Bucks win season closer, honor host families

A 9-5 win over the Southampton Breakers at Fiske Field Saturday brought the 2013 Shelter Island Bucks season to a close. The final victory left the team with a 17-23 record and out of the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League playoffs. A year ago the Bucks won the league’s regular season championship in the team’s inaugural season.

Despite missing a playoff bid, the team still had some satisfying moments this past season including the last win. After being down 1-0 early in the top of the first, the Bucks took a 3-1 lead going into the second after a Cody Howard home run and continued to build on their lead.

After a July in which the team’s offense was anemic, it finally came alive for one last time in front of a large home crowd.
The final game started out with ceremonial first pitches thrown by the team’s host families to the players they hosted. The game was played in honor of the host families who make the league possible by opening their homes and services to the young players here. Players living on Shelter Island for the summer — a place very different from home for most of them — their host families were also crucial in helping them adjust and get acclimated.

General Manager Cori Cass said looking from purely a baseball perspective the season was “very disappointing. I was disappointed in the lack of leadership on the team.”

But Mr. Cass noted the players are still young and that the grind of the season — 40 games in two months — wore on the stamina of players.

“But the fans were the best in the league,” he added, pointing out that Saturday night there were more than 200 fans at Fiske Field. He also said the young men had a great summer experiencing the Island and the host families’ hospitality.

Financially, the Bucks were the most successful team in the HCBL, Mr. Cass said.

Pitcher Alex Katz called the Island a “unique” place, especially for a boy from Nassau County. Katz was a lefty specialist out of the bullpen for the Bucks for most of the season before starting a few games near the end. He ended up as one of the team’s best pitchers with a 2.75 earned run average, second best on the team.

The Island was also a unique place for shortstop Justin Jones, who hails from Henderson, Nevada, right outside Las Vegas. “(It’s) very different from back home but a fun place,” Jones said, adding that the Island is full of great people. Pitcher Mike Wallace was in full agreement with his teammate.

Jones and Wallace were among nine Bucks who made the All-Star game earlier in July. Jones played a good part of the season as the team’s leadoff hitter and was a dependable run producer. He finished with 26 runs scored, a team high and among the league leaders, and he also swiped 21 bases.

Wallace finished with a team best 2.42 ERA and 40 strikeouts.

Despite both players putting up strong numbers, they thought they could have performed better. Jones’ said he “under-performed” toward the beginning of the season while Wallace used the word “all right” to describe his summer.

Another Bucks’ player who made the All-Star game was catcher Mac James. James was the team’s strongest hitter finishing with a .308 batting average. And while he came to the Hamptons as a good bat, James also got to end the season doing something else. He pitched the last inning of the season in one of the team’s lighthearted moments.

Of all the Bucks’ players, Howard got to see the most innings and at bats, with 142 plate appearances, which was fourth in the league. It was fitting because at the beginning of the season Howard’s main goal was to just get as many at bats he could.

What’s next for these players? James will be eligible to be drafted in the 2014 Major League Baseball draft following his junior season at the University of Oklahoma. “Obviously getting drafted would be awesome,” he said. “We’ll see, it’s all what happens this year at school, you can’t really tell.”

Meanwhile, Wallace, Jones and Howard will all be entering their sophomore years, which means they won’t be eligible for the draft until 2015. Jones is focused on having a good season at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and hopefully going to the Cape Cod League next summer to catch the eyes of major league scouts. The Cape Cod League is the most prestigious summer league in the country and players must be invited to attend it.

Howard meanwhile is looking forward to next spring and also playing at the UNLV. Wallace does not have any specific plans in mind, but he does know he just wants to keep playing baseball. “Keep playing until they tell me I can’t play anymore and see where it goes,” the young man said.

James believes missing the playoffs was due in part to players not realizing how much of a grind the season would be, resulting in a midseason slump. However, players were still positive as the season drew to a close because they had it was a good summer with a great group of teammates. Both of the Vegas boys, Howard and Jones, made sure to point out that at the end of the day sometimes winning isn’t everything, and it just comes down to having fun.