Shrub Oak Falls In Tournament Opener

Shrub Oak Post 1080 showed it could produce offensively in its American Legion New York State 17 and under baseball tournament opener at Peekskill Stadium Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately its defense let it down.

Seven unearned runs led to a 9-8 loss to Middletown. Shrub Oak (20-7) will now play Stamford in a must win loser's-bracket contest at noon on Thursday.

If Shrub Oak is victorious, it will advance to the 5 p.m. contest, also on Thursday.

Doing everything he could to help Shrub Oak garner the win was Chris Conklin, who was 3 for 4 with 4 RBIs. Shrub Oak coach Sal Gallinelli said that Conklin has been consistent all year.

Gallinelli said that when Shrub Oak has needed a hit in any tournament it has been in, he has produced it.

One shining example of that was in the bottom of the seventh inning with Shrub Oak trailing 9-6.

Nick Mariani, who went 2 for 4 with an RBI, led off the frame with a single and advanced to second on a one out walk by Chris Romano. Conklin then came through with a clutch two-out double, that drove in two runs and pulled Shrub Oak to within one.

“Chris is a dynamo,” Gallinelli said. “All year, he’s been the go to guy. The kid that I want up in that situation is always him. He got tired, I would say 20 games in. He had a little rest the last week and a half. He’s normally our two hitter but we dropped him to eighth so he would see more fastballs and he’s crushed them.”

On the mound for Shrub Oak, Mike Nash had a tough luck performance being that virtually of all Middletown’s runs were unearned.

“The kid is a bull,” Gallinelli said. “He has won for us all year, he’s 7-1. That’s the type of player he is. I had to pull him out (in the sixth) because I wanted to save him because now we have to come out of the loser's bracket. So hopefully he will be able to come back and give us another game.”

It looked like that Shrub Oak wouldn’t have to play in the loser’s bracket when it scored four runs in the fifth to take a 6-3 lead.  

“We finally started hitting,” Gallinelli said. “We had a little BP yesterday and got some good situational hitting. We stranded six or seven runners early in the game. My hitters finally produced when need be. I am not surprised. This team won 20 games all year. We won a lot of tournaments.”

Shrub Oak will play Stamford tomorrow at noon at Peekskill Stadium.

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