Phil Baccarella has been involved with Hudson County baseball for more than four decades, as a player, as an assistant coach and finally, for the last 20 years, as the head baseball coach at Bayonne High School.
And he’s never endured a season quite like the one just completed.
“It was definitely different,” Baccarella said. “I don’t know how good we were. We were 10-run ruled three times and played poorly at times. We also played good at others.”
Obviously, the Bees were playing well at the end of the season, because Bayonne captured the championship of the first-ever Hudson County Tournament, defeating St. Mary’s of Jersey City, 12-11, in eight innings last Saturday at New Jersey City University.
“We had the tournament at the end of the season and we were able to sell that to the kids,” Baccarella said. “It was the first time that we had a true Hudson County Tournament and we just got hot at the right time. It’s the fourth time in the last seven years that we were in a county final [the other three were in the HCIAA Coviello title games against Hudson Catholic twice and Memorial], but we finally won one. We had a good team the other times. We just lost to a better team.”
The Bees’ Josh Ortiz came up big in the title game, getting two hits, scoring three runs and collecting five RBI in the title game, earning the tourney’s Most Valuable Player honor.
“I’m happy for Josh,” Baccarella said. “He gave us a very good year and had a huge championship game.”
With Baccarella’s bunch bouncing back and forth all season, the veteran coach had no idea what to expect in the county tourney. As it turned out, the Bees, who finished 18-9 overall, may have benefited from losing early in the NJSIAA North Jersey Section 2, Group IV playoffs to Linden, losing in the first round, 9-2.
“You never like to lose, but it was like a blessing in disguise, because it enabled us to get up for the county tourney,” Baccarella said. “It’s hard to balance both the state playoffs and county tournament at the same time.”
Baccarella said that he can’t fathom the idea that the Bees are a county championship club.
“We were 18-9, but it was an up-and-down 18-9,” Baccarella said. “We also got lucky, because in the semifinals, we were being outclassed by Union City and scored six runs in the last inning on seven walks. We might have been the county champion, but I don’t know if we were the best team.”
However, Baccarella’s not going to give the championship trophy back.
“We’ve never had a true county champion before and now we do,” Baccarella said. “We had the Coviello and the Seglio and other counties laughed at us, because we never had one true champ. Now we do and it just happens to be Bayonne.”
Baccarella likes the idea of the tourney, but it needs some work.
“The concept is great,” Baccarella said. “The process was started. Now, it needs to be tweaked a little.”
No one deserves to be a champion more than Phil Baccarella…
The New Jersey Scholastic Baseball Coaches Association All-Star Classic will take place at the Cust Baseball Academy facility in Flemington on Thursday, June 10. It’s the first time that the All-Star showcase will not be held on a weekend.
Four Hudson County players will represent the area in the All-Star games, namely Marist catcher Eddie Sorondo, St. Peter’s Prep’s Jeremy Selecky and two North Bergen standouts, namely Anel Sotolongo and Alex Teran.
While the number of participants may be down locally, the quality is definitely there and all four should represent Hudson County in grand style…
McNair Academic held its fifth Sports Hall of Fame dinner last week, honoring three worthy inductees.
John Barulich, who coached both the boys’ and girls’ soccer programs at the school at points during his 23-year career and collected a total of 202 victories, heads the list. When he was coaching, Barulich was a well-liked and well-respected coach and earned HCIAA Coach of the Year honors three times.
Patrick Healy, the son of Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, was a fine basketball player and track standout during his time at McNair. Healy graduated in 2002 and was named the MVP of the Seglio Division title game one year and once held the school’s rebounding record.
And Domingo Padilla (Class of 1989) was a three-sport standout, earning All-County honors in volleyball, girls’ basketball and softball.
Credit McNair’s athletic director Hugh Dwyer for getting that Hall of Fame started six years ago…
Congrats to Weehawken native Joseph Corrado, who helped his Xavier High School rugby team capture the national championship in the sport last week in Colorado. It’s a huge accomplishment for the local athlete…
Secaucus’ Janelle Biamonte, who has received a ton of accolades and awards during her tenure at Felician College, was recently named as the school’s Female Athlete of the Year…
Anyone who thinks that the area getting the Super Bowl in 2014 is a bad idea should have their head examined. It doesn’t matter if the game is played in zero degree temperature. It’s going to be a major economic boom for the area, especially all the bars, restaurants and hotels in Hoboken, Jersey City, Secaucus and Weehawken.
And it’s also going to provide a major event in Jersey City’s Liberty State Park.
So it’s a huge get for the area and it should bring some exciting times to the area in a few years…
It’s sad that the North Bergen Little League field on 76th Street has been temporarily shut down due to absurd levels of arsenic found in the field by environmental agents. We’ve heard of other chemicals causing the closure of athletic fields, but arsenic? How does arsenic end up on a Little League field?
In any case, it’s the height of the Little League season right now and it remains to be seen how the North Bergen Little League officials operate without the use of a field. Maybe they can use the softball facility next to Stan Newman Field on 64th Street or share the Guttenberg Little League field inside North Hudson Braddock Park. But it’s a blow to one of the finest Little League programs in the county…
In closing, earlier in the season, an Athlete of the Week feature about an opposing player proved to be a motivation for Secaucus baseball player Louis Ojeda. Weehawken’s Eric Gerbehy received the honor and Ojeda made it a point to want to achieve heights like Gerbehy did.
According to Ojeda’s father, Martin, Louis wanted to get a chance to earn the same honors and although he didn’t, he sure came close, hitting two homers in a late-season game against Harrison and driving in three runs against St. Mary’s of Rutherford.
It’s refreshing to see how a weekly feature can motivate others to achieve. It was truly a heartwarming moment.
–Jim Hague
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.