Utica Unicorns cement magical season with championship hardware

UTICA — No matter where they finish or how well they do in the regular season, the Utica Unicorns always find a way to get the job done when it matters most.

The Unicorns finished third in the inaugural regular season of the United Shore Professional Baseball League before winning the championship, their first of five in the league’s eight seasons, and 2023 was another storybook season for Unicorns manager Jim Essian and his squad.

“I think there’s a lot of luck involved,” Essian said. “I really do. Yeah, we’re winning some championships, and we probably should’ve won in 2022, but I think a lot of it is luck and some of it is my experience of knowing how to put a ball team together. I’ve been around the block a few times. A lot of it is luck, but I attribute the success I’ve had to the players I’ve had.”

Finishing last in the league with a 17-26 record, the Unicorns sprinkled some magic onto the postseason, winning three straight playoff games including a 3-1 victory over the Westside Woolly Mammoths on Sept. 9 at Jimmy John’s Field to earn the team’s fourth championship in the past five seasons.

United Shore Professional Baseball League Pitcher of the Year Andrew Huffman took the mound for the Unicorns, tossing two innings and earning four strikeouts.

Huffman had thrown just two days prior, facing 20 batters, in the team’s 8-7 quarterfinals win over the Birmingham Bloomfield Beavers, but Huffman said he was ready to give his team everything he had.

“Going into the championship game, I wanted to give our team whatever I had left in the tank,” Huffman said. “It’s not ideal to have that amount of volume in a short period of time, but at this point in our careers, we don’t know how many championship games we have left to play. It felt like a no-brainer.”

A bright spot for the Unicorns all season was their pitching staff, and they showed up when the team needed them most as Conner Tomasic, Garrett Bonnett, Matt Colucci, and Ben Krizen all threw impressively in the championship game to lead the Unicorns.

Colucci was awarded Most Valuable Player for the championship game after throwing three hitless innings and fanning seven.

While the Unicorns offense was less than impressive all season, it came into the championship game red hot, averaging just over seven runs per game in its last four matchups.

The Unicorns scored out the gate early as Lucas Goodin, Phil Matulia, and Felix Aberouette all tallied RBI singles in the third inning to give the Unicorns an early 3-0 lead. Patrick Baggett scored the game’s first run for the Unicorns after hitting a triple earlier in the inning.

Every fairy tale ending has a little bit of adversity before it, and the Unicorns stared down elimination early in the playoffs as they trailed the Beavers 7-1 in the fourth inning in the quarterfinals.

Aberouette started the comeback with a solo home run in the sixth, and the entire Unicorns offense followed suit as the team scored two in the seventh, one in the eight, and three in the ninth, as Goodin drove in the game-deciding RBI to win 8-7.

After allowing seven runs by the fourth inning, the Unicorns pitching staff allowed only two hits the remainder of the game as Tristan Harvin, Jace Baumann, Colucci and Krizen shut down the Beavers offense.

From there, the Unicorns felt unbeatable going into the semifinals.

“Honestly, after we pulled that one off, I thought there was no way we were losing now,” Unicorns outfielder Nick Pastore said. “It was just kind of the mindset, like, ‘We won the first one, might as well just win it all now.’”

Pastore, who was up for USPBL Player of the Year, paced the offense in the Unicorns’ 7-2 semifinals win over the Eastside Diamond Hoppers with a 4-for-4 day at the plate, driving in two RBIs. Aberouette tallied a hit and three RBIs while Goodin went 3-for-5 with three runs scored. Jacob Harsany fanned seven batters in four innings of work.

The Unicorns should extend a special thank-you to SUNY Brockport, the State University of New York-Brockport, for providing three key players in Colucci, Pastore and Huffman.

All three players played their 2023 Division III collegiate season at SUNY Brockport and missed the Unicorns’ season opener to finish their college baseball season.

“It was just a fortunate event that one of their coaches at the little university at SUNY in New York was a trustworthy contact for me,” Essian said. “He said, ‘I got three guys here and they can play,’ and they could play.”

In their first season in the USPBL, there’s no doubt they made their marks in the league as newcomers.

As players head off to play for their respective college teams or pursue their careers in another league, the Unicorns will look to defend their championship title with some new names and faces in 2024.

As difficult as the Unicorns season got, the bond the team built together in a short time was something special, and the team will look to replicate that next season.

“That was the thing that kept us in it,” Huffman said. “Even when we were losing, we were still having a good time and enjoying our time out there with each other. I think that helped a lot. We all liked each other, and we didn’t want to go home.”