If there is one lesson the White Plains baseball team learned last week, it’s that whether he is in the field or at the plate, Mamaroneck’s Emerson Genovese is going to find a way to break through. On Tuesday, May 10, just three days after the senior centerfielder’s acrobatic catch preserved a Tigers’ win against their league foes, Genovese sank White Plains again, delivering a walk-off hit to lift Mamaroneck to another league title with a 6-5 win.
With two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning and runners on first and second, Genovese doubled off White Plains starter Spencer Lodes, plating the winning run in the form of Tiger third baseman Peter Matt, and prompting the Mamaroneck bench to empty onto the field, celebrating the league championship that hung in the balance of the final showdown between the two teams.
“It’s tough to decide between the two plays,” Genovese said after the game. “But right now, in the moment, winning the league championship on that hit, I’d say that this probably feels better than making the catch.”
Genovese, who was waiting for a fastball, drove the ball into the left centerfield gap and said he knew right away that his hit was going to send the Tigers home happy.
“[Lodes] had a pretty good curve, so I was just looking for something straight,” he said. “And right off the bat, I knew that if he was going to catch that ball, it was going to be a better catch than the one I made.”
Although Genovese’s heroics put the exclamation point on the day, it was the Tigers’ steady resilience that kept them in the ballgame. Although Tiger starter Truman Devitt was solid, allowing just five hits on the afternoon, White Plains managed to take two run leads on their hosts in both the first and third innings. Both times, however, Mamaroneck answered right back in the bottom half of the inning to tie the game.
“That was big for us today, because if you look at our season, we haven’t really come from behind a lot,” Genovese said. “In the games we lost this year when we went down, we just didn’t come back.”
Mamaroneck coach Mike Chiapparelli was especially pleased with the team effort on Tuesday, and said that tough league games, such as the ones the Tigers saw against Scarsdale and White Plains this year, should prepare the team well for the postseason. Mamaroneck will play non-league games against Arlington and Suffern this weekend before the playoffs kick off next week.
“When you look at our league, it’s always tough and records don’t mean a whole lot,” Chiapparelli said. “Each game, it comes down to who plays better in that game, and I thought that White Plains played a pretty good one today.”
