By Patrick McCormack and Joseph Staszewski
A sunny day with clear skies and temperatures in the 80s — sounds like a beautiful day for baseball, right?
Not for Cardozo and Coach Ron Gorecki. Prior to his team’s quarterfinal game against defending city champion Telecommunications, Gorecki protested with umpires and PSAL officials that the field at Grand Street Campus was “unsafe” because of “dangerous field conditions” Tuesday.
The game was ultimately postponed 45 minutes after its scheduled start time and plenty of raking by Telecom.
It was rescheduled for the Thomas Jefferson Athletic Complex in East New York Wednesday and was the only quarterfinal not played Tuesday Quarterfinal games are played at neutral sites.
Gorecki said when he arrived at the field, the umpires were trying to break up the hardened dirt.
“You have mud and you got hard cement over there, I am not putting my kids out there,” he said. “I would rather not play the game. For the playoffs, play on a safe environment. Why not give the last eight teams standing a shot of playing on a great field?”
Other than the hardened base paths, Gorecki saw an issue with the pitcher’s mound at the Brooklyn school.
“It’s an illegal mound that is out there,” he said. “It is hard. It looks like a rock. That mound shouldn’t be 2 1/2 feet in the air.”
Grand Street Coach Steve Martinez, whose team didn’t practice on the field Monday, said nothing has been done to change the size of the mound since the start of the season.
“I’m not surprised with that coach,” Martinez said. “We have been playing there all year.”
On the other hand, defending champion Telecom, which played at Grand Street multiple times this season, had no problem with the field.
“There is nothing wrong with this. This was nice right now,” Telecom Coach Ed D’Alessio said.
During the delay and before the game was called, D’Alessio had his team on the field with water and rakes trying to get it ready, but Gorecki appeared to have his mind made up.
“He was adamant about not playing,” D’Alessio said. “He felt it was unsafe. That was his sticking point, that the field was unsafe and he didn’t want to be responsible if someone gets hurt.”
The ruling puts Telecom at a disadvantage because the team only has 12 players and the extra day off now seriously affects its pitching rotation if they were to advance.”
“We have a very small squad and these are all the big schools,” D’Alessio added.
Work also had to be done on John Adams’ field prior to Grand Street taking on James Monroe. The Spartans were eliminated from the playoffs May 21. Monroe Coach Mike Turo said he and his coaches shaved 6 inches of dirt off the mound in the morning to get it to the proper height and were continuing to fix the field prior to game time.
“It’s got to be something nice for both teams,” Turo said. “If you have two teams of this quality, you got to pick good fields. It has to be done that way.”
