No matter what, he still had fun.
Poly Prep pitcher Oliver McCarthy doesn’t take things too seriously — even when he’s one pitch short of history.
The senior ace saw his no-hitter broken up — by the final batter he faced — as he led his team to a 6–0 victory over Hackley on May 8.
But McCarthy never stopped smiling, and cheered as loudly as ever when his team won. He was proud of his performance, of course, but in the end, winning is what mattered.
“I left a 1–1 pitch over the middle when I knew I should have had that away,” said McCarthy, who will head to Duke next year. “But, yeah, my team backed me up with the bats today. I had a really good time. It’s always fun.”
McCarthy didn’t know he’d be getting the start until a few hours before he threw his very first pitch, but the southpaw didn’t miss a beat. He simply focused on throwing strikes, getting ahead in the count, and settling into a rhythm.
“He wasn’t trying to bring it, we talked about just locating and he did it,” said Poly Prep coach Matt Roventini. “He understood what his job was. Baseball with wood bats and New York City in the wind, if you locate, you’re hard to hit.”
McCarthy did his job from the get-go, regularly tossing first-pitch strikes and keeping the Hackley hitters from finding any momentum in the batter’s box. It also helped that his defense had his back throughout the game, making some big-time plays in the field.
“I located my fastball really well, I threw a lot of strikes,” said McCarthy, who finished with 10 strikeouts. “I threw curveballs and change-ups when I needed to. I didn’t try to overthrow.”
Poly gave McCarthy a bit of offensive assurance in the fourth inning on Nick Storz’s two-run homer over the left-field fence. The Blue Devils added four more runs in the fifth, finally hitting its stride after some early-game miscues on the basepaths.
“We were kind of sleep-walking through the first three innings, we were getting caught on the bases a little bit,” said Storz, who also chipped in with a two-run single in the fifth-inning outburst. “Then the next inning after we got four on the board and that’s all we needed.”
McCarthy continued to pitch well down the stretch, determined not to listen to the “no hitter” muttering in the dugout. He struck out the first two Hackley batters in the top of the seventh, but then gave up the game-changing single to Danny Hernandez.
It was disappointing — McCarthy would have loved to have tossed a no-hitter in a season that’s been chockfull of accomplishments — but he didn’t dwell on what might-have-been. He pitched well, and had fun. That’s all he’s ever trying to do, he said.
“I was trying to get away from the [no-hitter] jinx,” McCarthy said. “But it’s inevitable.”
