Crowd tells story as Spartans fall

The instant the umpire raised his right hand to signal the final out of Valley Stream North’s 9-8 extra-inning loss to Seaford in the first round of the Nassau Class A baseball playoffs last Saturday, a hush fell over the diamond. It was a telling silence, as the crowd had told the story of this ballgame all afternoon.

The fans cheered exuberantly when the Spartans took an early 5-0 lead, then continued to shout encouragement when they struggled to hold that lead. By the fifth inning the score was tied at 5. In the sixth, Seaford surged ahead 7-5. Still, the crowd was behind its team, and a great roar went up when Anthony Martelli’s RBI single scored Greg Garcia and tied the game at 7 apiece in the bottom of the sixth. 

There were more cheers for Martelli when he made the play that might have saved the Spartans in the top of the eighth. With runners on second and third and one out, the infield playing in, Martelli made a diving stop of a ball in the hole and then fired to get the lead runner at the plate. However, with two outs and the bases loaded, Seaford got the big hit it needed and took a 9-7 lead.

The Spartans had one more chance, and now the entire park was alive, the crowd coaxing its team toward one more comeback, its second rally from two runs down in the span of three innings. The crowd would not go quietly, and neither would the Spartans. A run was in, the tying run on third and the winning run was on second with two out. And then in a moment – the time it takes a pitched ball to travel 60 feet and six inches – silence. Even the umpire’s call was soundless.

“There were a lot of ups and downs,” Valley Stream North coach Phil Sanfilippo said. “We showed a lot of heart, coming back the way we did, but things just didn’t break our way today.”

After the final out and the handshakes, Sanfilippo met with his team for a long while on the pitchers mound. What he said was not audible, but players could be seen patting each other on the back. The crowd looked on quietly.

“That was a tough one,” said a female fan wearing a Valley Stream North T-shirt, before adding, “Great game, though.”

When Sanfilippo and his team broke, the crowd let itself be heard one last time, with a sustained applause.

The Spartans finished in second place in Conference A-IV with an 11-9 record. They’d beaten Seaford 6-1 on the season’s final day to capture the No. 11 seed and home-field advantage in the first round. Glen Carey earned a complete-game victory as Martelli went 2-for-3 with a homerun. They’d dropped the two previous games to Seaford and ended up playing the same team four straight times to conclude the season.