The wait that started in 2019 ended a little after nine on Friday night in Central Islip. The Long Island Ducks beat the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs 7-2 in Game Three of the Atlantic League Championship Series at Fairfield Properties Ballpark, finishing a three-game sweep and claiming the 2026 title, the fifth championship in the franchise's 26 seasons.

They did it without losing a single playoff game. Long Island swept the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars in the North Division Championship Series, then swept a best-of-five against Southern Maryland that never needed a fourth night, closing the postseason a perfect six for six. Few championship runs in any league at any level end without a loss, and this one belongs to a team that plays its home games on Court House Drive.

A complete game in a clincher

The night's centerpiece was the man on the mound for all of it. Ducks starter Nick Margevicius threw every pitch of the clincher, nine innings on 97 pitches with 79 strikes, giving up two runs on seven hits without walking a batter and striking out five. In an era when a starter finishing what he began has become a curiosity, Margevicius finished a championship game, and the league named him Most Valuable Player of the series for it.

The runs behind him came early and kept arriving. Henry Kusiak and Jorge Bonifacio hit back-to-back doubles in the bottom of the first, each driving in a run before some fans had found their seats. Jacob Robson singled home a third run in the fourth, Alsander Womack doubled in another in the fifth, and Wilmer Difo led off the seventh by putting a ball over the right field fence to make it 5-0.

Southern Maryland finally broke through in the eighth on a two-run double by Ezequiel Pagan, and the Ducks answered in their half of the same inning: a run-scoring double from Kole Kaler, a run-scoring single from Chris Roller, and a 7-2 lead that Margevicius carried through the ninth.

The best team in the league, wire to wire

Nothing about the finish was a surprise to anyone who watched the summer. Long Island won 80 games in the regular season, more than any club in the Atlantic League, and took the second-half North Division crown at 43-20. Bonifacio, who collected two hits and drove in a run Friday, had already been named the team's 2026 Most Valuable Player. Womack led the offense in the clincher with two doubles, and Difo added two hits and scored twice.

The sweep gives the flock its fifth Atlantic League championship, alongside the 2004, 2012, 2013 and 2019 clubs, a total tied for the second-most in the league's history. The Ducks have been the league's signature franchise since they began play in 2000: the all-time leader in both wins and attendance, with more than 9.5 million fans through the gates and over 720 sellouts in Central Islip.

Why this one lands differently

Seven years separated this banner from the last one, long enough that a kid who watched the 2019 celebration could be driving to this one. The ballpark has changed names, the league has reshuffled around them, and through all of it the Ducks kept doing the thing that made them a Long Island institution: affordable summer nights, fireworks after the last out, and a team that treats a title chase in Central Islip like it matters, because here it does.

It also caps a week when Long Island's two biggest sports venues both delivered. Belmont Park reopened its rebuilt grandstand to a sold-out crowd last week, and now the Island's own baseball team has a championship. The trophy stays home for the winter, and the celebration picks up where it left off when the 2027 season opens on April 20, with the home opener at Fairfield Properties Ballpark set for April 23.

Pencil that one in now. Championship banners only get raised once, and the next flag day in Central Islip will be the fifth.