Staying home right move for Upper Darby’s Zupito
RADNOR » Chris Zupito knows the question is coming. The pairing of his current school, Upper Darby, and the one he’s committed to for college, NC State, offers a slight dissonance in their baseball track records.
And when the big private school on the block is, quite literally, a regional power on the same block, yeah there will be questions.
There never has been to Zupito, though.
“Upper Darby, that’s my hometown,” Zupito said Friday, after starting on the mound for the Delaware County Carpenter Cup team. “The big school on the block was Bonner. Everyone said, ‘go there.’ In my opinion, fighting through battles, making a bad team good is way more of an honor to do and more of a man thing to do than going to a team that goes 25-0 every year. For me down the road, being at a team that loses a lot and being able to make them a winning team is a good thing that I can take with me.”
Zupito is repping that hometown proudly, not at national baseball showcases but at the 36th edition of Philadelphia’s premier high school showcase. He got the ball for the first three innings Friday in the second round, moved to Archbishop Carroll with the ballpark at FDR Park waterlogged from Thursday’s storms. While Zupito put Delco on the path toward victory, a threerun top of the ninth by the InterAc/Independents instead sent them to the semifinals at Citizens Bank Park, 8-6.
Against top opposition, Zupito was excellent. He shouldered the responsibility from the start and gave up two hits and one unearned run in three innings. He struck out five, including two punchouts in the first inning to escape a basesloaded jam.
“It’s great,” Zupito said. “You’ve got players from your side, their side that are the best from around here. And it’s really an honor to start off a game and do it strong.”
Zupito was one of only two players from Upper Darby selected to the Delco team (the other, Chris Chung, didn’t pitch Friday.) He was playing against Inter-Ac opponents that had once sniffed around for his services.
The reason Zupito has stayed at Upper Darby is that he’s part of a core group that he hopes to see restore the program to prominence, under head coach and Delco Carpenter Cup assistant Tom Carey. Much of the core of the team is former UDHL players who’ve been together for years. Zupito, a captain as a junior this spring, is a willing leader in taking a team that went 1-15 in 2019 on to great things.
It hasn’t yet come off — the Royals were 6-10 last year, then 3-13 this spring — but the hope is that Zupito’s class could grow together into something more for next spring.
“It’s wonderful to have him,” Carey said. “He was a captain this year as a junior. He definitely carries a lot of weight in the program. Even though this year didn’t go the way we wanted it to, he still performed very well. It’s special because he’s going to the high school in his hometown and he’s with all the kids he grew up with and they’re all his best friends and he’s sticking with them.”
Zupito’s efforts nearly got Delco to Citizens Bank Park for Sunday’s Carpenter Cup semifinals. Delco supplied enough hits to get there with 16 safeties. But they stranded 13 runners, including eight in scoring position. They loaded the bases three straight innings without scoring from the second to the fourth. Delco had hits in every inning but the first, when they pushed across a run on two errors, and the ninth, when Penn Charter’s Scott Doran struck out the side to nail down the win.
“It is sad to lose like that, especially with all those hits and runners left on,” Delco centerfielder Alex Pak of Strath Haven said. “But I think we played a great game overall. Could’ve done better, but it
was a good job by us.”
Delco led 3-2 after five, thanks to a Reed Farrell (Garnet Valley) double, a Dom Carafa (Marple Newtown) RBI groundout and Farrell scampering home on an overthrow by the first baseman. RBI singles by Justin Brennan (Marple) and Evan Boebert (Haverford) in the sixth extended the edge to 5-2.
The Inter-Acs tied the game with three runs in the seventh, Trey Tiffan’s RBI double the big blow. Delco went back up in the eighth when Carafa dunked in a single to score Tigers teammate Jason Bennett.
But Delco’s Josh Lillis ran into trouble in the top of the ninth. It started with nine-man Fran Turner of Shipley fighting off five foul balls in a 10-pitch at-bat. The 10th, he roped to left center for a double.
“That was a good momentumstarter because the pitcher threw 10-plus pitches,” Malvern’s Tiffan said. “He was working him. That was good for the rest of our team.”
Tiffan tied it with a sac fly to left. Then the Friends Central duo of Alejandro Flores and Darius Adkins clubbed RBI doubles off the
wall to make it 8-6.
Ridley teammates Connor Kelly and Bryant Cauthorn led the first Delco platoon with two hits each, out of the eight and nine spots. Boebert had two hits and Carafa two RBIs for the second group.
Zupito was followed on the bump by Haverford’s Ethan Mahan, who gave up a run in twoplus innings. Sean Williams of Springfield stranded both runners he inherited in the sixth but was touched for three unearned runs in the seventh thanks to a dropped fly ball before Tiffan’s RBI double.
Doran, the fifth Inter-Ac pitcher, got the win. Charlie Oschell of Malvern Prep started and gave up five hits but just one unearned run in 2.1 innings before Springside Chestnut Hill’s Gabe Olsen got the next eight outs with four hits and two runs (one earned) surrendered. Turner and Luke Buscaglia scored two runs each for the second Inter-Ac unit. Episcopal Academy’s Tyler Beaulieu doubled on the first unit, but he was thrown out at the plate on a fly ball to Pak in center.