The almost-upset
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- April
- 29
Marcel Galligani’s team went to bed last night believing it was one out from beating the defending Class AA champ on its own field 5-3. The players had been told last night was a suspended game that would be resumed at a later date with two outs in the bottom of the 10th and Taylor Mondshein of Mamaroneck on second base.
A phone call last night to Section 1 co-chairman Pat Amendola revealed the worst to Galligani — the suspended game rule only applies to postseason games. Therefore, last night’s game reverted to the end of the last completed inning, the ninth, and was ruled a 3-3 tie.
“Honestly, Josh, that’s the worst part,” Galligani told me over the phone late last night. “These kids are sleeping right now thinking that the next time we play all we need is one out and we get the win.”
The disappointment didn’t lie in the outcome but in knowing that darkness in all likelihood cost White Plains a monumental upset over perhaps New York state’s best team. Here’s what happened:
— White Plains grabbed control with a 3-1 lead behind the pitching of Mike Quirindongo.
— Mamaroneck cut it to 3-2. In the bottom of the sixth, Christian Glaser stole home on a delayed steal to tie the score at 3-3. Matt McGovern had bunted for a hit to put runners at the corners. McGovern then stole second base with Glaser at third. White Plains threw to second, had the throw cut off and had Glaser dead at home but the throw sailed over the catcher’s head. Quirindongo then struck out both Mike Rosenfeld and Sean Hagan to end the inning.
— In the top of th 10th, as darkness really began to set in at Mamaroneck, Craig Bruno reaches on an error and later scores on a wild pitch. Nick Cutsumpas doubled off the fence. After the first out, the Tigers intentionally walk Quirindongo, and Ryan Flynn follows with a double to right center that scores Cutsumpas. A walk loads the bases but Mamaroneck and pitcher Eric Windsor escape the jam by forcing Mike Meccia to ground into a 4-6-3 double play.
— Someone (either the umpire or Mike Chiapparelli, although they both agree on it) put new baseballs into play. Galligani and Chiapparelli disagree on whether or not this is fair, but the umps allow it because it is very, very dark at time.
— Meccia, who threw the no-hitter for White Plains earlier this year, gets a fly out and a strikeout to start the inning, putting the Tigers one out away. The next batter, Mondshein, hits a fly ball to left field. Galligani termed the fly ball “routine,” and Chiapparelli said “I think he would’ve caught it,” but netiher description matters. White Plains left fielder Casey Oronzio never moves. He simply can’t see the ball, which drops in over his head for a double.
— The umps immediately call the game to protect the safety of the players. “It was definitely dark,” Galligani admitted.
As you can see, this was just a wild afternoon and evening at Mamaroneck. After learning about the rule, which was changed in recent years, Galligani felt a number of emotions, but what bothered him most was the lack of a resolution.
“It’s a baseball game we truly felt we played well enough to win,” he said. “We honestly felt we won the baseball game.”
“What are you going to do?” Chiapparelli said. “They played really well and if they got one more out they would’ve won, but it goes down as a 3-3 tie.”
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 1:30 am by Josh Thomson. 
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Josh Thomson has done some of everything since joining The Journal News in
March 2003. He began working for the Gannett weeklies during the winter of
2002 as a freelance writer. He joined the daily staff soon after and has
since covered various high school and pro sports. Away from sportswriting,
Josh lives in Westchester and spends his free time either with his
fiancee, Sarah, or expertly managing his various championship-winning
fantasy sports teams. He's visited 21 major-league baseball stadiums and
insists that Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are the best by far. Josh
graduated from Carmel High School in 1998, then went to Boston University,
where, in 2002, he received a degree in communications with a minor in
history. 
Jake Thomases has covered baseball, hockey, girls basketball, and girls soccer for the Journal News since arriving in 2003. He previously interned at The Poughkeepsie Journal while attending Vassar College. He is socking money away under his mattress to buy the Knicks, at which time he will trade Jerome James to Cleveland for a ham sandwich.
Wow! and nothing else happened anywhere else in section 1 yesterday. No other games, nothing! Well, at least we all got the update from Mamaroneck’s beat reporter. Hey thanks Josh, that was great!
I agree. The coverage this year has ranged from awful to nonexistent.
What an annoying game on all fronts.
White Plains played gritty tough baseball, and the breaks went their way. Mamk made too many errors in the field and on the basepaths, and the bad hop on a double play ball to Mondshien that led to White Plains’ second and third runs was representative of how their day went. They weren’t handcuffed by White Plains’ pitcher, but when runners got on, he bore down and got outs. Especially in each overtime inning where Mamk seemingly looked ready to score, White Plains turned it up and got their outs. They deserved to win.
