Nutley Little League Intermediate 50/70 (13U) coach Albert Prodigalidad knows this age group often presents a bit of an unknown due to it being the first age group where the players from Nutley American and Nutley East come together to play on the same team.
While the merger boosts the talent pool it does come with some questions about chemistry.
“They’ve all played baseball for a few years so you could see the talent that’s been developing within the team throughout the years,” said Prodigalidad. “It just started to all come together this year.
“It was a little intriguing to see how well they would gel, how quick would the chemistry work. As we got closer to the games within the first few practices, it was pretty clear that the chemistry was there. And this team, they were pretty good.”
Pretty good would seem to be an understatement.
This Nutley all-star group’s first summer together went all the way to Middletown where it finished third in the state.
Nutley outlasted Bloomfield in a three-game series, winning the first and third games to take home the District 8 title. It then stormed its way to a Region 2 championship with consecutive mercy rule victories over Washington Park of Jersey City.
The state tournament began with an emphatic 14-0 victory over Bergenfield. Nutley’s run came to an end with a 7-6 loss to South Vineland followed by a 12-1 defeat to Middletown.
“In the districts, we played Bloomfield and they were a very good team and they gave us some pretty tough games,” said Prodigalidad. “And after we beat them, you could just see their confidence was just sky high going into the sectionals. Immediately after we beat Bloomfield, we kind of knew we could take this pretty far.”
In many of these games, Nutley jumped out to quick leads thanks to a dynamic top of the lineup with leadoff hitter Jack Conway, followed by Michael DeJianne and Nick Rivera.
“That was everything. They were the table setters. They were the ones that got on base,” said Prodigalidad. “We scored runs in bunches because of them. It was their ability to get on base and then steal bases, hit home runs (that led us).”
DeJianne and Conway were two of Nutley’s main starters on the mound. Travis Gonick, the lone rising seventh grade on the roster, also was a key starting pitcher and Rivera was a primary reliever.
When not on the mound in relief, Rivera the starting catcher with Maximus Ruiz also catching.
Anthony Berardesco started at first base. At second base were Luke Priolo and Gregory Crumrine while DeJianne and Gonick were the main guys at third base and shortstop.
Conway started in center field for Nutley, while in the corners were Austin Prodigalidad, Luke Finkelstein, Matthew Espinales and Harrison Robertazzi.
Nicolas Rivera, Maximus Ruiz and Emmett Vespa all saw plenty of at-bats.
Travis Gonick and Mike Berardesco also served as coaches on the team.
“We told them, even though we fell short of our goal, you guys finished third and made the state finals in New Jersey,” Prodigalidad said. “These teams that you guys lost to, they’re really, really historically good teams down there in South Jersey. So it was pretty fun to see what they were able to accomplish.”
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Jason Bernstein | Observer Sports Writer
Jason Bernstein joined The Observer as its sports writer in March 2022, following the retirement of Jim Hague. He has a wealth of sports-writing experience, including for NJ Advance Media (nj.com, The Jersey Journal, The Star-Ledger.)