ZAGSBLOG

Lyndhurst Wins State Title; Bosco is Unbeaten

TOMS RIVER – The blistering temperatures in the upper 90s were the same for both teams in the Group 1 state championship game at Toms River High School South, but Robbinsville had the added obstacle of having to face Glenn Flora’s heat.

Flora, a junior right-hander, struck out 11 and walked six over 6 1/3 innings while pitching a three-hitter as Lyndhurst downed Robbinsville, 7-3, to win the school’s first state title in the playoff era.

Read the full story here. Read about Bosco's perfect season here.

State Baseball Finals: Lyndhurst Makes Special Run

The celebratory procession of police cars, fire trucks, buses and cars wound through Lyndhurst on Tuesday evening, passing restaurants and storefronts, waving townspeople and cheering fans, before stopping at Jennie Servideo's house on Copeland Avenue.

"You think I was an actress or something," cracked Servideo, the 83-year-old mother of Lyndhurst baseball coach Butch Servideo and a former secretary of the high school booster club.

Jennie had always attended her son's baseball games, from his time in Little League to his semipro days and through his 23-year tenure as the coach of the Golden Bears. Now battling cancer in her spine, she has difficulty walking and hasn't been to a game this season.

Read the full story here. And click here for Saturday's slate of games in Toms River.

Goitz, Bears Win Passaic Title

WAYNE – Two months after breaking his leg and wondering whether he would ever throw another pitch for the Hawthorne baseball team, Matt Goitz put on a truly inspired performance in the Passaic County championship game.

Goitz caught Steve Thomas looking for the final out of the game, his career-high 15^th strikeout of the afternoon, to touch off an exuberant celebration as the No. 9 Bears knocked off No. 2 Wayne Hills, 5-3, before several hundred fans at Passaic Tech.

Making his second start of the season, and third appearance on the mound since coming back from the injury, Goitz (3-0) allowed nine hits and two walks while throwing 120 pitches to earn the Bill Vacca award, given to the most outstanding player in the semifinals and final.

“I could never have imagined that this would happen, with a career-high in strikeouts,” said the soft-spoken Goitz, headed to Monmouth on scholarship. “That’s just great.”

Passaic Baseball Scores

Unless you count No. 9 Hawthorne over No. 8 Passaic, there were no upsets today in the first round of the Passaic County baseball tournament. Here are the scores, setting up some interesting quartefinals. My picks for the quarters are below.

Wayne Valley 2, Lakeland 1

Wayne Hills 10, Hawthorne Christian 0

Passaic Valley 9, Manchester 0

Eastside 5, Kennedy 3

Eastern Christian 9, Clifton 8

Hawthorne 5, Passaic 2

West Milford 8, Passaic Tech 5

Pompton Lakes 7, DePaul 6

Finally safe at home

PATERSON – Each night before he went to bed, Edwin Padilla kissed the photo of his twin boys. And every morning when he woke up in his tent in Iraq, he feared anew for his life.

"Every day," he said, "you never knew what was going to happen."

Padilla, 46, served as a supervisor in a maintenance battalion in Iraq for a year beginning in the fall of 2004. In his tent in the middle of a war zone, he kept that picture of the opening day of Little League, when the boys were 7, on the nightstand next to his bed.

Read the full story here.

Introducing....JAMES JEFFERSON AIRPLANE ZAGORIA

Dear Friends and ZAGSBLOG Readers --

We here at ZAGSBLOG are proud to announce the birth of James Jefferson Airplane Zagoria, who came into the world at about 11:20 Thursday night weighing in at 9 pounds, 3 ounces. Our nurse Danielle says he's the biggest boy she's seen here yet! Mother and son are both doing well....We'll have him up tossing the Frisbee and playing tennis in no time.

(For those wondering, the Jefferson is in honor of Jen's brother, Jeff, a former World Champion wakeboarder and current ESPN wakeboard personality, and the Airplane is for her father, Dick, a former Vietnam Marine pilot and a heckuva tennis player.)

Best wishes to you all.

PV Earns Top Seed; Passaic Baseball Predictions

Passaic Valley will head into the Passaic County baseball tournament as the top seed for the second straight season. Coach John Mazzo hopes the end result is the same.

"I thought we deserved the top seed being the returning champs and having the best record," Mazzo told the Herald News after Monday night's seeding meeting at Passaic Tech.

"I think this County is so up in the air. Anybody can beat anybody this year. You have a lot of teams that have one good pitcher and the way the tournament is set up [one game a week through the semifinals], you can ride one kid for three games."

See below for the complete schedule and predictions...

Mock Passaic Baseball Seeds

The seeding meeting for the Passaic County baseball tournament takes place Monday night at Passaic Tech, with defending champion Passaic Valley (11-3) and Wayne Hills (10-4) expected to be the top two seeds.

The tournament begins May 10 and continues with quarterfinal action May 17 and the semis on May 24. The finals are slated for May 26, Memorial Day, at PCT.

(Personal note: My wife, Jen, is due with our second child May 5 so I will probably be out of action until at least the semis, but I hope to be back then.)

With its 11-2 win over Caldwell Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., PV improved to 11-3 and head coach John Mazzo says his team should be No. 1.

"It makes us 11-3 so we go into the meeting with the best record and being that we're the defending county champs, I'd like to think that they would give us respect and make us the top seed," Mazzo said.

Hills coach Chris Ianneillo says if his team beats Old Tappan, it should be the No. 1 seed.

"If we win (Monday), I think we're one," he said. "I think our 11-4 record should be better than (Passaic Valley's 11-3)."

Here is how we see think the seeding should play out.

Goitz to Monmouth

Matt Goitz isn't sure when he will play his next baseball game for Hawthorne, but he knows where he's going to college.

The 6-foot, 170-pound Goitz has accepted a partial scholarship to Monmouth University, choosing the Division 1 school over Rider, Division 2 New Haven and Division 3 programs Ramapo, Rutgers-Newark and William Paterson.

Read the full story here.

**Here is this week's Herald News baseball notebook, with items on Lyndhurst, Wallington, Becton, Fair Lawn, Wayne Hills and Pompton Lakes.

From Silk City to West Texas

Living on the plains in West Texas, Jonathan Castillo misses Spanish food the most.

Instead of rice, beans and chicken, Castillo and his cohorts now consume steak, mashed potatoes and salad.

"You kind of miss that because in Spanish culture you get that every day," Castillo said by phone from Texas. "You expect that when you get into your house."

Castillo and cousins Andrew and Anthony Collazo are a long way from home. It is more than 1,800 miles from Paterson to Big Spring, Texas, where the three young men from the Silk City are playing baseball at Howard College (36-4), the No. 2-ranked team in the National Junior College Athletic Association Division I baseball rankings.

Read the full story here.