By Rich Bevensee
It wasn’t hard to read the emotion on Denis McLaughlin’s face that he was thrilled – maybe even proud – to be back in a baseball dugout, coaching a club team in a Diamond Nation tournament in Flemington.
Even better, McLaughlin guided the Frozen Ropes Rockies to one of their finest weekends of the summer.
With right-hander Nick Colello navigating through rough waters in the first couple innings and then finding his groove, the second-seeded Rockies used some timely hitting to earn a 7-4 victory over the fourth-seeded PAC Journeymen in the 17U Silver bracket championship game of the Summer Finale tournament on Sunday at ‘The Nation.’
“It’s a great time to win a championship,” Collelo said. “It’s a momentum thing. It gives us momentum into the winter, motivation to get better and work harder.”
The Rockies, which finished 3-1, not only capped their summer season with a title, they sent McLaughlin out a winner in his return to the diamond.
“Honestly it’s been a tremendous joy. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it,” McLaughlin said. “We were down in every single game, all four games, and they showed a lot of heart and I’m excited to be back in the program.”
In the Rockies’ third comeback of the weekend, they trailed PAC, 3-1, in the second inning when No. 10 hitter Nick Blandino slapped an RBI single through the middle and John Gore lined a two-run single into center to give the Rockies the lead for good at 4-3.
Right around the time the Rockies surged ahead, Collelo figured out how to stop the PAC hitters from populating the basepaths.
He gave up two runs in the first inning and managed to escape further damage with the bases loaded. In the second he yielded one more run while stranding two in scoring position.
That was all the offense the Journeymen would scrounge off Collelo. Only two baserunners reached scoring position in his last 3⅓ innings of work.
“I really tried to focus on my offspeeds,” said Collelo, a rising junior at Monroe-Woodbury in Central Valley, N.Y. “I don’t throw the hardest fastball so my offspeeds tend to help me more. I get more popups and rollovers. I started leaning away from the strikeouts to get more outs. It was about more finesse than speed.”
Collelo helped his cause in the third with a two-run single, and leadoff hitter Tristan Santos scored on a wild pitch in the fourth to cap the scoring for the Rockies.
Collelo’s final pitching line was four runs allowed in 5⅓ innings pitched on four hits and six walks with three strikeouts.
It was a fitting end to a memorable weekend for a baseball lifer like McLaughlin, who coaches high school baseball at Warwick Valley in Warwick, N.Y. McLaughlin was a superstar in his time at Warwick Valley before pitching for Old Dominion and getting drafted in the seventh round of the 1994 MLB draft by the Boston Red Sox.
McLaughlin coached in the Frozen Ropes program for nine years before giving up club ball coaching to spend more time with his family.
“He coached my older brother, Salvatore, who said a lot of good things about him,” Collelo said. “He’s a coach at a school in our district so he knew most of the guys and it was easy to get adjusted.”
McLaughlin’s appearance with the Rockies this weekend was his first club ball assignment in more than two years.
“No doubt I miss the lineup card, and just being in the dugout because I enjoy being with the guys, especially when they play hard,” McLaughlin said. “I miss this place (Diamond Nation). It’s the best place around, truly well run.
“I had a couple kids playing ball and there were things in my life I had to square away, but it was all to get back into the dugout and be around the guys and get to the basics of teaching baseball. It felt pretty natural being back. I made a couple mistakes this weekend that I’m going to learn from, but they made it easy for me. No one complained. If I’m going to come back, that’s the team I want to be with.”
Offensively for Frozen Ropes, Tristan Sasse got his team on the board with a first inning RBI double.
For the Journeymen, Ryan DeJoy scored on an outfield error and Brady Colbert had an RBI single in the first inning to give their team a 2-0 lead. Mike Dupray scored on a wild pitch in the second for a 3-1 Journeymen lead.
The Silver bracket semifinals were packed with late-game drama.
The Rockies trailed the third-seeded Armbarn All-Stars, 4-2, going into the bottom of the seventh inning. With the bases loaded and one out, Collelo earned a walk to bring the Rockies within a run, and Tommy Scarpacci did the same to tie the game. With two out, Nick Blandino singled down the left field line to bring the Rockies a championship game berth.
On an adjacent field, Rochester, N.Y.-based PAC (an acronym for Passion, Attitude, Commitment) led 7-4 in the sixth inning before the top-seeded Bucks County Generals loaded the bases with one out. The Journeymen escaped the danger to earn a matchup with the Rockies.