High School Baseball

BY ADAM RONIS

Billy Clark hit a 3-and-2 fastball over the leftfield fence for a walk-off grand slam capping a seven-run inning to lift Oyster Bay to an 11-7 win over Mattituck at Firemen’s Field in Valley Stream in the LI Class B championship/Southeast Regional semifinal. Oyster Bay (17-9) will play the winner of JFK Catholic (Section I) and Marlboro (Section IX) 5 p.m.Tuesday at Dowling in the regional final with the winner advancing to the state semifinals. Clark went 3-for-3 with a single, double, homer and walk. Oyster Bay entered the bottom of the seventh inning trailing 7-4 and had no one on with one out.

The situation looked bleak and it appeared Oyster Bay was headed for a loss in this game for the second straight season. Alex Hudak was hit by a pitch, Daniel Roland singled and Marc Douglas hit a three-run homer to centerfield to tie the score at 7.

Roland hit a three-run homer in the fifth to tie the score at 4. Oyster Bay hit three homers, all in key situations.

"We’re not known as long-ball hitting team," OB coach Jay Davis said, "but as we did last year in the big games, we’ve been hitting them. We don’t preach the long ball. I knew pregame when I was hitting to them that if you got the ball up, it was sailing. This is a hitters' field. We’ve played a lot of close games all season and fortunately we’ve come out on top of most. It’s a dream. I was hoping [Clark] would get a walk because we needed just one and he cashed in with four. It’s an unbelieveable way to end this game. The team responded."

Douglas wasn't surprised that Clark hit his first homer of the season.

"He hits bombs," he said. "We just don’t have a fence at our field."

Rallying from deficits to win is something Oyster Bay is used to.

"We’re a team that likes to comeback and we usually win," Roland said. "That was inning was tremendous."

Roland was removed from centerfield in the top of the seventh inning -- he reentered and got a hit in the bottom of the inning -- after hitting his head on the ground following a leap over the fence on a Mattituck homer.

"I couldn’t see straight," he said. "I was ok. I pushed it. The coaches didn’t want me to, but I wanted to."

Oyster Bay starter Jared Frydman issued a walk to leadoff the game and then retired the next 10 batters before allowing a homer to Dimitri Rauseo to tie the score at 1 in the fourth. Frydman had a cramp in his left calf muscle he was stretching before he took the mound in the fifth. He got the first out, but was still plagued by the calf after throwing ball one to the next batter. Time was called and he was being worked on by the coaches and drank some Gatorade. He seemed to bother him as he walked the next two batters. Mattituck would take a 4-1 lead in the inning.

Monmoth-bound Bryan Tardif was in line to get the win when he departed in the sixth. He went 5 2/3 innings and allowed seven hits, struck out eight, allowed one earned run and walked three before being relieved by Rauseo.

For more coverage, check out the story in Monday's paper.