Also, both teams suffered from some of the funniest balls and strikes calls I’ve ever seen. I know Chap thought his team was getting the worse end of it, and perhaps they were but I saw a couple questionable pitches from Mamk pitchers go in for strikes as well. It was strange because there would be reliably about one awful strike call per inning, and it was always in a different place.
In response to section one…. did any other team play into 11 innings yesterday? I don’t know, it was newsworthy!
I think your coach would be the first to agree you guys lost that game. We outplayed you. Mamk, don’t blame it on the umps. I saw you play us twice last year. Your pitching was very shaky this time round, which wasn’t the case last year. Your catcher kept you in the game, not only with his 2 bombs but with a great arm. I have to give credit where credits due. That kid is very good. To our boys, you should be very proud of the way you played. You beat the defending State Champs.
THANK YOU Section 1 . But when something interesting happens like when the coach is accused of swinging at an ump.. that gets ignored! You guys were called out on it from other bloggers and still ignored it.
I am all for our Section 1 teams, but the reporting this year has been awful. It has been mentioned many times on these blogs. The result is horrible comments and silliness. Good job boys. How about you sit with Devaney and learn how to do this thing right???
Now that its been established that Mama is just a HS baseball team with hs baseball players can we “broaden” the coverage a bit?
Did the 1st base coach for Mama beat anybody afetr the game?
To WP- the pitching was fine yesterday. Both pitchers who did throw pitched a fine game. The breaks just went to white plains. Yea Mike Rosenfeld is a great player but he wasnt he only person who kept Mamaroneck in the game. If you think pitching lost it for Mamaroneck your out of your mind
Get Real- I don’t think I’d be talking about breaks going our way.
First off I will agree with complaints that Mamaroneck has received way more press than any other team. The journal news should make a much better attempt to spread the press around. The lame excuse that they are state champs does not excuse that. Mt. Vernons basketball program does not get the same amount of press as Mamaroneck Baseball. Lets not forget that Mamk has won only 3 section championships in over 40 years, Mamk is not a perrenial powerhouse, the way Mt. Vernon is in basketball. Mt Vernon basketball has more state championships than Mamk baseball has section championships… yet Mamk baseball gets absurd amounts of attention.
Second, I was at the WP game. The umpires should be made to only do modified games. There is no way in heck that they should ever have started that last inning, it was already dark, . When an umpire brings in new whiter balls in play so the kids can see it better… that should mean it is too darn darkto play the game. Whats next? Color the balls in a fluorescent color?
That being said, WP is the unofficial winner of that game. Officially it is a tie unfortunately.
Horrible break for WP, a team that lost lost to New Ro 4-0, should have had a W against Mamk.
Good umpires out there? Ther has been an awful lot of ump bashing going on, what will happen come sectional time. I’m sure there has to be some guys out there that know how to handle a ball game. There will always be disagreement on balls and strikes but some of the stuff that has gone could be prevented with stronger umpires. Is there any one out the who can umpire ? Tell me if you know of any good umpires?
you need to stop crying oh man the umps, we didnt get a break, shut up its stupid dont blame that on anyone else but yourself take responsibility
Josh,
Mamaroneck just isnt as good as last year. I dont know what it is but if you keep on calling every game they play a fluke then theres something obviously wrong with the picture. The Mamaroneck team last year absolutely blew its competition out of the water from the first game to the last game. They were the most dominant team i have ever seen. Mamaroneck hasn’t lost a league game in the past 3 years, and they lose one yesterday, but they are still as good as last year? I know they only lost one senior last year so either he had a bigger impact on the team then we thought or Chappy just isn’t coaching them right because i just dont get it. They may have a lot of talent but baseball is a team game and they are obviously not playing as a team as they did last year. If you see them play this year compared to last year, you can see a huge difference in how they play. So please Josh please stop hyping them up because if you lose to White Plaines in your own place, then something obviously isnt right.
Devaney Fan, Section 1 and WP great points in regards to the over exposure and lack of exposure when something of interest arises. It is laughable.
Section 1…If you think I termed this a fluke loss for them, you obviously didn’t read the post. If anything, the only fluke was that Mamaroneck didn’t lose the game. It was a strange game to say the least and I thought baseball fans in the section would be interested to read about it. Obviously not.
To those of you complaining about the coverage, that’s fine. It’s your prerogative. But White Plains won just 10 games last year and three the year before that. The fact that it basically beat the defending Class AA state champ warrants attention. How would Solomon Schechter feel about beating Keio? How about Westlake or Croton about beating Kennedy? Would those be worth mentioning?
