After going through the regular season schedule like the proverbial warm knife through soft butter, the Greenwich Village Reds had a difficult go in the playoffs, but ultimately prevailed to win the season-ending Inter-League Playoffs in the Seniors Division.
In their semifinal game the Reds faced a scrappy Devil Rays team from the Downtown Little League. After spotting the Devil Rays a four-run lead in the top of the first, the Reds began to chip away at the lead by playing station-to-station ball while reliever Will Jacobsen held the Rays in check. However, due to a combination of atypical fielding miscues by the Reds and timely hitting by the Rays, the Reds came up in the home half of the last inning trailing by a score of 9 to 5. The Reds rose to the challenge by generating a four-run rally to put the game into extra innings.
Despite this setback, the Rays continued their tenacious play. The Reds brought in Alex Burwasser to hold the Rays at bay while the Devil Rays countered by bringing Juan Toma in relief. Finally, the game ended two innings later with the Reds’ James Schonzeit driving in a run to give the Reds a hard-fought 10-9 victory.
In the other semifinal game, the second-seeded G.V. Blues played host to the Cardinals from the Peter Stuyvesant Little League. The drama in this contest was driven by the superb pitching performances by both starters. The Blues’ Dan Dinella had a no-hitter going for the first six innings while his Cardinals counterpart was keeping the Blues under control. The Cardinals finally broke Dinella’s spell in their last at-bats by getting two hits, but Blues outfielder Jake Tobin preserved Dinella’s shutout by throwing a strike to home to nail the Cardinals runner as he was trying to score on the second hit of the inning. Max Marinoff drove in two of the three Blues runs.
The Championship Game between the Blues and the Reds did not lack for excitement or scoring as both teams tested each other’s determination with comebacks and lead changes. The Blues jumped out to a two-run lead in the top of the first but the Reds countered with three runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning and three more in the second to take a 6-2 lead. The Blues were undeterred and by the end of four innings the score was knotted at 6-6. The Reds continued to play opportunistic baseball and ultimately won the game by a final score of 13-9. Pitcher Schonzeit went the distance for the Reds while Burwasser and Paul Lariviere led the Reds’ well-rounded offense.
