Battling Mosquitoes, Hyde Park Sweeps Park League Clincher

The mosquitoes proved to be the toughest adversaries for Hyde Park Sports in its sweep to the Park League championship last night.

The insects were unrelenting, but the Triple D’s had no such power, losing the final game, 10-4, at Fallon Field in Roslindale.

“I’ve been in the Park League for nine years,” said Hyde Park manager Terry O’Malley, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

What O’Malley had just witnessed was the completion of a four-game sweep.

“We just didn’t execute,” said Triple D’s manager Leo Casey, “and we couldn’t get any hits when we wanted to. But they are the superior team in the league.”

Hyde Park, which completed a 27-10 season, wasted no time proving their superiority in the first two games of the best-of-seven series, blanking the Triple D’s, 9-0 and 5-0. Joe Killelea, a pitcher at Northeastern and Hyde Park’s top gun, earned the first for his seventh victory of the season and Dave Hurley got the second.

Triple D’s, which defeated the Towne Club, 3-1, in a tough best- of five semifinal series, scored their first runs with a two-run outburst in the first inning of the third game, but that was all the offensive production the team could muster as it dropped a 5-2 decision.

“I guess all of this was sort of anticlimatic for them,” said Buzz Beade, Hyde Park’s first baseman who won the MVP award. “But we really played well and we wanted to pull this thing together, because we didn’t want it to go any more than four games.”

Hyde Park Sports jumped on Triple D’s starter Steve Connelly in the first inning with five runs on five hits.

“We really didn’t expect him to start,” said Beade, who went 3 for 4 with 3 RBIs and scored two runs. “So, we wanted to jump on him as quickly as we could, because we wanted to end it in the first.”

The righthander was rocked by a two-run homer by catcher B.J. Flynn and had shaky infield support.

“We were missing a couple of our starters,” said Casey. “And my regular kid at third (Bill O’Leary) was out because his arm was hurting.”

Hyde Park scored three more runs in the second to increase its lead, 8-0, and sent Connelly packing.

John Griffin hit a sacrifice fly to center, scoring leadoff man George Banks. After Beade and Flynn delivered RBI singles, Connelly gave way to Rick Derany, who retired the side and went on to produce a five-hit, eight- strikeout, two-run effort gem in the final 5 2/3 innings.

Meanwhile, Hyde Park starter Steve Curtin, another NU pitcher, surrendered two runs on six hits over five innings.

“After we got the lead in the first,” said Curtin, “I didn’t want to pitch tentatively, so I went after the batters.”

Curtin gave way to Jim Connolly in the sixth. Connolly gave up two runs on two hits in that inning, enabling Triple D’s to pull within five runs, 9-4, but he regained his composure and quelled the uprising.

Hyde Park added another run in the seventh on an error, one of six by Triple D’s.

“I knew that coming in tonight we would have a good chance of winning,” said O’Malley, “but I just didn’t want the guys getting too cocky or too overconfident.”

How could they when they had to battle those mosquitoes?

Copyright © 1986 Boston Globe, all rights reserved. Written by Michael Vega.