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Sports

Mepham Takes Advantage of Carey's Shoddy Play in 9-7 Win

Pirates out pitch, out score and out class Seahawks.

Mepham shortstop Mike Spadaro had his game face on before he even stepped between the lines.

"We've faced them [Carey] before of course, last year they beat us in the playoffs, so we'd like to beat them," he said during pregame warmup. "We're not crazy about each other."

Once this heated matchup got going, Spadaro did what the Carey Seahawks could not - he let his bat and glove do the talking.

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After Mepham gave up an early 3-0 lead, Spadaro hit a solo homer to tie the game at four and eventually scored the winning run as Mepham surged ahead in the late innings to secure a 9-7 victory over Carey in Nassau AA varsity boys baseball yesterday afternoon at Mepham High School.

With seven innings worth of bench jockeying leaving even Head Coach Marc Hedquist shaking his head, it's easy to see why Carey is disliked. The Seahawks, who fell to 6-5 with the loss, were unable to back up their incessant jawing with a win, leaving them looking foolish, but hardly humbled.

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"That's just Carey being Carey," said Mepham Head Coach Bill Murphy, shrugging it off with a smirk.

Mepham winning pitcher Steve Luczaj took it a step further.

"It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I don't even try to block it out. I enjoy it." 

That fortitude showed in Luczaj's performance both on the mound and at the plate. Relying on a well-spotted fastball and good off speed stuff, Luczaj easily shrugged off Carey's taunts and nonsense with 6 2/3 innings of grinding, focused pitching. He also helped his own cause tremendously, roping three singles and scoring a run.

Luczaj consistenly stayed ahead of the Carey lineup and was perfectly willing to trust his defense by putting the ball in play all afternoon in scattering five hits, striking out three and allowing the All-County Mepham infield to record eight putouts.

Consecutive misplays by the right side of the Carey defense on swirling pop-ups in the bottom of the fifth inning gave Luczaj and the Pirates a four run cushion at 9-5. In the seventh, Luczaj's off-speed stuff started to flatten out and Carey closed within two at 9-7, but left the tying run on base to end the game.

The Seahawks further hurt themselves by committing three errors that led to two runs in the sixth. Those miscues and the failure to get to the two wind-blown fly balls behind the first base bag were the difference in the ballgame.

As Mepham creeped over the .500 mark to a 6-5 record with the win, Murphy saw the game for exactly what it was - part guts, part luck, part payback.

"That's baseball," Murphy told his team in the post game huddle. "Sometimes the difference is simply taking advantage of opportunities."

Mepham is back on the field at East Meadow on Monday at 4:30 p.m.

 

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