It was four years ago, before the first day of the season, and the freshman was as nervous as a first-year private at an Army inspection.
Lucas Weisser was just hoping to make the Roslyn baseball varsity in ninth grade, and now he’d made it and was in the starting lineup before the game against Division.
The butterflies were zooming around his belly, and then-senior Jordan Zucker noticed.
On some teams, seniors resent the young upstarts ready to take playing time. Not here.
Zucker walked over to Weisser and gave him advice that’s never been forgotten.
“He just said that hey, if you’re nervous, that just shows this really means something to you,” Weisser recalled last week. “And it calmed me down then and it’s something I’ve never forgotten, and remind myself to this day.”
Weisser isn’t a frightened rookie anymore. Neither is Tyler Giordano, the hulking slugger who was one of his closest pals and a fellow freshman on the Bulldogs 2021 squad.
Now, these two buddies who’ve been playing together forever and trying to make some history, and become the first Roslyn players to make the playoffs all four years they’re on varsity.
Giordano, a 6-foot-1, 240-pound corner infielder and pitcher, hit .468 with 12 RBI last season, while Weisser, who has played every position but catcher, batted .453 with 14 RBI in leading the Bulldogs to the postseason.
Now the duo will try to get the Bulldogs deeper into the playoffs in Class AA.
“They’re two guys who lead by what they say and what they do, and always want the moment,” Roslyn coach Dan Freeman said. “Smart kids with great leadership qualities.”
Giordano has been leading in baseball since he was a toddler; he said he started loving baseball when he got a Little Tykes baseball set when he was 3. It was love at first smash.
“Just being in the batter’s box, that’s the best place in the world,” Giordano said. “The first time I played (in a game) and got a hit, I knew that’s exactly where I wanted to be.”
As he grew (and grew, and grew; he said his Mom always had his birth certificate on her to prove Tyler’s age), Giordano learned to love the Yankees and the value of patience. To learn about the former, his Dad, Craig, would throw Tyler pop-ups and have him yell out a different Yankees player while the ball was in the air.
The discipline in the box has also been developed; Freeman remembered with fondness a 15-pitch at-bat Giordano worked last year.
“Battle is the word I constantly repeat to myself,” Giordano said. “You can’t hit a homer every time, so you’ve gotta make the pitcher work.”
His buddy Weisser is equally devoted to the craft; after playing a bit of soccer as a kid thanks to a father who played the sport collegiately, Weisser found baseball as his true passion
He is uniquely valuable to the Bulldogs, as he’s played every position but catcher in his career. Last year, when Roslyn needed a reliable second baseman, Weisser got the call even though he’d never played it before.
“Just whatever my team needs me to do, to win, tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said.
“He’s just a great athlete with a very high baseball IQ,” Giordano said of Weisser.
Both Giordano and Weisser have pretty good “real world” IQ’s too; Giordano is headed to Indiana University’s business school in the fall, while Weisser will matriculate to the Wharton School at Penn.
Before that, though, there’s more work to do, including Weisser’s volunteer efforts with the Challengers Program, which hosts baseball clinics for children with special needs.
“Being here together with Tyler, we’ve known each other forever and we know this is our last chance to really go far,” Weisser said. “We’ve been waiting for this for three years; can’t wait to see what happens.”