Located in Southern Westchester County, New York, the communities of Larchmont and Mamaroneck share a school district, and lay fifteen miles north of the bright lights and chaos of Times Square, and solely eleven miles from legendary Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Needless to say, this area is die-hard Yankee country...sprinkled in with a few supporters of that senior circuit squad from Queens.Survey the members of the Mamaroneck High School baseball team on which team they support, and you'll get an overwhelming amount of pro-Yankees responses, with a dose of frustrated Mets fans.Yet to no one's surprise, you won't hear a single member of the 2008 New York State High School Championship Baseball team pledge their support of that team two states to the north...the Boston Red Sox.
Yet, upon further investigation, it appears that the two proud programs might actually share more than just the Boston Post Road...Like the Bombers' rival to the north, Mamaroneck has played its way into its Section's title game numerous times, coming up short on more than one occasion. We're not talking Buffalo Bills "short" here...we're talking achieving regular season success over a long period of time, then falling in title games under the most unfortunate of circumstances.
Mamaroneck had won 10 Section 1, League A titles from 1980-2002 under legendary coach Mike Chaipparelli, an era of success un-matched in Westchester County High School baseball during that time. The legendary coach had developed over 90 student-athletes who would go on to play Division 1 or professional baseball. Yet with all of that success and prominence Mamaroneck had achieved during the better part of three decades, the program had failed to deliver a sectional title and a state playoff birth. Often times, their defeats were frankly puzzling.Example #1?Mamaroneck was ranked in the national top 20 for nearly the entire 1995 season, yet they couldn't get out of their own section to play in the state tournament. They faced a formidable opponent in FDR-Hyde Park from the Poughkeepsie area, but were clearly the favorite going into the match up. Yet to everyone's dismay, Mamaroneck's struggles in post-season play would come back to bite them. The Tigers had a chance to win the game in the bottom of the seventh on a base hit, but the runner proceeded to lose his balance after rounding third base, and fell to the ground. Needless to say, the out was made, and the game went into extra innings. FDR-Hyde Park would score in the following inning, and Mamaroneck would choke away another shot at the state playoffs. But that isn't even the worst occurrence in Mamaroneck playoff history.
How about another?
The 1999 season featured another Mamaroneck team poised at breaking the 35-season sectional championship drought, and was once again ranked for a good deal of the regular season. Mamaroneck faced another solid opponent in Suffern, who had built itself a pretty solid program across the Hudson in neighboring Rockland County. The Section title game was close the entire way, but Mamaroneck had taken a lead in the sixth, and looked poised to hold it. Yet, history repeated itself once again, as the Tigers fell to Suffern on a dropped ball by the first baseman that would have given the team its first sectional championship since 1964. Instead, the throw was mishandled, and the decisive run scored.
The 2003 season brought more great expectations, and a top 50 national ranking. This team would finally live up to the hype, and break the curse. The team went 24-6, knocking off powerful North Rockland 5-2 to win the Sectional title behind a solid pitching staff and a plethora of offensive weapons. Three of the team's seniors would go on to D1 baseball careers, including Chris Vasami who's currently in the Colorado Rockies system after starring at Notre Dame and Elon.
One can compare the 2003 Mamaroneck team with the 2004 Boston team, as teams who both battled the odds (Boston came back from a 3-0 ALCS deficit, and Mamaroneck won their section without playing a SINGLE HOME GAME for the entire season as their field was under renovation). The 2004 Boston Red Sox broke the franchise's curse by winning their first world championship since 1918 after coming "oh-so-close" countless times, and may be regarded as the most important team in that franchise's history. The same may be said for the 2003 Mamaroneck Tigers, a squad that broke the program's curse, and gave their legendary manager and their school its first sectional title since the 1964 season.
Whereas the '03 Mamaroneck and '04 Boston teams may have been the most important, the '07 Boston and '08 Mamaroneck teams were easily the best in the respective club's histories.
