By PAUL GOTHAM
Matt Knight had more mane to tuck under his helmet when he stood in the third-base coach’s box. John Guarino hurled seven shutout innings and came away without a decision. Tony Fuller played 19 innings without getting to the plate. Fate kept Jeff Eckler from playing the hero on two separate occasions.
Section V Baseball’s 2001 Class AA semifinal had a little bit of everything.
“I talk about that game at least once every couple of years,” said Fuller, the current head coach of McQuaid Jesuit. “It gets brought up somewhere along the line.”
When Brighton and Gates Chili went 17 innings recently, it created another opportunity to rehash the Penfield – Webster matchup from more than two decades ago.
“What an unbelievable game it was,” said Knight who was in his first year as head coach with Webster. “It was sad that you had to have team that didn’t move on from that game.”
It started on a Tuesday and was suspended after 17 innings with the game tied at two. One day later, Penfield won it 5-4 in 19 innings and earned a spot in the sectional final the following night.
“When you’re young, you don’t think we’re out of pitching,” Fuller said. “It was like, Oh my God, we get to play at Frontier Field (now Innovative Field).”
The game was played at a neutral site, Fairport, and home-field advantage at that time was decided by a coin flip.
Penfield, the No. 7 seed, had last cracks.
Chris Miller started on the mound for No. 3 Webster (then a combined school) and went seven innings. He allowed one run. Jeff Miterko took over from there and hurled seven scoreless.
Penfield, coached by the late Mike Gage, was coming off a victory over No. 2 Hilton. Brian DeRosa got the start. He also went seven before giving way to John Guarino.
Greg Ekimoff gave No. 3 Webster a 1-0 lead in the sixth when he drove in Carl Garritano.
Guarino came home in the bottom half on a Kiel Roach double to tie the game at one where it stayed for the next 10 innings.
“There were so many great plays,” Knight said. “Both teams threw out at least two guys at home plate with prefect throws and perfect relays. If one of those scores, we’re getting that game done in seven innings or 10 innings.”
Field dimensions, or lack thereof, played a role as well.
“We didn’t have fences back then,” Knight said recalling a pair of hits that traveled the distance to clear a fence but without such boundaries landed outside the playing field. “There were a couple of balls that were hit, I know it sounds like sour grapes, if we had fences for that game, we had two home runs. They were down the left field line and hooked foul. They were gone.”
Eckler, currently an assistant with Webster Schroeder, had one of those not-to-be round-trippers. Then the Webster third baseman, Eckler plated Chris Muoio with a triple in the 17th.
“I was on third with one out after the triple,” Eckler said. “We talk about it all the time that we should have squeezed.”
Eckler also recalled the layout of the Fairport diamond at the time.
“The sun in the spring would set right in the hitter’s eye. By the 13th inning, that sun you were staring into it.”
Still, Webster had snapped the tie. Victory was three outs away.
Guarino scored in the bottom of the 17th when Penfield, down to its last out, tied the game. Roach blooped an opposite-field single into right field to score Guarino.
“I remember we threw a curve ball,” said Knight who retired after the 2024 season as head coach of Webster Schroeder. “He waited on it. He took the ball to right field and dropped it in front of our right fielder to tie the game.”
With no lights on the field, the game was suspended after 17 innings and scheduled to resume the following day.
“The school was abuzz the next day,” said Guarino who was one of two pitchers along with Webster’s Chris Miller to throw seven-plus shutout innings and not figure in the decision. “It went from just the parents the night before to, I don’t want to say the whole school, but it was much, much bigger. There were a lot of students.
“The excitement of the school, the whole day was something I’ll never forget. It was pretty cool.”
Muoio gave Webster a 4-2 lead in the 18th with a two-run single. Again, Penfield responded in the home half. This time, Dan Pearson provided the tying runs.
“Base hit after base hit up the middle,” Knight recalled of the action on the second day. “I had a full head of hair prior to that game. It was an unbelievable game.”
Roach connected on a double in the 19th. Joe Dimiero came home to score the winning run.
“We stormed the field and dogpiled,” Guarino said. “That was one of my greatest memories from high school. To this day, we still remember it.”
For Fuller, a ninth-grader who started at shortstop, it was also an experience he won’t forget even if he didn’t get a chance to contribute to the offense.
“It was awesome,” he said “We were the seven-seed. We won at Hilton, the two-seed. Just for us to get there was a thrilling accomplishment.
“I played defense for 19 innings and I did not get to hit in that game. I was DHed for the entire game.”
The Brighton and Gates Chili game was suspended heading into the bottom of 11th with neither team producing a run on the first day. The Monroe County Division II foes played 13 scoreless innings before Nolan Bonnell gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead in the top of the 14th with a sacrifice fly. Sam Burge scored on the play.
Gates answered in the home half. Gavin Sweeney led with a single and eventually crossed home on a Cole Gorman RBI-groundout.
“We were hoping to play an inning and a half and ended up playing another seven,” Brighton head coach Jason Wasserman. “The kids were into it right from the first pitch. They knew they had to get those first three outs.”
Bonnell and Max Sheehan scored on a two-out single from Jack Edelstein in the 17th.
Grady Hopkin stranded a one-out single in the bottom of the inning to secure a 3-1 Brighton victory.
Hopkin, Sheehan and Noah Dietz combined on a seven-hitter. Sheehan started and struck out eight over 7.1 scoreless frames. Dietz worked 2.2 scoreless innings of relief. Hopkin threw seven innings to pick up the win.
“The guys have been working hard especially on defense and situational play,” Wasserman said. “They loaded the bases on us a couple times especially late in the game, and we were able to get away without letting up any runs. That was huge for us.”
For Gates (4-8) the 17-inning affair was the sixth time this season that the Spartans have played in a game decided by two runs or fewer. Dean Dingee’s squad is 2-4 in those matchups.
“It was a great game,” Dingee said. “You see zero-zero through 11, and you think there wasn’t any offense. I bet both teams had guys on second or second and third with less than two outs five or six times. It wasn’t for a lack of chance that we didn’t score.”
Inclement weather has prevented Gates from playing since that game was decided on May 1st. Brighton took the field four days later.
“I heard about the 17-inning (Brighton-Gates) game,” Guarino said. “It definitely brought back a lot of memories. Even before seeing that game, this is stuff that I talk about with my youth baseball team and other people that I see around.
In 2001, Penfield faced Athena the following day.
“I remember we all went the next day to Frontier (Innovative),” Eckler said. “At least most of us.”
Athena won 12-0. Led by Matt Agostinelli and Steve Taylor, it was the Trojans second of three sectional titles in four years.
Jason Bunting’s squad came away empty-handed in 2000. They weren’t to be denied this time.
“I reminded them how that felt,” Bunting said of the disappointment from the previous year’s loss. “There were a bunch of guys who were on the 2000 team. They were still hungry because they knew that the job wasn’t finished.”
*Game details for this story taken from the Democrat and Chronicle staff report.
Thank you for creating this article. A ton of great memories playing baseball with guys on both teams. That 19 inning game was awesome, despite being gassed for the finals.