Babylon HS Baseball to Challenge for LI Championship

The Babylon High School varsity baseball team will look to do something later today that it just missed out on last year – winning the Long Island Championship.

Last week, the Panthers took on Southampton, the number two seed among Class B teams in Suffolk County. Ace starting pitcher Max Watt threw a complete game, striking out ten batters along the way. Matt Finelli had the game winning RBI single in the fourth inning. A seventh inning 6-4-3 DP ended the game with bases loaded, giving Babylon a 3-2 win.

"[Watt] averages those strikeouts and sometimes a little more," said Coach Anthony Sparacio. "That’s really typical for him." Watt is now 7-0 on the season with a 0.73 ERA.

In game two, Babylon found itself facing a 6-3 defecit in the seventh inning. Babylon's starting pitcher was replaced by Finelli, who pitcher one-run, two-hit ball over four innings. The Panthers exploded to score twelve runs in the inning, including two-run singles by Joe Savastano and Nick Crawford.

"We put some hits together and they made a few mistakes," said Sparacio. "We just capitalized."

The Panthers will now take on the Nassau County Class B Champions, Oyster Bay, today at Farmingdale State College at 4:00pm. After making an exit in the same game last year, Sparacio said his team is ready to take the championship.

"The boys are pumped up for this and ready to go," he said. "They've been waiting for this since last year's loss at the end of the season. They made it back and they are just ready to go."