Boston was arguably the best team in baseball for the entire 2007 season. People weren't yet ready to crown them favorites going into the postseason because of their past history, and the track record of those hated New York Yankees. They had superb pitching, a plethora of bats, and was one of the most efficient defensive teams in baseball.
Mamaroneck also looked poised for a championship run in the 2007 season. They dominated their opponents in the regular season, but returned to their pre-2003 form come post-season, and inexplicably lost to the #16 seed in their tournament, forcing a first-round knockout from sectionals.
Was the curse REALLY broken? Or was 2003 just an abberation. Not quite the freak collapse endured in the 1995 and 1999 seasons, but this 2007 flameout was just as shocking, and stung the players just as lethally.The 2008 team featured almost all of the same players from the previous team, and sported the slogan: "Unfinished Business," on the back of their warm-up tees. They took no game for granted, and only dropped two the entire season, one of those losses coming to the #1 team on the East Coast: Don Bosco Prep of New Jersey. A Junior-heavy team full of talent, discipline, passion, determination, the Tigers entered their sectional tournament an angry bunch. They felt humiliated from the previous year's collapse, and embarked on a mission to seek and destroy.
Their first opponent was the same Carmel team that had knocked them out of the first round in '07. Mamaroneck got past them 5-3. The Tigers got past a game Arlington squad 8-6 in the second round, with help from a controversial non-call that may tied up the contest. With confidence soaring, the Tigers got past long-time nemesis and Dutchess County power, Ketcham, in a slug fest: 24-18. All that stood in Mamaroneck's way was Suffern, the same team that had shocked the Tigers in '99. But this team seemed different than the Mamaroneck teams of old. The seal had been broken, so to speak. No one on the field had nervous thoughts about choke-jobs or previous historical collapses. These players had won a national championship three years earlier on a summer league team. They had felt pressure, and refused to succumb to it. They knocked off Suffern, 12-1, giving Mamaroneck their first sectional title since 2003.
But these Tigers weren't done. This wasn't 2003. "Breaking the curse" wasn't sufficient. These players wanted it all. They wanted to give their coach, their program, and their town something it had never experienced: A New York State title. Game one of the state tournament? A 6-0 win over Vestal, from the Binghamton area. Game two? A 13-3 win over Minisink Valley, from the Catskills area...the same team the '03 squad knocked off before falling to Union-Endicott in this round. Next? The New York State final four... uncharted territory for the Mamaroneck Tigers.
Game One featured the top two teams in the state...27-0 La Salle Institute from Troy, NY, against the 30-2 Mamaroneck Tigers, who had recently achieved national recognition as the #8 team on the East Coast. National recognition was nothing new to Coach Chap and Mamaroneck baseball. Living up to those expectations and the hype? That was.
The Tigers lived up to their rep, and knocked off the #1 team in the state 7-5, handing La Salle their first and final loss of the season.
The Tigers were on a tear and seemed unstoppable. "Unfinished Business" was a slogan to be taken quite literally it seemed. The unfinished business didn't end with taking revenge on Carmel, and it didn't end with winning the section. The unfinished business apparently ended with achieving the greatest of goals. It ended with erasing all of those years of heartbreak and frustration. The dropped balls, the base running snafus, the unfulfilled expectations.
The 2008 Mamaroneck Tigers put a program on its not-so-diminutive shoulders...and took it to unforeseen heights. And those heights peaked with the 2008 New York State Championship plaque...the #1 team in the entire state.
The 2003 Boston Red Sox Championship season gave the franchise a sigh of relief, eliminating it from the butt of all jokes. The 2007 squad's title solidified the franchise as one of the greatest and most successful in professional baseball.
The 2003 Mamaroneck team's section title was a sigh of relief, assuaging the pain endured from years of heartbreak and unfulfilled expectations. The 2008 team won the New York State title, and Mamaroneck is now a New York State power, not just a local one. That's a completely different animal in itself.
Perhaps a Bengal Tiger.
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