Busy week reaps rewards-Holy Cross hands Molloy first loss, wins fourth game in three days

The Easter break hasn’t been a very relaxing one for the Holy Cross baseball team. On Wednesday they swept a doubleheader from Bishop Ford. Thursday, they beat Xaverian, the Brooklyn powerhouse, in a slugfest. And to cap their thrilling week, the Knights traveled to Archbishop Molloy on Friday for a high noon showdown, and handed the Stanners their first league defeat, 9-8, forging a tie atop the Brooklyn/Queens CHSAA division. “This is the most fun I’ve had playing high school baseball,” Holy Cross catcher George Carroll said.
“I told them ‘you’re on Easter break, you have nothing to do but play ball,’ ” Manager Doug Manfredonia said.
The Knights finished the productive week by rallying from a pair of late one-run deficits against Molloy, scoring the game-winning run on Kevin Kilpatrick’s run-producing groundout. But it was a textbook sacrifice bunt, laid down by Carroll, their cleanup hitter, of all people that led to the go-ahead run. “I wanted to rip one but you got to do what you got to do,” he said. “That’s how you play baseball. You can’t always be the hero.”
The Knights didn’t seem like a team playing their fourth game in three days early on. Behind first-inning run-scoring hits from Effrey Valdez, George Carroll and Justin Leisenheimer and Anthony Zupnick’s two-run homer, they pounded Molloy right-hander Gus Sebo for six runs. Molloy scraped their way back off Roger Pfeffer, erasing the big deficit on Ariel Amory’s opposite field grand slam in the second and forging ahead when Amory capped his six-RBI afternoon with a single in the fourth.
Meanwhile, Jarod Macchiarole, who relieved Sebo in the first, set down 10 Knights in a row, working the outside of the plate and taking advantage of the aggressive Holy Cross (5-1) hitters. In 6 1/3 innings, he allowed three earned runs, five hits, three walks and struck out three.
The Stanners (5-1), unfortunately, were unable to get any breathing room; Carroll tied the game for Holy Cross at seven with a RBI single in the fifth and Joe Licul, pinch-hitting for Andy Romero, did the same in the sixth, knotting the game at eight with a long sacrifice fly. “Every time we scored, they scored,” lamented Molloy Manager Jack Curran.
Senior Mark Vollaro, who was supposed to start the game for the Knights but had to be used in the win over Xaverian, was solid in relief of Pfeffer. In the sixth, he set down the middle of the Stanners’ lineup in order, striking out Joe Silvestri, the Georgetown-bound shortstop; getting Amory to line out to a leaping Valdez; and inducing Kevin Roberts into a weak fly-out to center. In the seventh, he pitched around a leadoff walk, earning the win.
“I was a little nervous,” Vollaro admitted. “I just needed to get out of there without any damage being done.”