The Locked In Baseball Expos, joined by their fathers, captured the Father’s Day Classic 13U championship and their third Diamond Nation title of the year.
By Rich Bevensee
Coaches and players from Locked In Baseball cannot emphasize enough how chemistry plays an incredibly vital role in winning ballgames, and they point to the 13U team as Exhibit-A.
Most, if not all, of the players from Expos 13U Blue have played together since they joined the Locked In program as 10-year olds. To them, chemistry is not a buzzword. It’s a crucial ingredient.
“We have a lot of great players, but chemistry is definitely important,” Dean Olivo said. “It helps us play as a team because we want to play hard for each other.”
The Expos used that motivation to whip through four games and claim their third Diamond Nation tournament championship of the year.
In the final, the Expos rode three stellar relief innings from Nico Dilusto and knocked off the second-seeded New York Longhorns, 6-4, in six innings in the 13U final of the Father’s Day Classic on Sunday at ‘The Nation.’
Last month the Expos won a pair of Diamond Nation titles, Spring Swing and Spring Fever.
After entering the Father’s Day final having outscored three opponents, 29-4, and then surviving its toughest test of the weekend, Locked In secured its fourth straight win and improved to 21-5 over the last two months.
“This team has been together since they were 9 years old for the most part, and it’s arguably the best team in our program because they matured together,” said Expos coach Chris Bagley, co-owner of the Locked In program. Bagley, a former Independent league player, has also coached at Fairleight Dickinson and Seton Hall University.
“For us at Locked In, our retention is phenomenal, so it’s very rare that we have a team that doesn’t have 90 percent of the players returning. These guys have matured together. It’s a team that enjoys being around each other and enjoys playing together. They’ve figured out how to pick each other up every single time.”
Olivo batted .417 for the tournament with two triples, four RBI and two runs scored and was named Most Valuable Player. In the final, he went 2-for-3 with a triple and a run scored.
Olivo had a hand in three of his team’s six runs. In the first inning he singled up the middle which led to an outfield error and two runs scored. In the third he tripled to left center and scored on a Bruno Venturelli single.
Expos slugger Dean Olivo, with his dad Tom, was named the 13U Father’s Day Classic MVP.
“I had a couple great knocks but it was a team effort,” Olivo said. “ I do what I gotta’ do to help the team win.”
“With the exception of his last at bat (a strikeout) it seemed he was crushing the ball, taking good swings and taking a line drive approach,” Bagley said.
The man in the spotlight on Sunday was Dilusto, who took over on the mound in relief of Henry Cox and pitched three shutout innings, allowing just two hits and one walk. He struck out two and stranded runners in scoring position in all three innings.
The biggest at bat of the game occurred in the top of the sixth. The Longhorns had battled back from a four-run deficit and trailed the Expos, 5-4, when the Expos’ Matt Carman came to bat with two outs. He lined a 1-2 pitch into center to drive in Bruno Venturelli with an insurance run, denying the Longhorns a chance to play for a single run to tie in their final at bat.
In the bottom of the sixth and with no time left on the game clock, the Longhorns still managed to bring the tying run to the plate twice. Lucas Alonso doubled with one out, but Dilusto induced a groundout and a flyout to secure the team’s third Diamond Nation title of the year.
“I was looking to pitch to contact,” Dilusto said. “I trust my defense a lot so I let them hit the ball and see what happens. I like the pressure. I thrive on pressure. I get a little bit nervous when I start pitching but I settle down.”
The Expos seized a 4-0 lead after their first two at bats. Aidan Finizio scored on one outfield error following a Cox single, and two more runs scored on an outfield error following an Olivo single for a 3-0 lead.
The Expos made it 4-0 in the second when Dilusto tripled to right center and scored on a passed ball two pitches later.
The Longhorns, anxious to keep their summer winning streak alive after winning their 10th straight in a 7-0 victory over Blue Sox Baseball-Carolina in the semifinals, gradually fought back.
Jackson Christ rifled a single up the middle in the bottom of the second to score two runs, cutting his team’s deficit in half.
The Expos picked up a single run in the third on a Venturelli RBI single, but the Longhorns crept to within a run at 5-4 in the bottom half on a Riley Huguenin RBI single and a Jeff Coyle sacrifice fly.
“In the third inning we were down by four,” Coyle said, “and I said to them, ‘Listen, you have two choices in life. You can either feel bad for yourself and give up, or go back out there and chip away.’ I asked them three times, are you defeated yet, and they said no and each time I said it they got a little louder.”
Nonetheless, the Longhorns, who hail from Massapequa, Long Island, saw their 10-game winning streak come to an end, but Coyle was far from disappointed in the team’s progress.
In making the transition to a 90-foot diamond, the Longhorns went 7-7 last fall and 8-8 this spring. Coyle explained why the Longhorns were able to go on a 10-0 run after playing .500 ball.
“In the fall we played up a little bit,” Coyle said. “We played in a middle school division so we saw some older competition, and so that’s where we felt ourselves out, facing some bigger arms and stronger guys. Now we’re playing at our age and we’re seeing a good formula with the arms we have and the bats are there. We’re never behind and when we are we chip away.”
“That was a great team on the other end,” Bagley said. “They did everything they could but we got a couple lucky hits and that’s the way the ball bounces.”