But once the postseason arrived, Cotuit was quickly given a scare by the rival Wareham Gatemen after they fell in Game One of a best-of-three series when the visitors scored two runs in the ninth to break a 1-1 tie. The pressure continued into Game Two, as the Kettleers and Gatemen headed into extras. Cotuit staved off elimination with a huge two-run homer from Berger in the top of the 10th, sending the series back to Lowell Park for a win-or-go-home Game Three in the West Division Finals.
Once again, it was a closely contested game that took a scoreless tie into the bottom of the eighth inning. One run was all it took for a ticket to the Cape League Finals, which came on a Livingston sacrifice fly in that frame. Lynch fought through cramps and went the distance to secure the win behind the insistence of his UCLA battery mate DeCinces to convince Coutts to keep him in the game.
“Winning that series, to me, was huge for us,” said Coutts. “And I don't want to say that we thought, ‘We were going to win the championship because we beat Wareham,’ but it certainly gave us a lot of confidence going into the Chatham series, having won close ball games like that.”
Whether that sentiment was true or not, the Kettleers certainly took their momentum into the championship series with Chatham. Games One and Two gave Cotuit a breather from the three consecutive battles with Wareham, as the Ketts won by 10 runs in the opener but fell 9-3 the following day when the A’s tagged Cressend for seven runs. Another winner-take-all bout was set to take place at Lowell Park.
Game Three stayed tight until the bottom of the fifth inning, where a seven-run explosion with a Glenn Davis three-run bomb serving as the exclamation point provided enough cushion to take home the league title with a 9-3 victory. The dogpile on the mound after Sheredy recorded the final out resulted in the favorite memory among plenty for many of the players on that team. Gandy and Paul would be named co-Playoff MVP as the cherry on top of a magical season.
“That was my favorite team that I ever actually played on,” said Paul, even after a nine-year MLB career. “And it was never replicated as a player.”
As nearly thirty years have passed, the championship celebration on the Lowell Park field was the last time most of the team has seen each other. However, the memories are fresh in the minds of the members of the 1995 Cotuit Kettleers, who will all be able to reminisce on their magical season at the team reunion hosted by the team on July 13.
“I personally am looking forward to it a lot. These are guys, most of which, we haven't seen each other in three decades, and we're all much different people than even back then, because that's a lot of life between those two dates,” said Paul. “So it'll be great to catch up with everybody and see how things are going.”
