the umpire. After a brief delay, it was determined the bat was not allowed in the tournament which resulted in an inning-ending out.
Next Level executes the steal of home to increase their lead to 2-0 in the fourth pic.twitter.com/2VSyOPIlBJ
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) October 2, 2021
Prior to that, Next Level had built their 2-0 lead on a first inning RBI single by Pat Heber which scored Christopher Sais. In the fourth inning, they added another on a double steal which scored Hardiman from third.
The starting pitcher for the Knights was Alex Marcoline. He did a nice job keeping his offense in the game especially against a tough Next Level lineup that featured Molloy-commit Jack Coogan, Binghamton-commit Matt Bolton and New Paltz-commit Christopher Sais. Additionally, Pat Heber and Steven Hardiman appear to be college-bound HS seniors as well.
