The Boston Park League, the oldest after supper baseball league in the country, opens its 50th season Monday night with four floodlight games (8:15), and that is going to be this year’s pattern – floodlight ball.
The 39th Park League baseball season goes into its second week Monday night with all hands reporting thanks to the increase of floodlighted fields. Games are being held several nights each week at Dorchester Town Field and, for the first time, at Fallon Field, Roslindale.
Bill Norton of Wakefield, a left-handed first basemen of the Bob Wolfe Club in the Boston Park League, was the first-round choice of the Red Sox during the regular phase of the major league baseball free agent draft in New York yesterday.
The Johnson Bombers may not be burning up the Park League, but on College Bowl they’re a match for anybody. Many people think of the average Park League player as a big, tobacco-chewing mill worker who brawles in the nearest bar after a game. But the Johnson Club hardly fits such a description.
After 15 years of major league pitching, lefthanded hurler Billy Hoeft is breaking into sandlot baseball.
The Herb Connolly Club successfully defended its Park League title and for the second straight year swept the playoffs, as it downed the Carlevale Braves, 6 to 0, behind the five-hit pitching of Bob St. John at Kelley Field, Friday night.
The hottest bat in the Boston Park League doesn’t belong to a baseball player who is an ex-minor leaguer. It belongs to a schoolboy who is batting the Frances E. Kelly Club into the league playoffs. His name is Bob Hansen.
He has a “thin man” look out there among all those Park League behemoths, but the Lyons Clubs’ 155-pound Chester Stone is deceptive. He’s just the guy to leave the opposition gasping, “What happened?” When the undefeated Dorchester team battles the Charlestown Townies this afternoon, Scatback Stone is going to be afforded a special honor – a citation from Gov. Volpe as Park League “player of the year.”
He was a man without a country, without a family, without a job, and with little to hope for. It was not the Mike Fornieles of today, the one who sells Pontiacs with a Desi Arnaz accent and has love for baseball, Boston Park League style.
The Supreme Saints, with a new manager and many changes in playing personnel, will start chasing their third straight Park League baseball crown Monday night when the oldest twilight league in the country opens its 35th season.
