Elmira Pioneers vs Brockport Riverbats (Jul 26, 2007)

July 27, 2007

BROCKPORT, NY - PJ Saporito, the left-handed ace starting pitcher for the New Jersey Institute of Technology baseball team, made history Thursday night, tossing the first perfect game in the history of the New York Collegiate Baseball League, a summer circuit that was founded in 1978 as a development league for Major League Baseball.

A league that is similar in mission to the older Cape Cod League, the NYCBL includes college stars from all over the country who compete on teams based in towns throughout upstate New York.

The NYCBL had 27 players taken in the June 7 Major League Draft. Four current and past members of Saporito's Brockport Riverbats teams were among the 27 players selected by big league teams last month.

Saporito, a graduate of New Milford (NJ) High School who is headed for his junior year at NJIT, threw the perfect game in an 8-0 win by his Brockport team over the Elmira Pioneers, who came into the contest as the top hitting team in the circuit.

Retiring all 27 batters he faced, Saporito recorded five strikeouts, 13 fly outs and nine ground outs.

The two biggest threats to his gem came on a fly out to center field and a pop out to second base. In the fifth inning, Brockport center fielder Sean O'Bannion went a long way to track down a fly ball off the bat of Elmira's Jake Wells. Leading off the ninth inning, David Valesente blooped the ball over the head of Brockport second baseman Chad King, but King made a nice catch for the 25th out of the game.

The final out of the game was a called third strike.

Saporito's masterpiece improved Brockport to 21-19 and a tie for fourth place in the 12-team NYCBL, which has a four-team postseason playoff. Brockport has two games remaining.

Saporito is one of two Highlanders on the Riverbats, as NJIT classmate Matt Melody has served as the team's closer.

Thursday night's brilliance by Saporito follows a fine 2007 college season at NJIT, as he went 6-5 with a 5.95 ERA in the Highlanders first season of NCAA Division I competition. The southpaw struck out 62 in 75.2 innings for NJIT.

Included in his 2007 collegiate accomplishments were the school's first complete game shutout in Division I, a 2-0, five-hit, nine-strikeout effort against New York Tech on May 4 that earned him New Jersey Division I Pitcher of the Week honors. He closed his sophomore season on May 25 with a 7-4 win over South Dakota State, which came in with 34 wins, including a nine-game winning streak and which had scored 50 runs in its previous three games.

As a freshman, he was the starting and winning pitcher as NJIT captured the 2006 ECAC Division II championship in the Highlanders' final game at that level.

The 21-year old Saporito helped New Milford High to the state Group I title as a junior in 2004 and he was named North Jersey Player of the Year. He was a two-time all-Bergen honoree and was all-state first team in 2004.

Ranked in the top 10 of his high school class at graduation, he is an engineering major at NJIT.

The Highlanders, who won 15 games in their first season of Division I play, are tentatively scheduled to open the 2008 season in a late February tournament hosted by the University of South Carolina Upstate.

(Special thanks to Stan Lehman, Director of Media for the NYCBL, and to Bob Maxwell, Assistant AD at the University of Buffalo, who witnessed the game. Both men provided the game details and background information used in this story)