From Worst to First

John Bowne was surprisingly tame following another blowout victory, this one a regular season-ending 13-1 shellacking of Robert Kennedy that earned them a share of the Queens North-B division title.
The last three years in the ‘A’ division, the Wildcats (13-3) were doormats, winning just five times in three seasons. So naturally, one expected them to dance around a little bit, jump on top of one another at least. As it turned out, they were just waiting for their Manager Ed Brown to join them down the left field line for team pictures.
For as soon as the shots were snapped, they went ballistic, drenching one another with individual Gatorade bottles and soaking Brown with the entire cooler. “It’s cold,” he would say later, giddily laughing, “But it’s good.”
Most everything about this season has come up roses for Bowne. The star pitcher, junior Felipe Montenegro, got his grades right, to anchor the pitching staff. Shortstop Hector Justo improved dramatically after a summer in the Dominican Republic - “like night and day,” Brown said. In addition, senior Hector Velazquez, the potent third baseman, steered clear of trouble after a problematic junior season.
“It’s really amazing,” Velazquez marveled. “We come a long way from last year. This team had a lot of good chemistry. Last year it was really a ‘me’ team; this year we’re a ‘we’ team.”
When the year began, with two losses in their first three games, it did not seem like a lot had changed, despite the move down to the ‘B’ division. However, Brown, a baseball coach for the last three decades in his fifth year at Bowne, remained positive. “We told them ‘its okay, we’re going to get better,’ ” he recalled. “We were working hard. In the back of my mind, I knew how much talent they had. I was shaking my head and thinking ‘we have to better than this.’ ”
They were. The Wildcats won eight straight and 12 of 13 to close the season thanks to a diverse lineup. Sophomore outfielder Nelson Ramirez leads the team with three homeruns; junior first baseman Jose Casado is second in the division with 22 RBIs; and Justo’s 25 runs scored are first in Queens North-B. Furthermore, Brown has received at least two victories apiece from Montenegro, Casado, Naeem Bhalli, and Nasibul Nematullah.
“They’re working together, they’re happy; that’s what gives me the most pleasure,” Brown said. “Once they saw they could win they started buying my stuff. Once they started seeing that it worked they started working harder and buying into it, cutting down the physical errors, the mental errors.”