The Kings are Crowned: Y-D Red Sox Capture Cape Cod Baseball League Championship Title (VIDEO/SLIDESHOW)

HYANNIS – Baseball players worth their salt never tire of erupting in celebration after winning a championship.

Particularly, since it happens to so few of the millions who play the game.

For the second straight season and 5th time in the past 11 years, the Y-D Red Sox captured the Cape Cod Baseball League championship title last night at McKeon Park, upending the host Hyannis Harbor Hawks, 8-1.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com Sports

The Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox (28-24-1) – who finished tied for 3rd place in the East Division during the regular season this summer – took the Cape League by storm in the postseason and Wednesday night finished that gutsy playoffs run by taking their second straight Cape League championship in a row and 5^th league title in the past 11 seasons with an 8-1 win over the host Hyannis Harbor Hawks in front of 6,500 fans at McKeon Park.

The Harbor Hawks (29-21-1) – who took the West Division regular season title and the West Division playoffs title – watched last night as manager Scott Pickler’s boys picked apart the usually tough Hyannis pitching for 19 hits and 37 hits and 17 runs over the course of two games.With their Harbor Hawks Down 3-0, the Hyannis crowd fell silent after South Alabama’s Cole Billingsley hammered a three-run homer in the 8^th inning – his first home run of the season in his final at-bat – to give Y-D a 6-0 lead and in essence, seal the victory.

Seven Yarmouth-Dennis players collected multiple hits on the evening and three had three hits including Stanford’s Tommy Edman, Oklahoma State’s Donnie Walton and Pacific’s Gio Brusa.

Walton was named the 2015 Cape Cod Baseball League playoffs co-MVP along with teammate and closing pitcher Ben Bowden from Vanderbilt.

How sweet it was for the back-to-back Cape League champions.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com Sports

Bowden, a 6’4”, 230-lb. southpaw who hails from Lynn, came in relief to start the 7^th inning for Y-D and allowed Hyannis its only run in the 9^th inning. He was brought in relief of winning pitcher Brandon Bailey, a junior righty out of Gonzaga who was superlative throughout his six shutout innings of one-hit baseball. Bailey walked none and struck out seven and he proved the difference-maker by all standards in this affair.

A sign of things to come came immediately in the first inning as Billingsley reached on an error by Hyannis starter Devin Smeltzer (Florida Gulf Coast) who played a bunt correctly but threw it away and Billingsley eventually came home for a first-inning, 1-0 lead.

Hyannis did not score its lone run until the bottom of the ninth with two outs.

The Sox tacked on one more run in the 5th inning off of reliever Aaron Civale (Northeastern) for a 2-0 lead but Civale was lights out until he tired in the 8th and the eventual league champions erupted for five runs, including a three-run bomb from South Alabama’s Cole Billingsley, his first of the season.

Following Billingsley’s home run, it became readily apparent that Hyannis had all but conceded the title affair as the ‘Hawks dugout went virtually dead silent.

A brief glimmer of hope in the bottom of the ninth with two outs came for Hyannis via basehits from Tristan Hildrebandt (Cal State Fullerton), Corey Bird (Marshall), Austin Hays (Jacksonville) and UConn’s Bobby Melley, but that was all the steam the hosts had left in their collective tanks as Vanderbilt’s Ben Bowden retired Louisville’s Blake Tiberi for the final out on a comebacker to the mound.

— Story and photos by Sean Walsh, sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm