Wantagh brings home state baseball title

Wantagh’s Jimmy Joyce was eyeing a hitter’s pitch when he stepped to the plate in extra innings of last Saturday’s New York State Class A baseball title game, with two outs and a tie score with Buffalo-area power Williamsville East.

After getting ahead on a two-balls-and-no-strikes count, Joyce, a junior, lifted a deep fly ball that carried over the left field fence for what proved to be a championship home run. The Warriors won it, 6-5.

Senior pitcher Bobby Hegarty tossed three outs in the home half of the ninth inning to clinch Wantagh’s second-ever state title and first since 1998. Joyce’s clutch homer capped a comeback from an early 5-1 deficit in the Warriors’ second game of a memorable day in Endicott, N.Y.

“I took a home run swing because there’s nothing to lose on a 2-0 pitch, and I connected,” said Joyce, a pitcher himself, who tossed a one-hitter in a 2-1 semifinal win against previously unbeaten Queensbury last Saturday morning. “I was looking for my pitch.”

Said Wantagh coach Keith Sachs, “Jimmy has come through in a million different ways. There is nothing he can’t do.”

Joyce helped set the stage for heroics when, with Wantagh trailing 5-4, he singled to lead off the fifth inning. He later scored on a sacrifice fly to left off the bat of Anthony Fontana.

The Warriors began the rally with three runs in the fourth inning. Mike Derham delivered a bunt RBI hit that scored Joe Murphy. Derham later scored on a wild pitch to bring Wantagh within a run. Trevor Fagan led off the inning with a double.

The rally was made possible by a 120-pitch complete-game effort by Hegarty. After Williamsville East scored five runs in the first two innings, Hegarty allowed only three hits the rest of the game.

“It was my last high school game, so I wasn’t saving myself for anything,” said Hegarty, who will pitch at the University of Scranton next year. “It was an amazing feeling.”

The championship capped a memorable playoff run that began with Wantagh’s inclusion in the same four-team bracket as state title contender Division Avenue in the first round of the Nassau County Class A playoffs. Wantagh conquered the tough bracket before edging North Shore in the semifinals and Kennedy in the county finals. The Warriors then reached their first state tournament since 2010 with a 3-1 win over Mount Sinai in the Long Island title game on June 4.

“Most people saw our bracket as a death sentence,” Sachs said. “We didn’t see it that way.”

He credited much of this season’s success to his assistant coach, Mike Ninivaggi, who has been by his side since 2000. Ninivaggi was not in the dugout for Wantagh’s last state championship in 1998, making this year’s that much more rewarding.

“It was great to experience this with him, who means so much to the program,” Sachs said of Ninivaggi, who helps run the summer Warrior baseball camp. “He’s irreplaceable.”

Sachs has fond memories of his 1998 state title team, which went 29-1, but said he has greater appreciation 18 years later for how hard it is to win a state championship. He added that the closeness of the team throughout the season made the celebration and the long bus ride that followed that much more meaningful.

“The experience with these kids has been remarkable,” Sachs said. “They were a great group from the beginning.”