The East End Ospreys laid a hurtin’ on the Kraken at the Bridgehampton School’s field last Thursday evening, pummeling the former two-time champion 10-2 to win the deciding game of the Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s best-of-three final series.
Meanwhile, at around the same time, at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park, the Southampton Breakers were defeating the top-seeded Sag Harbor Whalers 7-1 in the first of a best-of-three Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League semifinal.
The Kraken won the first game of HAH’s championship series by a score of 8-4, but the Ospreys won the second 16-4, and were no less dominant in the finale. Matt Zappoli, one of Hub 44’s baseball coaches in East Hampton, who also batted cleanup in the Ospreys’ order, started for the winners and went all the way. Besides the two runs, he gave up five hits, walked five, and struck out five. Double plays by the Ospreys took the Kraken out of their fifth and sixth at-bats.
The Ospreys touched the Kraken’s pitcher, Brennen Rack — the winning pitcher in game one — for 12 hits, five of them doubles that accounted for seven of their runs.
A two-run double by Zappoli got the Ospreys on the board in the bottom of the first inning, after which an infield error allowed another run to score. The Kraken got two back in the top of the second, but that was to be it scoring-wise for the former champs that night.
A double deep to right field by Sam Goodkind, the 12th hitter in the Ospreys’ powerful lineup, cleared the bases, which had been loaded, and treated the Ospreys to a 6-2 lead in the bottom of the second.
The Ospreys effectively put the championship away with three more runs in the bottom of the fourth as Joe McBride (double), Goodkind (single), and Shane Donahue, the lead-off hitter (single), got the r.b.i.s. The Kraken had runners at first and second base with one out in the top of the fifth, but a double play ended the threat.
Zappoli’s second double of the night plated the Osprey’s 10th run in the bottom of the fifth, and that was pretty much all she wrote.
Zappoli gave up a single to lead off the Kraken’s last at-bat, but a 1-3 groundout, a strikeout, and a third-to-first groundout sealed the victory that the first-year team had been hungering for.
“We had a great group of guys,” Mike Chiarello, the Ospreys’ manager, said afterward. “They were fully dedicated to playing and competing each and every week. With Sam Fox, Max Kra, and Matt as our anchors, our pitching rotation really clicked. It was a great season, a deserving team took home the Ospreys’ first championship. We look forward to defending the title next year.”
To get to the final, the Ospreys won two of three from the Sag Harbor Royals and the Kraken won two of three from the Publick House Brewers in semifinal-round series. The Brewers had won HAH’s pennant with a 9-3-1 record. The Ospreys had finished the regular season in third place, at 5-5-1, behind the runner-up Royals, who were 8-3-0, and ahead of the Kraken (3-8-0) and Mexico (3-9-0).
Back to the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League, the Whalers’ season ended Friday as the Breakers, playing at home, shut them out 8-0. Anthony France took the loss in game one. Will Darrell, one of six locals who played for the Whalers this summer, was the losing pitcher in game two.
