Wild ending sends Passaic Tech into county final by Greg Tartaglia of The Record
WAYNE – At a point when so many eyes were focused on the umpires, Christian Silfa kept his on the ball.
The Passaic Tech junior raced home from third base to score the winning run in the bottom of the ninth in Sunday’s Passaic County baseball semifinal against West Milford.
Despite confusion surrounding the final play, the end result was a 4-3 victory that sent the No. 4 seed Bulldogs (14-8-1) into Tuesday’s championship final against No. 6 Pompton Lakes (12-6). The game will be played at Passaic Tech with a scheduled 5 p.m. start.
Silfa led off the home ninth with a double that dropped into right-center between outfielders. After a sacrifice bunt and two intentional walks, Passaic Tech DH Anthony Noesi popped up a 2-2 pitch.
In view of the scorer’s table, the home plate umpire waved his arms to signal a foul ball, indicating that it had grazed the backstop on its way up. The ball fell to the infield turf as a Bulldog runner and the West Milford second baseman came together, while Silfa slid into home.
“Usually when there’s a popup on the infield, you stay in [close to the base],” Silfa said. “But I took a little lead, and when I saw the ball drop, I just took off.”
“It was an unbelievable ending,” he added.
After a conference, the base umpire’s call of the infield fly rule – making the batter Noesi out with runners able to advance at their own risk – stood as the final verdict.
“The home plate umpire called ‘foul’, so even if the field umpire is calling an infield fly, an inadvertent foul call is still a foul ball,” West Milford coach Joe Jordan said. “It’s in the rule book.”
The ending was not the only bizarre occurrence of the day. Shortly after Highlanders pitcher Zack Licursi drove in the run to tie the score at 1-1 in the third, a sudden downpour halted play for 10 minutes.
On the first pitch after rain and hail subsided, Jimmy Rauth gave No. 8 West Milford (10-11) a 2-1 lead with an RBI double.
Licursi allowed three runs (two earned) over seven innings in a no-decision. Harry Vargas’ two-out, two-run single in the home fifth evened things at 3-3 and led the Bulldogs into extra innings for the second straight game. On Friday, they needed 15 innings to defeat Passaic Valley, 5-4, on the same field.
“Down 3-1, they never quit, and we were able to get a win,” Passaic Tech coach Robert Nutile said. “I pitched [No. 2 starter] Tim Peña, who’s been phenomenal all year. I have no regrets, and then I come back to [ace Marcus] Eusebio on Tuesday, so it kind of worked out.”
Peña allowed three runs over four before departing. Left-hander Anthony DiBrino (3-1) earned the win with five innings of scoreless relief, and he did not allow a hit over the final three innings.
POMPTON LAKES 3, WAYNE HILLS 0: Right-hander Kyle Shafer (3-2) allowed four hits over six, walked two and struck out nine to power the Cardinals to their fourth title game in five years.
Shafer ended each of his six innings pitched with a strikeout, including twice when No. 7 Wayne Hills (10-11) had runners on second and third.
“We’ve really come together as a family this whole season,” he said. “The team was behind me, and I didn’t really have to worry about letting [the hitters] put the ball in play, so it really eased my mind.”
Shafer helped his cause with an RBI single in the fourth inning that made it 2-0, and catcher Jack MacDonald homered to lead off the sixth. Jack Gorstein drove in the first Pompton Lakes run with a sac fly.