A summer-long baseball odyssey by North Syracuse’s 13-15 All-Star team, which included Baldwinsville standouts Gabe Levanti and Brett Charbonneau, has resulted in the highest honor possible – the championship of the Babe Ruth World Series.
And it was won in dramatic style during the Aug. 27 championship game in Monticello, Ark. Completing a perfect 6-0 run through the tournament, North Syracuse rallied in the seventh and final inning to beat Saginaw Valley, from Michigan, by a score of 7-4.
Not since 2003, when Onondaga took the 16-year-old World Series title, has a Syracuse-area team won a Babe Ruth national championship. Thanks to one big, timely swing from Nick Pilotti, that seven-year drought would end.
Entering the top of the seventh in the final, North Syracuse trailed Saginaw Valley 4-3, just three outs from seeing its three-year quest for a national title fall short one last time.
Prior to this, 10 of the players on North Syracuse had participated in Babe Ruth World Series in 2008 (in Jamestown) and 2009 (in Appleton, Wisc.), and had not won on either of those occasions. North Syracuse was determined not to endure the same sad ending here.
Leading off the seventh, Alex Caruso drew a walk. When Levanti followed with a single, Saginaw Valley took out starting pitcher Luke Scharich, replacing him with A.J. McInnis.
Up stepped Pilotti. With the tying and go-ahead runs on base and nobody out, Pilotti intended to follow traditional baseball strategy and bunt to move Caruso and Levanti into scoring position.
But after a called strike and a foul ball, Pilotti got a chance to swing away. McInnis obliged with a curveball, just what Pilotti was looking for – and he drilled it over the center-field fence for what prove to be a World Series-winning three-run home run.
Now up 6-4, North Syracuse tacked on one more run before Ryan O’Kane returned to the mound, where he had been from the start. Blanking Saginaw in the bottom of the seventh, O’Kane clinched the title.
So ended a diamond classic that was, from the start, a back-and-forth affair.
Saginaw Valley jumped ahead with a pair of runs off O’Kane in the bottom of the first inning, the two runs a result of four clean hits, Grant Bridgewater and Zach Olszewski getting credit for the RBIs.
Fighting back, North Syracuse got a run in the top of the second with Eric Hamilton’s solo home run to cut it to 2-1. An inning later, O’Kane tied it with an RBI triple and Pilotti, in a hint of what was to come, doubled to push North Syracuse in front 3-2.
Saginaw didn’t flinch, though. In the bottom of the fifth, O’Kane, with a runner on, made one more mistake – and Ryan Jankowski took it over the fence for a two-run homer.
Now trailing 4-3, North Syracuse endured a scoreless sixth inning as O’Kane settled down. Overall, he would give up nine hits, recording five strikeouts against a pair of walks, and head coach Dom Caruso never gave a thought to taking O’Kane out, despite the high stakes.
North Syracuse also finished with nine hits, and while the run total was modest compared to what it had done earlier in the tournament, it hardly mattered once Pilotti made his big swing in the seventh inning.
Just to reach the final required a comeback in the Aug. 26 semifinal against Greenville (N.C.). Trailing by two runs, North Syracuse erupted in the bottom of the fourth, which led to an 11-3 victory.
With Dan Brower getting the pitching assignment for the semifinal against Greenville’s Jarrett Ozimek, North Syracuse seized a 1-0 lead in the first inning. But Greenville countered with a three-run outburst in the top of the third to move in front. Two walks, an error and an infield hit produced Greenville’s trio of tallies as Brower labored through 33 pitches.
It was still 3-1 going to the bottom of the fourth when, as it has done so many times this summer, North Syracuse dramatically turned events in its own favor.
Pilotti led off the fourth with a double, and Pat Wright reached base on an error. O’Kane moved both runners by laying down a sacrifice bunt, and Eric Hamilton followed with a two-run double that tied it, 3-3.
Up next, Charbonneau got hit by a pitch, bringing up Joe Budnar, whose single allowed Hamilton to score the go-ahead run. Then Matt DiPaulo beat out an infield hit, loading the bases for Levanti, who drew a walk to make it 5-3.
Now North Syracuse turned to Caruso, whose well-placed single scored two more runs, doubling the margin to 7-3. Pillotti, the 10th batter of the inning, grounded out, but yet another run came home. So it was 8-3 when, with one on and two out, Wright found a pitch he liked and crushed it over the fence for a two-run home run to cap the rally.
Brower did the rest, blanking Greenville in his last four innings of work and allowing just five hits overall and earning four strikeouts to earn Player-of-the-Game honors. An 11th run came in the bottom of the sixth courtesy of Levanti, who doubled and raced home on a pair of wild pitches. In all, North Syracuse had 11 hits, two each from Levanti and Charbonneau.
North Syracuse got to rest for two days after its 4-0 sweep of division play, which capped on Aug. 23 with a 7-2 victory over White Hall, one of the local Arkansas entries.
It was still 0-0 when, in the bottom of the third, North Syracuse broke it open. With Charbonneau on base, Levanti drilled a single to bring Charbonneau home with the game’s first run.
Continuing to build momentum, North Syracuse loaded the bases. Then Pilotti cleared them, his double scoring three runs to make it 4-0 before heading home when Pat Wright doubled.
White Hall cut the margin in half to 4-2 in the fifth inning, chasing O’Kane, who had five strikeouts before turning the game over to Pilotti. Not only did Pilotti strike out three in his three-inning shutout stint on the mound, he offered further heroics at the plate in the bottom of the sixth with a second double that led to Wright’s clinching two-run home run.
For the six games of the tournament, North Syracuse outscored its foes 58-13, averaging nearly 10 runs per contest. And the last four of those runs helped produce a World Series title.