Baseball: Yorktown Topples Mahopac

Yorktown pitcher Steve Nardelli allowed two first-inning runs but didn't give up any after that in the Saturday, August 7, afternoon contest against visiting Mahopac in the 18-and-under division of the Westchester Putnam Baseball Association.

"I knew I didn't have it today, so I decided to change up my pitching style," Nardelli said. "I tried to hit my spots more and lay off the speed. I threw my curve ball more; I threw off-balance. I just mixed it up more."

Nardelli's complete-game performance helped Yorktown (13-6-1) in its 6-2 triumph against Mahopac in its regular-season finale. Yorktown will compete in the WPBA playoffs beginning this week.

Brian Rooney, filling in for Yorktown coach Sean Kennedy, was very impressed with Nardelli's effort.

"Steve's a bulldog," Rooney said. "You know from him, you are going to get 100 percent effort every time out. He squeezed his fastball in the beginning; we went out and talked to him. We told him to get a feel for your other pitches, throw your changeup, throw your curveball and then come back to your fastball. He's got more than one pitch that he can throw. When he does that, he's successful. He changed speeds, then he came back to his fastball and it worked."

Things really started to click for Yorktown when right fielder Steve Kultzow caught a fly ball and then threw home to complete a double play to end Mahopac's first-inning rally.

"It was huge," Nardelli said. "It was a big turnaround for us. We needed that double play to get out of there."

Yorktown cut Mahopac's lead in half when Anthony Bambach scored on Joe Frederick's groundout to short in the bottom of the first. It took the lead in the third inning on a two-run single by Mike Moskowitz and added an extra run on an RBI triple by Matt D'Alesio.

"We had a couple of big hits in that inning," Rooney said. "It was our second time through the order. We had seen him, their pitcher, early in the year, and one time through the order we saw that this guy depended on his fastball a lot and we had our kids lean back on that. Mike had a big key two-out hit, a single to right field. That was big. Mike's bat has been really hot. He has come along late in the year."

Yorktown tacked on two insurance runs in the fifth on an RBI single by Chris Mosca and RBI double from Moskowitz. Rooney said that those two runs were huge because they knew Mahopac wasn't going to quit.

"Some of our kids here have been playing Mahopac for seven, eight, nine years," Rooney said. "They know that Mahopac doesn't give up. They know they don't roll over. They got a bad hand dealt to them today, they had to play another game this morning so this is their second game of the day. They are only playing with nine kids. They were fighting until the end, they put a couple of guys on base in the last inning."

Keeping Mahopac's guys off base with great defensive plays was Yorktown catcher Brendan Ahearn.

"Brendan, he's caught before but that's the first time he's caught for us this year, believe it or not," Rooney said. "He got in front of everything. He did a fantastic job. Picking that kid off second in the top of the sixth was a big play. If he doesn't do that, it could have been a big rally for them."