Facing a win-or-go-home situation at the Pantigo fields on July 6, East Hampton’s 9-and-10-year-old Little League softball all-stars outlasted their North Shore peers 22-15, avenging a 12-2 loss to that team earlier in the week and setting up a third meeting, for the District 36 championship, at North Shore.
In the two-and-a-half-hour agon, which lasted until the sun went down at 8:20, the young Bonackers, who were cheered on and at times implored by some in the sizable hometown crowd, batted around in three of the six innings. Every play, it seemed at times, was an adventure.
Presumably, it was the last go at Pantigo for the East Hampton Little League organization. The four-plus acres there are to house by the end of 2023 a Stony Brook Medicine emergency building. Henceforth, Little League games are to be played at the town’s recreation area on Stephen Hand’s Path.
Merritt Bistrian-Emptage’s double to left got the locals off to an exciting start in the top of the first inning, by the end of which the Bonackers, thanks to five walks, a run-scoring single by Laila Sanders, an infield error, and a hit batsman, had taken a 6-0 lead.
North Shore, which had won a pregame coin toss that determined the “home” team, scored one run in the bottom of the first as the result of a leadoff walk and two subsequent infield errors, but Ella Field, East Hampton’s plucky starter, got out of the inning without any further damage, and set the opposition down without a run in the second.
Jeff Tupper’s crew, which had added a run to its total in the top half of the second, went up 9-1 in the third. Again, Bistrian-Emptage led it off, singling up the middle, though soon after she was doubled up by North Shore’s first baseman, who had snagged a line drive hit her way by Callie Amicucci. No matter: The third hitter, Maeve Tupper, singled, and was then driven in by the cleanup hitter Evelyn Royal’s electrifying triple over the left fielder’s head. Royal came home when the fourth straight ball pitched to Allison Rade got by the catcher.
But no lead apparently is safe in 9-10 softball. A raft of substitutions was made by North Shore’s coach when the bottom of the third began, and a raft of runs subsequently crossed the plate. It was 9-4, with one out and runners at first and second base, when Field, who moved to shortstop, gave way to Rade.
Rade struck out the first batter she saw, but walked the next, loading the bases, and before she got the last out, North Shore had tied the game at 9-9.
East Hampton loaded the bases with two out in the top of the fourth, and retook the lead, at 10-9, on a wild pitch to Royal, who then flied out to center field.
Again North Shore tied the score in its half, but, with one out, Kiana Dias, the left fielder, gathered in — somewhat to her surprise — a fly ball hit over short and, without hesitation, threw to second to double up the runner there, a huge double play that took North Shore out of the inning.
With Cameron Tuthill, Cameron Dawson, Bistrian-Emptage, Tupper, and Royal getting r.b.i.s, the Bonackers retook the lead, at 17-10, in the top of the fifth.
Rade got out of North Shore’s fifth unscathed, and she and her teammates tacked on five more runs in the top of the sixth — doubles by Dawson and Royal, and a single by Rade accounting for three of them — treating East Hampton to an apparently insurmountable 22-10 lead.
And indeed it proved to be so, though the anxiety wasn’t over until it was over. Rade closed out the 22-15 win with a full-count strikeout that sent everyone on Bonac’s side — players, coaches, parents, siblings, friends, and grandparents — home happy in the gloaming.
