FEATURES
Rich Ciufo’s Road To Recovery
by P.J. Potter It’s Opening Night at Historic Hicks Field in Edenton, North Carolina. The fans are still filing into the grandstands as the Steamers are coming up to bat for the first time of the Coastal Plain League season. While people were still getting settled, Rich Ciufo was already locked in. On his very first swing, everyone in the ballpark stopped what they were doing. They looked up as Ciufo crushed the ball over the double deck of advertisement signs in left field, and he was met by a roaring ovation while rounding the bases. And just like that, crossing home plate with a huge smile, Ciufo became a star in the CPL. “It was a great way to open the summer. It felt like a lot of hard work paid off,” Ciufo said, a Medford, NY native attending Brown University. Jumping into the summer...
17 Miles, Two Counties Apart, One Passion: Baseball
by Matt Dzenawager The Carl Yastrzemski Award, given to the best player in Suffolk County, and the Diamond Award, given to the best positional player in Nassau County, are two of the most prestigious honors for Long Island High School baseball players. This year the Carl Yastrzemski Award was earned by Matt Hogan of Half Hollow Hills East High School and the Diamond Award was earned by Anthony D’Onofrio of Wantagh High School. Despite living in different counties, the game of baseball has brought Hogan and D’Onofrio together. The two have played travel ball together since they were 11 for the Long Island Titans organization and have forged a long-lasting, great friendship. “Everyday, every weekend we’ve had games and stuff,” Hogan said “baseball is more of a brotherhood bond.” Both D’Onofr...
Catching Up With Peter Theodorellis
by Matt Dzenawager The transition from high school to college baseball has had its ups and downs for 2017 Commack High School graduate Peter Theodorellis. Theodorellis has been a winner his entire baseball career. From winning the 10-year-old Mid-Atlantic championship in 2010 to winning the high school Suffolk County championship in 2017. Individually, he won the Silver Slugger and was named All Tri-State in his senior campaign. Theodorellis now plays for the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights and he’s honing his craft this summer in the Hamptons League. As a pitcher and position player, Theodorellis pitched 22 innings and received 76 at-bats his freshman year with the Knights. “My role definitely changed,” Theodorellis said. “I wasn’t the top notch guy anymore,” between being a freshman...
Q & A With Joey Pena
It’s hard to have a better collegiate career than Joey Pena. The Brooklyn native just wrapped up an outstanding 4-year career with the St. Thomas Aquinas Spartans, hitting .366 with 37 RBI and 50 runs scored this season. Joey was far from a singles-hitting shortstop. He had 26 extra base hits and stole 37 bases, while playing all 54 contests. Perhaps most impressive, he drew 45 walks and struck out only 14 times; which padded his OBP to a ridiculous .498 over 194 at bats. Earlier this year he broke the program record for hits in a career. They came up just shy of returning to Cary, N.C. for the Div-II College World Series after they were shutout 6-0 by Blue Point native Shane McDonald. Pena participated in our Axcess Invitational on Tuesday and he was one of the stars of the show. He...
Ryan Sandberg: From Obscurity to the Top of the Nation’s Leaderboards
If he was a secret before, he definitely was not a secret following his 16-strikeout, no-hitter over Suffolk CC last month. Suffolk Head Coach Brian Klammer called him the “best pitcher we’ve seen all year, hands-down”. He was siting 88-90 and touching 92 MPH with pinpoint command. And he’s available to any college that’s interested. Queensborough CC ace Ryan Sandberg went on to be named CUNYAC Pitcher of the Year after recording 90 strikeouts over 46 innings just a year removed from Tommy John Surgery. He led the nation in strikeouts, K/9 and was top five in complete games. His pitching coach Alex Pangourelias described him as a “bonafide ace that took the mound overtime and gave his team a chance to win”. Following his lights-out season, he has g...
Vincent Rice: Farmingdale’s Resilient Leader Eager to Win a Skyline Championship
by Joe Pantaleo “I knew I was in trouble during the first inning,” said Vincent Rice. “On one pitch, there was an electric shock up my arm, and I just walked off the mound. I knew.” Shortly after, Rice — then a senior at Farmingdale High School — received news that all pitchers dread: he had torn his Ulnar Collateral Ligament and would need Tommy John surgery if he wanted to play baseball again. “It was actually a big game for me too. There was a lot of college scouts coming that day,” he said. Rice was one of the best high school pitchers of his class on Long Island, and he had started to gain some buzz from several local colleges that season. A few weeks later, Rice would receive the surgery to repair his partially-torn UCL, and he decided to walk-on at Farmingdale State ...
