The Rockaway Wave
Originally Published September 19, 2025
To start the top half of every inning of a Brooklyn Cyclones home game, the same chant rings out.
“Three up, three down!” David S. Pecoraro, known around Maimonides Park as “Wolf,” yells from his seat right behind the Brooklyn dugout while holding three fingers up and three fingers down at the appropriate times. “Let’s go Cyclones!”
Wolf is a Coney Island staple. King Henry, Brooklyn’s in-house master of ceremonies, and all the other regulars know him well, as do the players and coaches.
“I love him,” Cyclones manager Gilbert Gómez said. “He’s faithful. He comes in almost every game and gives us the support that we need. We need a fanbase like that, a fanbase that’s gonna support you. At the end of the day, we’re gonna put on a good show for them, and having those types of fans really helps us get motivated to be able to play.”
He’s been coming to Cyclones games since the team’s inaugural 2001 season, and might know more about the team than anybody. He remembers how easy it was to tell that Michael Conforto would be a good ballplayer. He remembers thinking the same about Brett Baty, as well as being in Brooklyn when Baty hit his first MLB home run in Atlanta.
He thinks the same of Chris Suero, who played 161 games as a Cyclone from 2024-2025. He even has Suero’s Bark in the Park jersey from 2024 and his Superman jersey from 2025, the final special jersey he wore before being promoted to Binghamton.
“I love that kid,” Wolf said. “Where else do you find a catcher who can steal bases, beat out bunts, beat out infield hits — a catcher, mind you — hit for power, AND play left field, AND play first base credibly?”
For $11 a game, Wolf sits in the first seat of the first row behind the Cyclones’ dugout. He has season tickets close enough to talk to the manager, coaches and players. During Game 2 of the Division Series, he talked to Cyclones catcher Vincent Perozo and bench coach Eduardo Núñez about how the song “La Bamba” played over the loudspeakers is by the band Los Lobos, and how the opposing pitcher is named Inmer Lobo.
Lobo, a Spanish word, means wolf.
“¡Adiós, Señor Lobo!” Wolf shouts as his name-mate is pulled mid-inning after allowing two baserunners, surely making one Wolf happier than the other.
“Sean Manaea, when he was on rehab here, he said he could hear me from the mound,” Wolf said. “I said that’s nothing, on a night in April, they’ve heard me in the visitors’ bullpen. I’ve got cafeteria voice.”
He’s close enough to the dugout to know that Noah Hall, who was probably the best pitcher on the Cyclones playoff roster but didn’t pitch in either of the first two games, would be the starting pitcher for Game 3 if necessary. Hall told him himself. Wolf’s even surprised that he hasn’t seen him eating Chinese food yet, because according to him, Hall likes having Chinese food the night before a start.
He keeps score every game and has for every baseball game he has attended since 1971. He was here for the combined no-hitter the Cyclones threw in 2024, and has been here for 15 of the 17 walk-off home runs in Brooklyn Cyclones history. He even knows the two he missed off the top of his head: Tony Piazza in 2003 and Joe Bonfe in 2010.
He and his son had tickets to Game 2 of the New York-Penn League Championship on September 12, 2001, which was cancelled due to the 9/11 attacks. Instead, the Cyclones and Williamsport Crosscutters were named co-champions. That made Brooklyn’s New York-Penn League Championship in 2019 a moment almost two decades in the making.
“Someone gave me a bottle with a swig of Champagne in it, so I actually got to celebrate that,” Wolf said. “That was an insane memory. It was great that I got to share it with my son. It took 19 years to do it, but we did it right.”
Wolf estimates he’s been to about 60 games this season alone, including some road trips. He’s seen this 2025 Cyclones team at its best in the first half and at its worst in the second half.
“It’s a tale of two seasons,” Wolf said. “And this may, in fact, now be turning into a tale of three seasons.”
In the first half of the season, the Cyclones had more talent on the roster than maybe any other team in Minor League Baseball. Carson Benge, Jacob Reimer and A.J. Ewing all had breakout seasons at the plate. Suero and Jesús Báez were also big offensive contributors, and the pitching staff was loaded with arms like Jonathan Santucci, R.J. Gordon, Will Watson, Nate Dohm and Brendan Girton.
All of those players are gone. Most were promoted to Double-A (and Benge then again to Triple- A), and Báez and Dohm were dealt at the MLB trade deadline.
Wolf was here for that, too.
“Jesús Báez was on second base, and was traded to St. Louis for Mr. Hells Bells, God help me,” Wolf, a Mets fan since 1969, said. “God help us all.”
The first-half Cyclones, the team that clinched the playoff spot, in essence did not exist when it was time to cash in that playoff berth.
