Friday, October 2, 2026
After a heartbreaking loss to start its best-of-three championship baseball series with Farmingdale, Massapequa went on to dominate the final two games and re-claim bragging rights between the crosstown rivals.
Jack Scannapieco tossed five scoreless innings and junior third baseman Mikey Smar had a clutch five RBIs in three at-bats with the bases loaded as the second-seeded Chiefs (18-8) knocked the top-seeded Dalers (19-5-1) off their Nassau Class AAA throne with a winner-take-all 12-0 triumph at Farmingdale State College on Sunday.
The victory capped off an historic weekend for Massapequa after the softball team swept 2024 titlist Oceanside two days earlier to reclaim its county championship. The baseball team won its second Nassau title in three seasons and 18th in program history and will return to Farmingdale this Saturday night to face either Connetquot or Sachem North for the Long Island title.
“It feels wonderful,” Chiefs coach Tom Sheedy said. “With all the work, this is always where we want to be, competing for a county championship.”
The Chiefs scored in the top of the first inning on three walks sandwiched around a hit by pitch. In the second, Caiden Erker drove in fellow junior John Neary with a wind-blown double that fell into shallow right center and came around to score the team’s fourth run when Farmingdale committed a throwing error while senior Jason Romance was legging out an infield hit.
Massapequa blew the game open in the fourth. Vincenzo Della Porta led off with a full-count walk, was sacrificed to second by Neary, and advanced to third on Erker’s single to center. After Romance fouled out to the catcher for the second out, Erker stole second, prompting Farmingdale coach Frank Tassielli to intentionally walk senior Thomas Harding to load the bases for Smar.
Smar made the Dalers pay by lining another single to center that scored Della Porta and Erker to make it 5-0. He came up with the bags full again in the fifth and drilled a two-run double to right to increase the lead to nine and plated his fifth run on a fielder’s choice during his third bases-loaded chance in the seventh.
“It was really all mental today,” Smar said. “I feel like I understood the circumstances. I took my opportunity and I just ran with it.”
The Chiefs had six of their 14 hits in the final inning, including one by Jack Parkes, a legally blind senior who sent the Massapequa portion of the crowd into a frenzy after he singled up the middle.
The runs were more than enough for Scannapieco, who yielded just four hits. Two of the Daler hits came from Anthony Mancuso and James Sebber to start the third, but the junior hurler retired the next three batters on a flyout and two infield popups to escape the jam.
“I was just throwing strikes and getting ground balls,” Scannapieco said. “I know my team is going to back me up.”
The defense was stellar behind Scannapieco, including a play where shortstop Neary went out to shallow left and dove over sliding left fielder Christian George to snag Justin Ortiz’s fly ball to end the second inning.
A day after a painful 1-0 loss in the series opener — on a walk-off balk — Massapequa came out swinging last Friday afternoon to force the deciding Game 3.
The Chiefs scored five times in the bottom of the first and added three more runs in the second, including one courtesy of Romance’s homer over the fence in left, on the way to a 10-4 victory.
“They walked me three times in Game 1 and I walked in my first at-bat today, so I was just looking for a pitch in the zone I could drive,” Romance said. “I think I fouled off four or five pitches and kept battling and finally got a hold of one.”
Harding, who pitched a gem in the series opener along with Farmingdale’s Colin Horowitz, Smar and Anthony Conza (two) also drove in runs in the first-inning explosion. Della Porta had a two-run single in the second to make it 8-0.
The Dalers cut the lead in half with a pair of runs in the fourth on a long homer by senior Eli Sierra and another pair in the fifth on a run-scoring double by junior Ive Mills and a sac fly from senior Angel Cartagena.
“Resiliency,” Sheedy said. “We’ve used that word a lot this season.”
