MIDDLETOWN – A team doesn’t win a league-record 13 playoff championships in 27 years without facing adversity at times.
Wayne, which won its first Delco Baseball League playoff title in 1987 – before many of the Middletown Lions players were born – will have to make another comeback if it is to claim the 2014 postseason crown.
Manager Brian Fili’s squad got only three hits – including a single and double by Kyle Gillen, who reached base in each of his three trips to the plate – in dropping a 5-0 decision to Middletown in Game 3 of the best-of-5 finals at Penncrest High Sunday.
Wayne must win Game 4 Tuesday to send the series back to Radnor High Wednesday if it is to have another chance to hoist the Charlie Kress Memorial Trophy, which goes to the Delco League playoff champion each summer.
“Three hits, and one guy gets two of them,” said Fili, who played for Wayne’s championship teams in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “I guess you can look at it as that we have to remember our last series.”
In the semifinal round, the Upper Darby Blue Sox took a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning of Game 5 before Wayne rallied to score four times and take the deciding game of the series. Gillen delivered the winning hit in that game.
“We were hitting too many balls in the air,” Fili said of his players, who were retired on 11 fly ball outs by Lions pitcher Andrew Abrams. “We hit a ball or two that might have been out of here if they hadn’t taken their (outfield) fence down this week. But that’s no excuse. We needed five runs, not one or two.
“We have to win two games in a row. We’ve done that before. We have John Bernhardt going Tuesday, and he’ll have four days rest.”
Bernhardt tossed a two-hitter at Middletown in the opening game of the championship series.
Jeff Courter opened the second inning with a single for Wayne, and Gillen doubled with one out before Abrams got a pair of infield outs to retire the side. Gillen’s one-out single in the top of the seventh inning was the only other hit off Abrams.
“He’s a good pitcher,” Wayne coach Jim Vankoski said of Abrams. “He beat (defending champion) Aston twice (in the semifinals).”
Vankoski’s son, Jim, started in right field, then gave up two hits and one run in getting four outs in relief for Wayne.
“(Abrams) mixed things up and was hitting his spots,” the younger Vankoski said. “I guess not having the fence up out there hurt us a couple of times, but we needed to hit the ball better.
“You have think that we have the right guy on the mound for us (Tuesday) and come back here to win the next game.”
