Sleepy Hollow Guts Out 3-2 Win Over Patterson

A full deck couldn't beat a pair of aces Tuesday night.

Sleepy Hollow aces Joey Good Jr. and CoCo Paulino kept Patterson's full deck of bats freezing cold, en route to a down to the wire 3-2 league win at Sleepy Hollow High School.

Good Jr. and Paulino induced stress-free fly balls, ground outs, and sent batters back to the pine by way of strikeouts.

Their awareness, however, was what helped propel Sleepy to yet another dramatic victory.

Against some noted base thieves, Good Jr. delivered four pickoffs. Good twirled a one-hitter through three innings and Paulino closed the deal by yielding just one run through four innings.

The offensive catalyst was Mikey Martello. The neophyte toted the potent bat, going 2-for-3. He also made his presence felt defensively, snagging a hard-hit ball in right field with the go-ahead run on second. The electrifying play closed the deal for Sleepy, which improves to 11-4 this summer.

Don't look now, but the Horsemen have reeled off five consecutive victories and find themselves chasing a league title that's between Somers and Mahopac.

Assessing the landscape of the league, the road to a title will likely feature stops against those two northern county foes. The club is slated for a date with Somers on Thursday. The Horsemen are bent on avenging a recent 9-7 loss to the Tuskers.

"I think the league is really between three teams," explained assistant coach Richie Doyle.

"That would be us, Mahopac, and Somers. I'm confident that we can beat them. I think having lost to them we now know what it will take to defeat them. As of right now, we're surging. So, if we can stay hot at the plate and our pitchers buckle down I think we will be capable of bringing home a title."

Providing some of that sizzle at the plate was Mike Feeney and Mike Fortugno, both of whom provided timely hits in the low-scoring affair. Feeney and Fortugno have bought into the small ball concept, delivering clutch run-scoring singles into seams in the outfield.

A core that's been playing together since essentially ditching the sand castle (they all learned and absorbed the game at the same parks as young children) has come into fruition. The seeds that have been planted five years ago have really taken root at the grass-roots level.

The Horsemen coaches are hoping that Sleepy's flair for the dramatic will not catch up to them. They've made a living out of closing the door on tight games, adding validity to the claim that they are for real this season.

"These kids just don't get fazed," said Doyle, a 2011 graduate of Sleepy Hollow High School.

"Mike Feeney, Coco Paulino, and Mike Martello have really come on and made a difference. I can't tell you how many games I've left with having lost my voice from yelling. It's fun."

Since defeating upstate LaGrange in a double-header this weekend, Sleepy Hollow has been heating up like the scorching temperatures outside.

Now, there is a major challenge cooking on their front stove. Exacting revenge on a deep Somers squad would ascend them into the league's upper echelon.

The team's high-order commitment to keeping errors at a minimum has paid dividends in recent wins. The Horsemen's pitchers will need to really be chucking seeds to keep a hot hitting team of Somers caliber off balance.