CfAR Team Is In The Driver’s Seat
The team without a sponsor but with a logo, CfAR, sprayed sand in the defending champions’ faces in the first two games of the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league’s best-of-five final.
Ray Wojtusiak’s team defeated Schenck Fuels 22-17 in game one on July 25 and made it 2-0 with an 18-13 win at the Terry King ball field Monday night. Game three was to have been contested last night. A win by the Fuelmen in that one would have extended the series to Monday inasmuch as the Travis King memorial tournament is at Terry King through the weekend. CfAR, last year’s runner-up to Schenck’s under the Stephen Hand’s Equipment banner, was, of course, hoping for a sweep.
As for the women, three playoff games were to have been played Tuesday — two of them involving the odds-on favorite, Bostwick’s, and the third a matchup of the third and fourth seeds, Groundworks Landscaping and the P.B.A.
Rich Schneider, the leagues’ spokesman, said if Bostwick’s defeated Grazina Orthodontics and Men at Work, the top seed, which is seeking an unprecedented seventh straight playoff championship, would advance to a best-of-three final with whichever team emerges from the Groundworks-P.B.A. series. Groundworks won the first game. Should P.B.A. have won Tuesday, the deciding game will be played next Tuesday. Otherwise, the best-of-three final will begin that night.
It was all CfAR throughout the first three and a half innings of Monday’s game, thanks largely to Joe Sullivan’s three-run homer and Alex Tekulsky’s solo shot in the first inning and a three-run homer by Chris Pfund and a solo shot by Nick Jarboe in the third.
Trailing 10-0 going into the bottom of the third, Doug Dickson, Schenck’s veteran pitcher, got his team on the board with a run-scoring triple to right-center field, but CfAR added four more runs in the top of the fourth, two of them the result of another home run by Pfund.
Schenck’s made it 14-4 in the bottom half, a double by Andy Tuthill accounting for one run, a sacrifice fly by Brendan Fennell driving in another, and a base hit by Beau Lawler plating the third.
Going into the bottom of the sixth, the Fuelmen had yet to deliver, trailing as they were by 15-5. Adam Gledhill, the number-three hitter, led it off with a single, Vinnie Alversa followed with one of his own, and Tuthill drew a walk to load the bases for Fennell, whose sac fly to Pfund in right field made it 15-6.
With runners at the corners, Lawler, Garret King, and Chris O’Connor, who reached first safely on a throwing error by CfAR’s shortstop, Tekulsky, were credited with successive r.b.i. Alex Dalene then hit into a force play at second that allowed the Fuelmen’s 10th run to score, and after Dickson singled with the count 0-2, Ethan King, the leadoff hitter, poled a three-run homer over the left-field fence for 15-13. Finally, the battle had been joined.
Wojtusiak, who hits 10th in CfAR’s lineup, was ruled out at first on a bang-bang play that led off the top of the seventh. An error by Gledhill at short allowed Diego Palomo to reach first base safely, and after Tommy Thorsen drove a long single to the fence in center, Palomo moved up to third when the throw from the outfield got by the catcher, Alversa. Sullivan drove Palomo in with a single, and after Bill Collins, the cleanup hitter, lined out to Lawler at third, Tekulsky singled home Sullivan, ripping the ball by the outstretched Fennell down the right-field line. Tekulsky’s r.b.i. made it 17-13, and Andrew Foglia made it 18-13, singling with the count full. A lineout by Pfund to Frank Quevedo, Schenck’s left fielder, ended the inning.
The Fuelmen had their third, fourth, and fifth hitters due up in the bottom of the seventh — Gledhill, Alversa, and Tuthill. Gledhill led off with a single between third and short. Alversa forced him at second, however. Tuthill then doubled to the center-field fence, putting runners at second and third for Fennell, but, with the count 1-1, Fennell grounded out to Thorsen at first as the runners held. That brought up Lawler, who had two r.b.i. earlier, but Rob Nicoletti, the winning pitcher, induced him to loft a high fly ball to left that Palomo squeezed for the final out.