Labrozzi returns to Sag Harbor for summer ball

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Mary, Mike and Joseph Labrozzi at their Sag Harbor home. OLIVER PETERSON

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Whalers power-hitter and first baseman Mike Labrozzi admits that he sleeps with his bats and puts new ones in gym socks, but despite his quirks, the superstitious player and Sag Harbor native is one of the top hitters in Hamptons Collegiate Baseball.

Labrozzi is the only player in the Kaiser league to hit a home run out of his team’s home field, Mashashimuet Park, and he’s already logged five doubles and 13 hits this season and leads the league in both categories. He’s second in the league with nine RBIs and only three players in the division have earned more than his 21 bases this summer.

All the while, Labrozzi has depended on lucky trinkets and rituals, but he said that kind of behavior isn’t unusual in baseball. Along with keeping his strange bedfellows, Labrozzi always wears his grandfather’s wedding ring on a chain around his neck and never changes his T-shirt and pants during a hitting streak. He hung a Buddha medal on the fence for 56 straight games during the summer season in high school and never went without a hit.

The 22-year-old will be a senior at Farmingdale State College in the fall, but right now he’s thrilled to be playing for Sag Harbor. “I live just two roads over [from the ballfield],” Labrozzi said after a recent home game. “It’s awesome.” A short time earlier, he hit a bomb of a double that led the Whalers to victory and sent the Westhampton Aviators home with their first loss of the season.

This is the first summer Labrozzi has played in Sag Harbor since graduating from Pierson High School in 2005. He was a four-time All League, one-time All County and three-time team MVP for the Pierson Whalers and, at age 16, his summer travel team, the Long Island Tides, was ranked number one in the state.

Labrozzi lives with his parents, Joseph and Mary, and commutes to school from his childhood home in the village. Baseball has been a lifelong passion for Labrozzi and his parents have become his biggest fans and supporters. “My parents aren’t athletic at all,” he said, noting that they never pushed him toward the sport.

“We have traveled for 11 years with him,” his mother said. “It’s probably the best experience of our lives.”

She and her husband said they’ve watched Labrozzi play in several states and enjoyed seeing him excel and make lifelong friends. “He’s never quit,” Ms. Labrozzi said.

“God gives certain people gifts,” she said, explaining that her son was born for baseball. Though she had little interest in the game, she watched every minute of the legendary 1986 Mets/Red Sox World Series while she was pregnant with Labrozzi and often credits it as the reason her son became a player. “It was the best season I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Labrozzi said, noting that she’s since become a fan.

Labrozzi, who is a Yankees fan, went to Florida Southern to play junior varsity baseball on an academic scholarship after high school, but the college dropped its JV program that summer and he was left without a team. Labrozzi dropped out by Christmas and set out in search of a school where he could play.

“I just wanted to know I was going somewhere to play,” he said. Labrozzi was recruited by Farmingdale State’s new head coach Keith Osik and in a few short years the Rams made history at the school. The team’s record was 7-21 before Osik took over and it climbed to 19-19, reaching a 500 average for the first time ever in Labrozzi’s rookie season.

He took a season off due to a shoulder injury, but the tenacious player battled the odds and returned the following year.

The Rams won their first-ever Skyline Conference Baseball Championship in 2008 and finished the season with 26-18 overall record. Labrozzi and his team won their second consecutive Skyline Conference Championship in May of this year and then won the New York Regional Championship and advanced to the NCAA Division III College World Series for the first time in Farmingdale State history. They were eliminated from the series after two straight losses and finished the season with a 30-17 overall record, but the Rams had already achieved more than any of their predecessors.

Labrozzi was named Skyline Player of the Week for baseball in April of 2008 after going 9 for 13 (.692) with two doubles, a home run, five RBIs and four runs scored. He helped his team sweep Purchase and defeat

College of Southern Idaho

to earn the top seed in that year’s Skyline Tournament.

While he shines on the field, Labrozzi is also an all-star in the classroom at Farmingdale State. He maintains a spot on the dean’s list with a 3.59 GPA in the business management program and won this year’s Chancellor’s 
Scholar-Athlete Award in recognition of his “outstanding academic excellence and outstanding academic achievement.”