In front of a record number of parents and well-wishers, almost three dozen budding Bambinos from the Downtown Little Leagues’s Majors and Minors Divisions took their mightiest cuts in the 3rd Annual Memorial Day Weekend Home Run Derby at the BPC Ballfields on Friday, May 28.
“This is a fun event which has grown and grown,” said Bill Martino, founder and organizer of the event for DLL.
A Friday evening crowd was treated to a down-to-the-wire finish and a “Minor” upset, when Brandon Mirabella, a rising star in DLL’s Minors Division, and one of 14 Minors’ players to enter this year’s derby, slugged his way to victory in a stirring walk-off fashion.
Hitting off a pitching machine, nine young men made it through the initial round, sending moon shots over the temporary fences at the ballfields, which stand about one hundred and eighty feet away to dead center field. Later rounds reduced the field to a final four of Mirabella plus Clyde Huibregste, Brody Sharoff, and Dario Flores of the Majors Division. The championship showdown was an epic marathon as Flores and Mirabella matched each other shot for shot through five full rounds of sudden death, before Mirabella took the 2010 title in the end.
