Jim Nicoletti, who, along with his players on East Hampton High School's county small schools 1995 championship baseball team, is to be inducted into the school's Hall of Fame the morning of Saturday, Oct. 19, wants all who played baseball here from the 1950s through the present to attend a Bonac Baseball Through the Ages gathering to relive "the glory days" at the Clubhouse in Wainscott the night before homecoming at 7.
"Anyone who played for Fran Kiernan, Carl Johanson, Jack Lillie, Bob Koppelman, Bob Budd, David MacGarva, me, and Ed Bahns, and anyone who has played or is playing for Vinny Alversa and Henry Meyer is welcome to attend, as well as their wives, significant others, parents, and siblings," the former longtime coach, who now lives in Bradenton, Fla., said in an email this week.
Hugh King (1950s), Dick Baker (1960s), Jim Brooks (1960s), Rob Nicoletti (1970s), and Mike Sarlo (1980s) are helping Nicoletti (1960s) get the word out.
The 1995 team, on which Alversa, Meyer, Guy Ficeto, Denis Dunn, Jake Katz, Brendan Fennell, Tom McGintee, Matt Fromm, Steve Puglia, Alex Walter Jr., R.J. Etzel, Robbie Peters, Keith Corso, and Troy LaMonda played, won the school's second county small schools title in a row. (The 1994 team, on which Ross Gload, a former Major Leaguer, played, is already up on the wall.)
Ficeto, who led the county in strikeouts, and Dunn, who was fourth in that category, generally mowed down the opposition during the course of the '95 season, and they and their teammates hit throughout the lineup. The '95 team finished the league campaign at 16-2 (18-3 over all), and beat Half Hollow Hills West, Islip, Kings Park, and Hampton Bays on the way to the county small schools championship.
Nicoletti, whose assistant was Alex Walter Sr., told his charges as they prepared for the county Class B title game with Kings Park that he'd dreamed the night before that they'd won 11-0. They won 12-0 as it turned out. The Bonackers trounced Hampton Bays 14-1 to win the county small schools championship.
At one point that spring East Hampton could boast of four .400 hitters — Alversa, Fennell, Meyer, and Ficeto — and of one, McGintee, who was batting .377.
Nicoletti's team had won 16 straight games in the regular season before Center Moriches broke the streak with a 4-0 win.
Only Meyer, the catcher, the county's Golden Glove winner who was renamed to the all-county team that year, and Katz, the second baseman, who drove in the run that clinched the league title, had played on the county small schools championship team in '94.
Ficeto, League VII's most valuable player, was also an all-county pick, and Alversa was all-league.
As was the case in '94, the '95 team did not get off the Island in the state tournament, losing to Division Avenue High School of Levittown in the Long Island Class B championship game, but Nicoletti reminded the players that it had been "a great year," and reminded them that "winning two county small schools championships in a row was no mean feat."
"This is the 30th anniversary of that 1995 team, and the 40th anniversary of the 1985 team that traveled to Cooperstown and played on Doubleday Field," Nicoletti said in his email, adding that "that team also won a county Class C championship. We'll have a moment of silence in memory of the recently deceased captain and catcher of that '85 team, Rick Spero."