The second-half Cyclones struggled. The holdovers from the first half were holdovers for a reason — they didn’t play well enough to earn a promotion — and many of the players promoted from Single-A didn’t have immediate success. After winning the North Division in the first half, the Cyclones finished fifth (of six) in the second.
The Cyclones lost seven of their final nine games to finish out the regular season before setting out to North Carolina for their first-round playoff matchup with the Greensboro Grasshoppers, a team that took five of six games from them in late July.
Then it was time for the third season: the playoff Cyclones.
Brooklyn threw a bullpen game in Game 1, using seven different pitchers to get through nine innings. Colin Houck, who largely struggled in the regular season after being promoted to Brooklyn for the second half, tied the game in the sixth with an RBI groundout and extended the Brooklyn lead in the eighth with a two-run homer.
“I hit it, I felt, pretty well,” Houck said. “It felt pretty good. I saw the left fielder run back, I thought that there might have been a shot that he got a good jump on it, and then I saw — there’s a few kids on the berm, kind of playing around — I saw one of them put their glove up, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I got it.’”
It was a huge swing for the 2023 first-round pick, and a decent Sammy Sosa impression with his hop out of the box down the first base line. It was the deciding homer, too, as the Cyclones’ bullpen gave up two runs in the bottom of the ninth to turn a 4-1 game into a narrow 4-3 victory.
It was back to Brooklyn for Game 2, and if necessary, a winner-take-all Game 3.
Joel Díaz was on the mound for the first playoff game at Coney Island since 2022, and he twirled a gem. He threw 6 and 2⁄3 innings of shutout baseball, allowing just four baserunners, and was a two-out single away from finishing out the seventh.
In came Hoss Brewer, who became the closest thing to a go-to high-leverage arm the Cyclones had down the stretch.
Brewer walks the first batter he faces.
“One more out Hoss!” Wolf says, while talking about a game he attended in 2001 where the opposing first baseman, future NL MVP Ryan Howard, was “fielding as if he was lugging around a lead glove.”
Brewer walks a second. All of a sudden, the 2-0 game that Brooklyn had controlled for almost seven innings was at a potential watershed moment.
“You’re getting me nervous, Hoss!” Wolf says, while talking about a home run Evan Longoria hit “that Stewart Air Force Base had to clear for landing.”
On a 2-2 count, and after some heckling of the umpire, Brewer strikes out the final man looking to leave the bases loaded.
“Way to be, Hoss!” Wolf shouts as the pitcher enters the dugout after successfully walking the tightrope.
The Cyclones offense tacked on two more in the bottom of the seventh to push the score to 4-0, and then handed the ball to Dakota Hawkins to get the final six outs. Hawkins did just that, striking out the side in the eighth and closing out the game in the ninth, despite a pair of two-out doubles that made the final score 4-1.
“Happy for the guys, happy for all the work that they put in all year,” Gómez said. “We spoke about needing to play four really good games, and that’s what we’ve done in terms of playing the first two games. Really good defense, clutch hitting, great pitching.”
The Cyclones remained home for the first game of the Championship Series vs Hub City and absolutely wholloped the Spartanburgers. Marco Vargas went 5-for-5 with a walk out of the leadoff spot. Yonatan Henriquez went 4-for-6 with six RBI while hitting second. Every single player in Brooklyn’s starting lineup reached base at least once, and the pitching staff, led by Hall, held Hub City to one run en route to a 13-1 victory.
One game away from the title and back on the road, the Cyclones handed the ball to 20-year-old Frankin Gomez, who threw three scoreless innings out of the bullpen in Game 1 of the Division Series one week prior. Gomez just turned 20 in July and spent most of his 2025 with Single-A St. Lucie and had his ups and downs once joining the Cyclones, but tossed maybe his finest outing of the season in Game 2. Gomez tossed four shutout innings, struck out five, and allowed just three baserunners — two singles and a walk. As for the offense, they did just enough.
Ronald Hernández, a player Wolf loves, reached base three times. Marco Vargas continued to produce, reaching base twice and driving in the first run of the game with an RBI single. Matt Rudick, a 2022 Brooklyn Cyclone and another Wolf favorite, who was back with the team on a rehab assignment, singled in Vargas two batters later.
That’s all the Cyclones would need. Gomez, Channing Austin, Gregori Louis, Hawkins, Tanner Banks and Brewer combined for nine innings of one-run ball. ‘Clones win, 2-1.
The Brooklyn Cyclones, and their 33-year-old manager, are 2025 South Atlantic League champions.
“It feels like we got two different teams, one in the first half and one in the second half,” Gómez said in an interview with Cyclones broadcaster Justin Rocke. “But we grinded. We always
believed that we had what it took to be able to play the four games that we played during the playoffs. We’re just blessed and happy and just a resilient bunch of you-know-whats.”
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