Brick American Seniors capture a district title
Set sights on sectional title
BY WAYNE WITKOWSKI
Staff Writer

Justin Short, Brendan Melody and Justin Gordon, who played on the Brick American Junior All-Stars that won the state championship two years ago, are looking to do the same thing for the Brick American Seniors after helping that team to the District 18 championship on Sunday.

Melody supplied some strong pitching and a run-scoring hit, and Gordon cranked out four hits and made a great over-the-shoulder catch of a sinking line drive at second base, as Brick American clinched the district title with a 7-2 victory over Toms River. Short also had a solid tournament as his efforts helped Brick American win its first title since 2004 when it completed a three-peat.

"Those three are the core group, the older kids on the team," said manager Joe Baatz. "They know what each other is doing all the time - very solid players."

"This team had a tremendous amount of heart," said Short. "The leaders stepped up. It feels great, a great group of kids. We had a lot of pitching, and that came up big."

"It's actually pretty cool, and I enjoyed going to the state championship. I'd do anything to get back," said Melody.

To get to the title game, Brick American had to come out of the losers' bracket when it fell to Toms River, 9-1, early last week. It bounced back on Wednesday with an 11-8 victory over Holbrook and then had to beat Toms River, unbeaten in the double-elimination tournament, on back-to-back days. Brick American did just that with a 7-3 victory on Saturday to set up Sunday's showdown.

Brick American begins section play tomorrow night at Old Bridge Little League.

"It's unbelievable; these guys never gave up," said Baatz. "This is a young team and they didn't think of themselves as being a year behind the other teams. They kept plugging away."

What happened, said Baatz, is that "everybody hit well" in the rematch with Toms River.

"On Saturday, we faced the same pitcher who shut us down, but we had a different approach," Baatz said. "He had a curve and fastball [that] kept us off-balance and frustrated because we were swinging at the first and second pitches. This time, we thought that if he throws strikes, fine, but we weren't going to help him. We'd take some pitches and then when he'd have to come in with the fastball, we knew we could hit it."

"We really keyed on [hitting] the fastball," said Short.

The strategy worked on Saturday as Brick American led all the way, while Short allowed three runs on two hits over the five innings he pitched.

Melody threw a hitless inning of relief. Phil Sigona and Glenn McGinniss each batted in two runs and Short drove in another while each had two hits.

On Sunday, Brick American added to the strategy. It realized it could run on the catcher and stole nine bases. It took a 3-0 lead after two innings. Toms River came back with two runs over the next two innings before Brick American broke the game open with three runs home in the fourth inning for a 6-2 lead. All three runs came with two outs.

Gordon launched the rally with a hit and stole second. He rode home on a single by Melody, who stole second. Phil Sigona ripped a run-scoring single and stole second and rode home on Nelson's single, one of three hits for him in the game.

An inning later, Gordon delivered Jason Promisel with the insurance run with a base hit.

"Promisel has hit well for us the last three games," said Baatz.

Melody allowed five hits over four innings, while Lou Raccuelia pitched three scoreless innings of two-hit relief.

"It was defense; we had a lot better defense than the first time we played them," said Short.

Melody, Gordon and Joe Murray drove in the first three runs with singles.

Early in the week, Brick American beat Holbrook on a walk-off three-run home run by Melody to left-center field in the fifth inning. With a rain delay and an injured Holbrook player making the game run up to the curfew, the umpires announced that the fifth inning would be the last, and Melody blasted his third home run of the tournament.

"There was no doubt when it left his bat," said Baatz.

"We're a very young team and the whole thing is that we're power hitters and we came in with people thinking we were going to play small ball because we're young, and we came out and fooled everybody," said Melody.

The team actually was losing, 8-6, going into the inning when it rallied for five runs, the first two riding home on Tom Devalle's two-run single.

11-year-olds

Brick American raised its record to 2-3 after beating Beechwood, 15-3, and needs to win its final game of pool play on Tuesday to advance out of pool play. Key hits by Mike D'Amato, Tyler Green and Joe Pipher and pitching by Brian Melia carried Brick American on Sunday. Brick American also dropped a 7-5 verdict last week to Toms River East American, which rallied in the last inning.

10-year-olds

Brick American lost to Holbrook, 9-0, on Sunday to fall to 2-1 in pool play and needed a victory on Tuesday night at home against Toms River American to advance. Earlier last week, the Americans routed Barnegat, 12-2, as Nick Smith and Pete Papcun belted three-run homers. Smith also lined two doubles and a single and had four RBIs. Anthony Assante got the mound win.