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ROTTERDAM — The unassisted triple play is one of the rarest feats in baseball.
So rare, in fact, that in the moment when 7-year-old Rotterdam Carman Little Leaguer Dominic Mastrogiovanni completed one of his own, he was completely unaware of it.
“I didn’t even know it happened,” Mastrogiovanni said.
Mastrogiovanni turned his unassisted triple play on July 9 as the RC Little League 8U All-Stars played in the championship game of Scotia-Glenville’s Friendship Tournament.
With Rotterdam Carman leading 2-0 and the bases loaded, a line drive was hit right to Mastrogiovanni at second base. He snagged the ball out of the air for the first out, tagged the runner who was sprinting to second base for the second out, then stepped on the second base bag before the runner headed for third could get back, completing the triple play and ending the inning.
“Everyone was like, ‘Did that really just happen?’” said Eric Mastrogiovanni, Dominic’s father and the team’s coach. “The umpires went to the middle of the field, they conferred with each other and they kind of figured out that it really happened the way we thought it did.”
“It was really cool,” Dominic said.
It was a proud accomplishment for the 7-year-old Mastrogiovanni, who started playing baseball at 4. This year, he made the RC Clippers 8U travel team and the RC 8U All-Star team. His Skip’s Auto rec league team won the Farm Division championship this season, and prior to his triple play heroics aiding the tournament win in Scotia, he was also part of the RC 8U All-Stars’ tournament win at Gloversville.
In the history of Major League Baseball, few things are as rare as the unassisted triple play. There have been 24 perfect games — the most recent by Domingo German of the New York Yankees on June 28 — and 18 instances where a player hit four home runs in one game.
Comparatively, there have been just 14 unassisted triple plays in MLB history. The most recent — turned by Eric Bruntlett of the Philadelphia Phillies in an Aug. 23, 2009 game against the New York Mets — occurred well before Mastrogiovanni was even born.
Maybe that’s why his next baseball goal is pretty simple.
“I want to do it again,” he said.
“He thinks it’s so easy,” said Marcie Mastrogiovanni, Dominic’s mother. “He said, ‘It’s so easy, mom. I’ll just do it again. It’s no big deal.’”
Contact Adam Shinder at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Adam_Shinder.
Categories: -Sports-, News, Rotterdam, Schenectady County
July 17, 2023 at 10:00PM
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