Grossane's Bases Loaded K Preserves Colts Lead in Win Over Mepham

It's the moment every pitcher and hitter lives for.

The score was 6-4 Calhoun yesterday in the bottom of the fifth inning. With runners on second and third, coach Joe Correa opted to bring in sophomore Mike Grossane, who was impressive in his last outing against East Meadow, and the impressiveness continued.

After electing to unintentionally intentional walk Steve Luczaj, Grossane was able to throw a nasty curveball to strike out Tom Pisano to leave the bases loaded. Grossane pumped his fists with excitement, and two days after falling to the Pirates, Calhoun cruised to a 10-6 victory at Mepham High School.

"I am that kind of fiery guy," Grossane said. "I let it all go out there, and that's just who I am."

Calhoun (4-3) would then follow that up with two consecutive two-run innings, the last of which was capped off by a mammoth two-run bomb by Joey Christopher.

Mepham (2-5) did not go quietly, though. Luczaj crushed his second homer of the game to trim the Calhoun lead to just two, but that would be the closest the Pirates would get. Luczaj also started for Mepham, and said he would definitely have liked to do things differently.

"I definitely need to do a better job with keeping the batter off balance," Luczaj said. "I fell in love with my fastball today, and I left it over the middle a few times, and Calhoun did a good job to hit those mistakes."

Calhoun got the scoring started in the bottom of the second when Ryan Kass was able to get a hold of one for a big three-run homer.

"I had two strikes on me," Kass said. "I decided that I was going to swing with all I had, so I figured I would either hit a homer run or strike out." Kass was pleased with the outcome.

The Pirates would not take long to respond as Luczaj hit his first homer of the game, and that trimmed the lead to 3-1, and that's the way the score remained until Calhoun came up in the fourth. After the Colts had two outs and two on, Zack Goldstein played "Mr. Clutch" and singled in a pair, and he had three RBIs on the afternoon.

"The key is to hit the ball hard," Goldstein said. "If you do that, the ball is bound to find a hole."

Although Mepham coach Jim Hughes was impressed with the way his team played as a whole, he knows one area in which they could see improvement.

"They need to work on their psychological toughness," Hughes said. "If the players have a tough at-bat and strike out, they need to forget it. Some of these kids let it linger."

On the other side, Calhoun coach Mike Marino had an interesting thing to say regarding what he would like to see out of his troops.

"Believe it or not, it would be nice to see more hitting," Marino said. "Our pitching was OK today, but we could have had more hits." Calhoun also left 10 runners on base.

Calhoun was playing without their starting third basemen and cleanup hitter, Robbie Rosen, who was away from the team due to a school function in Virginia Beach.

Calhoun returns to action on Monday at 4:30 p.m. at Massapequa, and Mepham will play Monday when they host visiting Freeport at 4:15 p.m.