10 reasons why baseball Rams could have best season in years

With major league warm weather baseball pre-season training camps underway from Arizona to Florida as of Monday (2/19) and the first exhibition games scheduled to start Friday (2/23), it's beginning to look like a wonderful day in the neighborhood because that means Port Chester Rams varsity baseball is also near at hand.

It also means that the winter that looked as though it would never end is nearing its final days and there are better days ahead, not just for the pro-Yankees and Mets who have finetuned their rosters to the point where they are legitimate contenders but for the Rams as well because P.C. has paid its dues and its baseball-playing seniors are ready to come of age.

Top tier performers

For years now, the current crop of varsity Rams have won in the Port Chester Youth Baseball League, even won a national title in a Cal Ripken age-group baseball tournament in Myrtle Beach, and are now poised to do some real damage to the established powers in ultra-competitive Section One Class AA baseball circles.

And we are not talking here about making it into the post-season playoffs after too many losing years—they did that last year only to lose in the second round.

This time around they have the makings of a club that could match the 2013 team that made it into the semi-finals, maybe even go all the way.

That is not just some pre-season pipe dream where hope springs eternal, or at least until the first regular season pitch.

There are 10 reasons why this season's Rams have the potential to go all the way.

Those reasons range from a team that returns three All-League players, an All-Section performer and a young pitcher who went undefeated last year in five starts to a hard-swinging club that starts off with arguably the best infield in the league.

Flesh out numbers

How does that break down from the general to the specific by naming the names that flesh out the top 10 reasons that go into making this quite possibly an upcoming season to remember in the best possible way.

Let us count the ways:

1. In slugging, All-League senior first baseman Keshaun (Key) Ellis, the Rams have one of the premier sluggers in Double A, as graceful around the bag (especially considering his size) as he is in swinging the bat. That power bat enabled Ellis to hit the first home run ever over the newly-installed portable outfield fences last season, a nearly 385-foot blast over the left centerfield fence—the only shot to clear the wall all season long.

2. In smooth-fielding senior All-Section and All-League third baseman Luisbert Fritas, a product of the Dominican Republic, the Rams have one of the area's best contact hitters as well as a swinger who can hit for power.

3. The area's best shortstop could well be Michael (Mikey Boc) Boccarosa, a solid All-League hitter with a major league arm who may well have made last season's play-of-the-year with a perfectly timed leap, body fully extended, glove outstretched to snare a liner to left field that had sure double written all over it. "Mikey Boc, you are simply the greatest," left fielder Jonathan Fingold said as he trotted in after that catch, as pretty a play as you can see this side of Yankee Stadium or Shea. Fingold may have been right.

The arms have it

4. Wide-roaming centerfielder Jason Wiley, arguably the school's best senior athlete, has a gun for an arm, threw out several doubting runners at the plate from somewhere near White Plains, hits for average and power and should have made the All-League team.

5. Power-hitting catcher Joe Rinello made the varsity as a freshman starter last year, swings a mean bat, calls a smart game and fires bullets that make opposing runners think twice before attempting to steal a base.

6. Smooth-throwing sophomore pitcher Chris Hudson has a deceptively easy motion, but the ball explodes out of his glove, or at least seems to, his flawless delivery one reason why he won five games last year with the Rams’ bats usually coming alive for big scores behind him. He was a big reason why the Rams made the playoffs after Colin Gillespie, the Rams’ starting quarterback, came down with arm problems that cost him most of a season when he was counted on to be one of the P.C. aces along with Angel and Juan Garcia.

With those latter three pitchers now graduated, the Rams are counting on Hudson to step up big time this time around.

7. Melvin Molina, easily the best defensive player on the Rams All-League championship football team, chafed at not getting more playing time last season after continually hitting the ball all over the lot in batting practice all season long.

Look for him to have a breakout season.

8. Conor O'Dea, another hard-hitting football player called up from the junior varsity towards the end of the season when the hurting roster was depleted, impressed on the gridiron and could do the same on the diamond as a pitcher/outfielder.

Gridiron winners

9. Every one of the players mentioned except for Fritas got a taste for winning as pivotal players on the Rams’ best football team in years, not just league champions but part of a tight knit group molded by turnaround coach Paul Santavicca into a cohesive unit that was willing to pay the price to become winners in terms of practice, dedication, determination and desire. And it is no accident that the off-season training paid off—Wiley made All-Section, All-Conference and All-League as a running back, Ellis made All-Conference and All-League on the line and Boccarosa and Molina made the All-League team with Santavicca chosen as All-League Coach of the Year.

10. Fiery head coach Eddie Martinez, a former All-State high school player in Connecticut and a collegiate All-Star at Concordia, lit a fire under the long-smoldering Rams in his first two seasons and is cast in the same mold as Santavicca. Martinez, also a player/manager with the semi-pro New Rochelle Robins, very much wants to bring home a baseball league championship for the Rams for the first time in ages.

In his assistant, Bobby Thalheimer, he has a throwback to the Rams’ glory days with Bobby Thal an All-League and All-Section first baseman/outfielder who went on to star at Iona College and became an outstanding PCYBL age-group coach whose team won the national Cal Ripken baseball championship at Myrtle Beach a few seasons back. His son, Bobby Thalheimer Jr., is a candidate for this year's Rams varsity as is Myles Durney whose father is a former P.C. athletic director who is now deputy superintendent of schools in the district.

All those names add up to the fact that this could be a very special Rams baseball team once they call out "Play ball" for real.