As Marcos Perivolaris looked in for a sign from catcher Brian Pelan, the Mattituck crowd started to get loud.
“Ma-ti-tuck. Ma-ti-tuck. Ma-ti-tuck,” they shouted as everyone in the crowd rose to their feet.
The count was 2-2 and there was a runner on first base with two outs on the board. Mattituck was up by the slimmest of margins, 1-0. After two comeback victories in the series, one for each team, Perivolaris knew the game was far from over.
He took a deep breath and let it fly, snapping his wrist. The curveball started at chest height and landed smack dab over the heart of the plate.
“Steeeeeeerike three!” shouted the umpire. The Center Moriches player stood motionless in the batter’s box as the celebration began.
The loudspeaker echoed the newly found truth throughout the field.
“Congratulations Mattituck! Class B Suffolk County champions!”
Baseball gloves and hats were flung in the air as the entire Mattituck team swarmed Perivolaris on the pitcher’s mound, trampling each other in the process.
“We couldn’t let it happen again,” Pelan said, who knocked in the sole Mattituck run with an RBI groundout in the fourth inning. “We let the last game slip away and it wasn’t going to happen again. Not on our home field.”
They didn’t.
“Our backs were against the wall,” Perivolaris said. “We needed to come out with the win. We’ve been working hard the entire year since the beginning of January when it was negative degrees out here, practicing.”
Perivolaris pitched a complete game, surrendering only four hits to go along with his four strikeouts.
Pelan described his pitcher’s performance as “complete dominance.”
“We expect that out of Marcos,” head coach Steve DeCaro said. “Every time he takes the mound, we expect to win.”
Not one hit rattled him. He knew his job and executed. He allowed Center Moriches to put the ball in play and had faith in his defense to come up with the out.
“We had no errors today,” Perivolaris said. “When you’re pitching in a tight game like that, every out matters. And when your team is making the plays, it makes it that much easier.”
A crisp and sound pre-game warmup routine of infield and outfield seemed to carry over to the game. Oftentimes a flawless infield-outfield means establishing a winning or losing mindset right away.
“Our infield-outfield is so structured that everybody knows what they’re doing and it’s a great boost of confidence when everybody’s making the plays,” DeCaro said.
It’s all a part of being a great team. Pitching, fielding, hitting and heart — Mattituck has it all. And DeCaro didn’t hold back when he acknowledged the amount of talent on this team; going as far as saying that “this is one of the best teams Mattituck has ever produced.”
“We’re strong through the lineup one-through-nine,” DeCaro said. “We have a strong bench. We have guys who are waiting to hit on the bench. We have pitching, we have a bullpen and we have defense. What more can you ask for?”
Up next for Mattituck is Wheatley, the Nassau County Class B champs. They play on June 6 at Farmingdale State College. A time has yet to be determined.
“We have a couple days now to lick our wounds and work on our batting because I don’t think it was up to par today,” DeCaro said. “We’ll have time to practice and get some scrimmages before we get to play Wheatley.”
Asked whether he’s heard anything about Wheatley, DeCaro answered: “Yeah, we read Newsday. But it’s just going to come down to how we play. Nothing else matters.”
SoutholdLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr.
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