Staten Islander Gregory Bruno keeps his poise on the mound — and the batter guessing.
The lanky soon-to-be eighth-grader is so close with his Little League World Series-bound teammates that they’ve developed a sort of coded language. Some say he and his catcher, Chris Cancel, can read each other’s minds.
But there’s one thing Bruno can’t keep hidden — he’s a monster on the mound.
“The kid is the ultimate competitor,” says Joe Calabrese, manager of Mid-Island Little League team.
Bruno’s fast pitch is measured in the 75-mph range — the professional-adult equivalent of about 90 mph.
“He’s got speed pitches he hasn’t even used yet,” Calabrese says.
Mid-Island last won the Little League World Series in 1964, the only team from the five boroughs ever to do so.
And it’s returning to the World Series thanks in part to Bruno, who threw a perfect game — with no opposing batter reaching base — in the Mid-Atlantic regional competition last weekend, advancing the 11 players from the “forgotten” borough to the championships in Williamsport, Pa. On Thursday, they’ll face off against Des Moines, Iowa’s Grandview Little League team in front of tens of thousands of fans, with millions more watching at home.
That pressure won’t be a problem for Mid-Island because the team is packed with standout players, including slugger Steven Martinez, who has hit so many home runs, his mom, Venida Martinez, has lost count of the scuffed-up balls she has collected from over the fence.
“At all their tournaments, the younger kids, they wait at the end of the fence for him to hit a home run, and when he does, they bring it to me,” Venida says.
The roster is so robust that Calabrese is saving Bruno’s arm for what could be a tough second game in the double-elimination tournament.
“This is probably the strongest team I’ve ever seen,” says Al Bedford, a team coach and bookkeeper, whose son, Chris, plays second base. “Other teams you might be top-heavy, have four or five good players. But this team, top to bottom, they’re just good ballplayers.”
To understand how the tight-knit team came to be so indestructible, it’s best to start with Bruno, and his obsessive drive to dominate. As a toddler, he was obsessed with Godzilla.
The radioactive, city-smashing monster made the toddler’s “eyes light up,” says his dad, Gregory Bruno Sr. If he wasn’t watching the old Japanese movies, he’d be imagining his own, drawing Godzilla wreaking all manner of destruction.
“I have about two year’s worth of Godzilla drawings from him,” Bruno Sr. says.
But once Junior started playing baseball on his neighborhood’s youth team at 5 years old, he had a new and lasting obsession.
“When he gets something he’s passionate about, it takes over,” mom Andrea says.
The family would vacation in Florida so that Greg Jr. could spend time with his pitching coach. Winters were spent not sledding down Staten Island’s Mount Loretto, but at a strength-and-conditioning training camp. He even prefers playing the video game “MLB The Show,” over the one game most kids cannot stop talking about.
“When all your friends are playing Fortnight, you’ll be out there practicing, training” his father remembers telling him. “If this was fun all the time, everyone’d be doing it.”
Still, kids will be kids, and at St. Rita, the Staten Island Catholic school he attends, he banters with teachers such as Sister Mary Jude Chamberlain. The 73-year-old nun says young Bruno, who’s always eager to help her with errands, learned a complicated secret handshake with her this year.
“You slap the front, then back, you touch thumbs, then we point a finger, and blow on it” like a gun, says Sister Jude. “And then you put it in a holster.”
Keeping things fun despite a serious work ethic also became easier when Greg Jr. met friends equally fixated on their budding careers. When Greg was 6, he started playing on teams with kids such as catcher Cancel, now his star battery-mate.
“Chris and Gregory are like two peas in a pod,” says Cancel’s father, Nicholas.
“My son knows Bruno’s body language, he knows when to calm him down. He knows when the pitch is off and he’ll call a different pitch if he knows it’s off,” says Nicholas of his son, a straight-A student in the scholars program at PS 75.
“Cancel’s like another coach on the field — the kid is one of the smartest baseball players out there,” says coach Bedford. His player-son Chris is one of those “Swiss Army players — he’s one of the only kids who can play anything,” says his dad.
Chris has also got some special moves.
“He’s known as the best dancer,” Al says with a laugh.
Of all the players on the field, though, it might be first baseman John Calabrese Jr. giving the rest of the team the drive they need to clinch the world title. John Jr.’s father — Coach Joe’s brother — died suddenly in 2014 of a heart attack. “The team dedicated the entire season to his dad,” Venida says.
Parents say John Jr.’s attitude helps keep the team positive.
“I don’t know how the kid does it — lost his father, smiles every day,” Nicholas Cancel says.
The team on a whole is inseparable. “They have their own little language,” Bruno’s mother Andrea says.
“I don’t understand half the things they say,” says Coach Joe, who adds that he’s not sure if it was the loss of his brother that really brought them together or just that the teammates spend all their time together, even coming over to his house on summer days for pool parties.
“These kids are my family now,” Calabrese says. “I’ll do anything for them, for the rest of my life.”
And though not on the roster, Coach Joe’s son, Joe Calabrese Jr., is the team’s secret weapon: When he was their age, in 2006, his team made it to Williamsport, but didn’t last long in the tournament. As a mentor and assistant coach, Joe Jr. says he’s helping them get into the mentality to win: “I’m someone who’s been in their shoes, and someone who’s lost,” he says.
“Little League baseball does a good job of making every kid feel like it’s enough to make it this far,” Joe Jr. says. “But for this team, we don’t want that mentality to set in. We expected to be here and we’re here to win.”