It’s not often that a pitcher gives up 11 walks and wins the game, not to mention that the Kraken’s Brennen Rack had a no-hitter going through five innings of Sunday’s Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s championship series opener, during which the East End Ospreys had scored four times.
Rack, a big lefthander who went all the way, gave up only two hits that day, a single in the bottom of the sixth inning and a single in the bottom of the seventh, while he and his teammates, who hit well — Rack included — and fielded well, wound up as 8-4 winners.
The best-of-three series was to have continued at the Bridgehampton School’s field Tuesday, and, if the Kraken did not win that one, the series is to end at Bridgehampton this evening.
The Kraken, which beat the pennant-winning Publick House Brewers in a semifinal-round series, has won HAH’s championship in three of the four years the league’s been in existence. The Sag Harbor Royals won the crown last year, defeating the Kraken two games to one in the final.
The “away” team on Sunday, the Kraken manufactured two runs right off the bat, both coming in on an infield error.
The Ospreys took a 3-2 lead in their half of the first. After Rack had given up a walk, hit a batter, and walked another, the Kraken’s shortstop, Andrew Rodriguez, having neatly scooped up a grounder hit his way, threw wide of the plate, after which Rack walked in the second run, and, with the bases still loaded, and with one out, the “home” team plated its third run by way of a 5-3 groundout. A strikeout ended the inning.
The Kraken tied it at 3-3 in the top of the third. Tom McGrath, the leadoff hitter, reached first base safely via an infield hit, and Rodriguez followed with a sharp single through the right side of the diamond that drove McGrath in.
The Kraken were almost out of the bottom of the fourth when Stephen (Doc) Petruccelli, the first baseman, let a high pop drop, allowing a run to score from second base, but, following the eighth free pass Rack had given up, atoned by gathering in a foul ball off the first-base line for the third out.
What proved to be the tying and winning runs were scored by the Kraken in its fifth. With one out, McGrath drove a long single into the outfield, and then came all the way around to score on another sharp single through the right side by Rodriguez. The throw from the outfield arrived in time, a cloud of dust arose, and Roger Foster, the plate umpire, called “Safe!” prompting dismay from the Ospreys and glee from the Kraken. Two outs later, and with runners at the corners, Rack won his own game with a two-run line single into shallow center field.
The winners made it 8-4 in their last at-bat, an overthrow of third base enabling their seventh run, in the person of A-Rod, to score, and a subsequent one-out bloop single by Rack plating Scott Abran from third with their eighth.
As for the Kraken’s good fielding, the chief examples were two great catches by Steve Turza, the left fielder, that took the Ospreys out of their fifth inning, a 6-4-3 double play that effectively erased the Ospreys in the third, and the catcher Jim Abran’s peg to second base that caught a would-be base stealer for the third out in the bottom of the sixth.