Again, if you don’t like the coverage, fine. Just don’t shortchange White Plains, which has received very few mentions on here since the blog began. This time it was much deserved.
Hey Josh… lets be realistic. You would have continued to NOT mention White Plains unless this took place against your beloved Mamaroneck. And the few WP mentions are whose fault? If the record and product put on the field was not yet worthy you could have written a nice story about WP’s coach. He was a stud at Iona and a high draft pick.
Mamaroneck is a great story, but you have gone to the well once to often and the bloggers are bothered. Then you choose to not report on a situation that would shed some bad light on the Tigers..so that made it worse.
You and Jake do a solid job, but your denial of the over exposure of Mamo is weak and so is the “fear” of covering a tougher topic.
Josh does a great job covering all that ’s interesting. Give it a break. When you’re on top, everyone tries to take you down, whether it’s Mamaroneck or Josh Thomson! Josh is on top and we’ll see about Mamaroneck!
Josh and Jake- You guys are doing a great job. These people will moan unless you’re writing about their kids, period. I don’t think for a minute the coverage you’ve given Mamaroneck, or Kenedy for that matter, has been over-done. The only way these bloggers will ever shut up is when their kid wins a State Championship. So I guess it’s something you guys will just have to deal with and we’ll have to listen to.
wp jv beat mamo last year and they should of beat them this year again anybody know what happened in the mamo-wp jv game yesterday?
Please, there’s absolutely no reason to whine about this coverage. Out of any game you guys could have picked to complain about, this was the wrong one. It went 10 innings, and had a strange ending that everyone in attendance and many who were not would be interested in. Oh, and White Plains (beat) tied a virtually unchanged State Championship winning team brimming with overconfidence.
And WP, I have a hard time believing you were at the game. The pitching from both teams was stellar. Rosenfield played fine, but he was hardly a game-changer. And then you tried to take me to task for commenting on the umps. A post later, you did the same thing! I have no idea what you were watching.
The point is; these teams played 10 innings of very good competitive baseball. The difference in the game came down to a couple of base-running decisions, a couple of errors, a couple of pitches. It was a dramatic game. Mamk had runners on in scoring position in every extra-inning. They had the bases loaded with two outs. They had first and second with no outs. Each time, WP fought through the pressure. In the end, they pulled through. I’m confused about what exactly everyone’s objecting to anyway. Was this game not exciting? Should the defending state champs only be covered when they win, or when they get creamed or not at all? I mean, it was a good game. What is anyone supposed to say?
Clarification: I was using a different computer in the morning when I posted using the name “Mamk”. I didn’t notice that this computer had a different name already inserted. Same person
WP-
Since you brought it up Mamaroneck JV defeated WP JV 11-7 in a back and forth game yesterday. #10 pitched well for WP before tiring in his last inning. #44 for Mamo looked good closing the game.
Will you please fix that joke of a stat section. How can anyone get stats about the different teams with the way you guys have things mangled. Why not work on that first and get yourselves some credibility.
after all the attitude i was given for rightfully pointing out that the journal news local baseball reporters have NO business reporting on florida hs shut outs. here i go again…
COVER THE LOCAL TEAMS!!! did you see or report on a huge upset win by croton over briarcliff today!!
no one out here really cares what happens in florida hs baseball. but i think many want to know what happened up at croton today?
They covered mamaroneck, what else do you want?
el estudiante- The second post from WP was not me. I guess there were other people there from WP. The point was, regardless of the umps, who made bad calls for both teams, we out played you and our boys deserved to win the game. As to the pitching, Q was great and Meccia did a stellar job in relief. Your pitching seemed a little shaky in the beginning of the game, but did settle in later. Making a point of recognizing your catcher, who was hard not to notice after a homer, and almost a second to dead center, who threw out a couple of our kids and picked-off a couple of others when your pitcher got into trouble, sorry hombre. Just trying to give credit where its due. Impressive. But your right, he was fine but hardly a game changer. Where were you?
Fanny.. you make some solid points. . What is very bothersome to me is the inability to cover everything when it comes to a program. Look at Kevin Devaney. When Peekskill was accused of running up the score on Pearl River(through the blogs). He not only covered it, he went up to Panazaro and asked him questions about it!! He wasn’t afraid of the outcome. Josh(or Jake)didn’t cover the issue with the coach.. why? Was it a non-story? Maybe..but it was bought up more than once on the blog, so respond to it. Either way it was weak and should have been acknowledged.
In reality Mamaroneck has a special group of kids. So “over” covering them makes sense, but spreading it out is possible. Personally I want nothing but the best for Mamaroneck. They represent Section 1 well, but I am also a fan and would like to know about all the local talent.