SANFORD, Maine — Tree-fringed Goodall Park has been part of Tim Curley’s baseball life for 37 years, first as a kid learning the game and now as the coach of a team of teenagers.

It’s an idyllic place built around an expanse of deep green, a 103-year-old ballpark where Babe Ruth hit one of his last home runs as a barnstorming member of the Red Sox. A place where generations of Sanford residents have forged lifelong friendships and memories.

Now, historic Goodall Park will be known for something else — an out-of-control driver who crashed onto the field, scattered dozens of panicked youngsters, and killed a 68-year-old man who had rushed from the stands to end the mayhem that threatened his grandson, a second baseman for Curley’s team.

That man, Douglas Parkhurst Sr., was immediately hailed as a hero. But in a surreal twist, he had been behind the wheel 50 years ago in a long-unsolved crash that killed a 4-year-old girl in central New York. After confessing in 2013, he moved to rural Maine for anonymity and a fresh start.

Part of that start was watching his grandson, one of the fastest on Curley’s team, play Babe Ruth League ball in this southern Maine city of 21,000 people. On June 1, Parkhurst had driven about 15 miles from West Newfield to watch his grandson play, just as he had for nearly every game over the past two years.

The boy’s mother was there, too, and the pair watched him with brimming pride. But in the fifth inning, screams shattered the evening quiet as a local woman, Carol Sharrow, crashed through a park gate in a maroon Honda Accord and gunned around the infield.

As 200 spectators watched in horror, Parkhurst was killed when Sharrow rammed her car through a metal gate that Parkhurst was desperately trying to shut to protect others, according to police.

Only later, after the shock began to dissipate, did people in Sanford learn that Parkhurst had struck and killed Carolee Ashby on Halloween night in 1968.

Parkhurst left the scene of that accident, and the identity of the driver who killed Ashby in Fulton, N.Y., remained a haunting secret for more than four decades. Five years ago, the Vietnam veteran admitted his guilt after receiving assurances from the district attorney that he would not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired, authorities said.

Parkhurst set down new roots in an out-of-the-way place where he could separate his past from the present. But the two intertwined tragically on June 1, and residents have spoken since then of justice, God’s plan, and redemption to explain the inexplicable irony that brought Parkhurst’s life to the same end as Carolee Ashby’s.

Detective Sergeant Matthew Jones, a police officer here for 16 years, shook his head from side to side as he watched asphalt being poured during a construction detail in rainy downtown Sanford, about 30 miles southwest of Portland.

He used the words “bizarre’’ and “crazy’’ to describe the scene at the ballfield, nestled at the base of a small hill directly behind the police station. Sharrow, the 51-year-old suspect from Sanford, was arrested at her home and charged with manslaughter shortly after she crashed her way out of Goodall Park.

A York County Superior Court judge ordered $500,000 cash bail and a mental health evaluation for her.

Curley said he caught her eye moments before she rammed into Parkhurst, who witnesses said was thrown 30 feet into the road. A pool of blood formed under and near him, easily within sight of Little Leaguers who also had been playing at an adjacent field.

“She was looking right through me,’’ Curley said. “She looked like she was totally out of it.’’

Jones said Sharrow was tested for alcohol use, but that no alcohol-related charges were filed. She has been convicted twice of drunken driving, once in Maine and another time in New Hampshire.

Police found Sharrow surprisingly lucid after her arrest, according to one officer who drove her to the hospital. She also was conversant and nonconfrontational, he said. But she left trauma behind at Goodall Park, where some shaken players left the field wondering whether they ever wanted to play again, Jones said.

“Everybody can readily agree that the kids in this tragedy are victims. These ballplayers were just playing America’s favorite pastime,’’ Jones said.

As young as they are — the Babe Ruth League has four teams of 13- to 15-year-olds — these teenagers already are role models to smaller kids. Shawn Young’s 5-year-old boy, Ethan, came to Goodall with his father that fateful night to watch Curley’s son, also named Tim, as he patrolled first base.

Young was the last person whom Sharrow spoke with — shouted at, actually — before she barreled onto the field as Curley’s team took their positions midgame.

“Open the gate!’’ she yelled, startling Young as he stood with his son behind the fence along the third-base line.

“No,’’ he shot back.

“Open the [expletive] gate!’’ she screamed again, this time crashing through the barrier and circling the bases from third to second to first to home plate and back out the gate again.

Young placed his son in a protected spot and began sprinting after the car, which was retracing its route through a small alley behind the press box and toward the other side of the stadium, where Parkhurst tried to corral her.

Young gave up the chase when he injured his quadriceps, only to see the Honda strike Parkhurst with such force that he was thrown out of his shoes.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,’’ Young said.

The people of Sanford hope they never do again, but Curley hopes one memory outlasts the others. “That man, Doug Parkhurst, was in the safety of the stands and took immediate action,’’ Curley said. “He was a hero that day. Call it what you will 50 years ago, but on this day he was a hero.’’

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.