Willy Adames Ready for the Call
Click For Video From Adames’ Cycle NEW YORK – Willy Adames didn’t appear as if he had too much left to prove in the minor leagues. Tampa Bay, however, assigned him to minor league camp in early March, signaling that the club didn’t think he was quite ready to make the leap from Triple-A Durham. Adames, whom the Rays acquired from Detroit in the 2014 David Price deal, remains one of the top prospects not only in Tampa’s system but also in all of baseball. According to MLB.com, he is No. 22. If he was disappointed that he opened the season in Durham, he hasn’t let it show, putting together a slash line of .315/.419/.507 and 15 RBIs through the end of April. The native of the Dominican Republic also hit for the first cycle in the Durham Bulls’ Triple-A franchise history on April 23 agai...
Patrick Lagravinese: The Ultimate Utility Player
(Photo Credit: Bill Ziskin) By Justin Paura Being asked to do everything is hard. There are very few people who you can count on to do backflips for you one day and run a mile for you the next. But for Albany junior Patrick Lagravinese, it has become second nature. In his first two seasons with the Great Danes, Lagravinese saw himself playing all over the infield. It helped him get some burn as an underclassman, playing in a total of 80 games through his freshman and sophomore years. “Getting experience early has really helped me develop as a player,” Lagravinese says. “Some kids don’t see time until their sophomore or junior year. I’ve been lucky.” The only thing is, it hasn’t been a matter of luck. It’s been a matter of flexibility. His role in his junior year has completely changed. He ...
Alex Katz Reflects On His Playing Career
(Photo by Brian Westerholt/Four Seam Images) What could be a bigger thrill for a six-years-old than getting to stand on the field of a Major League Baseball stadium and getting to meet your favorite players? What could be a bigger thrill for a baseball player than getting to participate in the World Baseball Classic in front a sold-out crowd in Japan? New Hyde Park-native and Herricks HS grad Alex Katz was fortunate to experience both things. The former was the virtue of luck by winning a contest at a shoe store that he was entered in. The latter was the virtue of many years of hard work, success and persistence. The hard-throwing southpaw grew up a die-hard Met fan in New Hyde Park and he remembers going to games at Shea Stadium hoping to grab the attention of his idols, Billy Wagner and ...
How Marcus Stroman Went From League I MVP to World Baseball Classic MVP
(Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on March 22, 2017 after Team USA captured the Gold Medal in the World Baseball Classic) Having coached him for five years on the diamond and one year on the gridiron, not many people know Marcus Stroman–who was just named Most Valuable Player of the 2017 World Baseball Classic–better than Patchogue-Medford HS Head Coach Anthony Frascogna. Prior to gaining national acclaim for taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning and leading Team USA to their first WBC championship, he was leading Pat-Med to league titles. But before that, he was the little guy that was turning everyone’s head no matter which sport he played. “I knew Marcus from when he was in elementary school because I knew Earl (his father), and I would see him on the fields...
Aidan Tornquist: Why I Chose Fordham University
(Editor’s Note: Aidan is a 2019 CF/LHP graduate of Half Hollow Hills West. He recently announced his verbal commitment to Fordham University. The following words are his own.) On Sunday, March 18, I chose to commit to Fordham University. That frigid morning, I visited Fordham with my travel baseball coach, Pete Kritikos of MVP Beast, and my parents. Coach Kevin Leighton gave me a tour around the campus for an hour-and-a-half and I immediately fell in love with the school. I’ve always found myself looking for a small campus and I found exactly that when I toured Fordham. Coach Leighton went into detail about life as a Fordham student, more specifically as a student-athlete, and the support system offered by the school to foster students with great ambition. Over the past year, I...
Adam Heidenfelder On His Resurgent Season at Old Westbury
It’s been quite a journey for Adam Heidenfelder. In May 2014, he was coming off winning his second Diamond Award at MacArthur HS. His fastball, sitting 90-91 MPH, was drawing herds of scouts behind the plate at all his games and was being discussed as a potential draft pick. Ultimately, the only local high school player that got drafted was Jesse Berardi, the Carl Yastrzemski Award winner out of Commack. Heidenfelder, a 6’5″ RHP, began his college career at Hofstra University and made his first start against UCLA in Hofstra’s second game of the season. The start did not go as planned, and it was the start of two frustrating seasons for him. He used that as an opportunity to start fresh, however, recognizing that there was an opening atop the SUNY Old Westbury rotati...
