Boys of Summer: Chief Among Rivals, Mount Kisco Youth Baseball Team Wins Championship
When a general has a battle plan, it’s sometimes prudent to keep the broader strategy from the soldiers.
That was Coach Steve Grasso’s thinking when he devised his blueprint for the Mt. Kisco Chiefs 9U summer season in the Greater Hudson Valley Baseball League.
Grasso decided to schedule games in the regular season against elite teams playing superior division ball. The young team would endure some battle scars, facing the best players in the league, finishing the regular season with just 4 wins against 7 losses after opening with a 3-0 record. But come playoff time, when the boys squared off against players in their own bracket, they would find the competition far easier to handle.
The plan worked exactly as it was drawn up, with the Vail Buick GMC sponsored squad taking the bracket’s top honors — the first Mt. Kisco team to do so in the Greater Hudson Valley Baseball League — easily winning the 9B Silver championship game 11-2 on Aug. 4 against the Cortlandt Nationals.
But not advertising the long-term plan to the players was by design.
“Playing against tough teams made it a great training experience for the kids,” Grasso said of arranging an intentionally difficult regular season schedule in advance of the playoffs. “I did keep them ignorant to the strategy because I didn’t want to give them an excuse to lose.”
Also assisted by coaches Frank Fanelli, Pete Stonecipher and John Bainlardi, the team’s triumph wasn’t just a significant moment for the managers and their players. It was also a big win for Mount Kisco Little League, which is planning a celebration for the team during its upcoming fall travel season.
“It is a nice accomplishment for a relatively small town program,” said Mount Kisco Little League executive board member Ken Diorio. “MKB has been in GHVBL for about four years and this is our first championship. The league has teams ranging from small town teams to large club teams, so it’s nice to have this win. 9U has a tight team that is in their second year together as a core (and) they came together at the right time. We can’t wait to see how they develop over the next couple of years.”
Observers of the Mt. Kisco group noticed an extra level of passion displayed by all the stakeholders.
The road to the championship wasn’t without some speed bumps. Grasso had to grapple with pitch count limits, a challenge he isn’t accustom to negotiating when previously coaching his currently middle school aged daughter’s KLBS softball teams, where having only a few pitchers on the roster is more manageable. (Grasso’s youngest children, twin sons John and Luke, played on the championship team). Also, at one point in the season, the heat seemed to be getting to the youngsters. And vacationing players presented some challenging logistics, forcing the team to organize double headers in order to complete enough games to qualify for the post-season.
But Grasso stressed how the roster was populated by a special group of kids who rooted hard for each other through and through, fueling the team’s eventual success.
“They played their hearts out every inning, every out,” Grasso observed. “There was no quit in these kids, they were all gas and no brake all season.”
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