The MidVille Dodgers are celebrating yet another successful season. Photo Courtesy Robert Holden
The 2013 Midville Dodgers Unlimited Team capped off another successful season by winning the Long Island Midweek Men’s Baseball Championship. This Championship was their third in a row and sixth Midweek Championship in the last nine years.
Midville finished the 2013 regular season with a 13-4 record and a first place finish, earning them a bye into the best of three championship round, where they would meet one of their newer rivals, the Panthers.
The Dodgers sent Phil Spotteck to the mound in game one of the championship at SUNY Old Westbury on Aug. 15. Spotteck, who had a perfect 7-0 record during the regular season, did not disappoint. He shut down the potent Panther offense and pitched the Dodgers to a 4-3 game one victory. Spotteck went the distance allowing zero earned runs on five hits. He pitched around five Dodger errors in the fourth inning and was at his best in the sixth and seventh innings when he retired all six Panther batters he faced in order. The Dodgers received RBI singles from Kevin Rogers and John Pratt in the bottom of the fourth inning and also capitalized on a few Panther miscues to pull ahead for good in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Dodgers had put themselves one win away from a three-peat.
Game two of the series was Aug. 19 at Mitchell Field. The Dodgers jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning and never looked back. Lionel Ledesma’s two-run homerun in the third inning deflated the Panthers and, at the time, put the Dodgers up 8-0. The Dodgers pounded out 13 hits, six of them extra base hits, en route to their 12-1 championship clinching win. Veteran LHP Mike Forthofer started the game for Midville, pitching four strong innings. Andrew Kapela pitched two hitless innings and Eddie McDonnell pitched a 1-2-3 seventh inning to finish off the Panthers. The Dodger defense certainly showed up in game two, led by SS Dave Dinkelacker’s 10 assists.
Dodger veterans, OF John DiGregorio and SS Dave Dinkelacker, led the offense in the series by accounting for 7 runs scored and contributing two hits each. Dodger rookie IF Kevin Rogers put together a nice series with four hits, as did fellow rookie OF Will Horan with three hits. The always-reliable Billy Dinkelacker drove in three runs in the clincher.
After game two John Billera, the team’s catcher and founder, was thrilled with the victory.
“It’s great to see a decade of Dodger dominance”, Billera said. “We have have kept the core of this team together and built around it for the last few years. This season was probably our most dominant from start to finish. I look forward to reloading in the off-season and going for the fourth title in a row in 2014.”
