A Maine team hadn’t been in the Senior League East Region Tournament since 2019.
This year’s state champs from the towns of Gray, New Gloucester and Raymond made up for lost time on Wednesday night at Mansfield Stadium in Bangor.
The Maine squad held off Delaware for a dramatic 6-5 win, despite a seventh inning surge from the Delaware champs of Millsboro that saw a runner stranded on third for the final play of the game.
“Well your heart races a little bit at the end of that, that’s for sure,” said Maine manager Nate Stone, who was proud of his team’s effort and happy to get the win to start the double-elimination tournament.
Henry Stone got the critical save on the mound for Maine, entering the seventh and final inning with a two-run lead and showing a strong constitution by getting the final outs against the First State squad from Delaware.
“I just wanted to throw strikes, trust the infield and keep doing what we’ve been doing all game,” Stone said after the win. When the final batter skyed a fly ball to center field, Stone was confident that teammate Isaac Dunn had it under control.
And Dunn did, making the catch to end the game.
“I trust Isaac,” Stone said. “Best outfielder in Maine.”
Dunn, the Maine leadoff hitter, also got the scoring started after a first inning walk. Delaware bounced back in the bottom of the first to take the lead 2-1 briefly. But Maine stormed back with a relentless third inning to go up 6-2.
What seemed like a comfortable lead got much closer in the bottom of the fifth, when Delaware’s Hayden Barnhouser hit a two-run double with no outs to cut the Maine lead to 6-4 with runners on second and third.
That’s when Maine’s Evan Franklin provided one of the most pivotal plays of the game. The shortstop jumped and snagged a line drive and quickly doubled a Delaware runner off at second base, helping to stop the Delaware surge in its tracks that inning.
“I was watching it down. I thought I could get to it, so I leaped up,” Franklin said afterward. “And I saw that he was off second, so I just chucked it over, and made it happen.”
He agreed that it was a critical point in the game that kept Delaware from adding more runs.
“That definitely saved a couple.” Franklin said.
Starting pitcher Liam Joyce got the win for Maine and credited his teammates for their solid defense.
“I have some good guys behind me,” Joyce said.
Left fielder Jackson Timer provided several highlight reel catches for the Delaware squad, which will get another chance in the double elimination tournament this week.
The Maine team will next play in Bangor on Friday at 4:30 p.m. against the Massachusetts team.
“It’s exciting to have a Maine team, it’s exciting for them to have some success,” said tournament organizer Mike Brooker. “We’re certainly hoping that it drives attendance. This is an important tournament, I think, for Little League baseball.”
Senior League is a division of Little League that features players ages 13 to 16. Maine did not field a Senior League team in last year’s tournament.
Brooker said there has been a decline in players in the age group and he fears that Little League could eventually get rid of the Senior League division if more players don’t get involved, as it did several years ago when discontinuing Big League Baseball for older teen players.
“I’d love to see senior ball pick up in the state,” Stone, the Gray-New Gloucester coach, said after the win. “If we can get some press for it and get people interested, it’s a great program. And it’s really fun, and this is a great tournament, and there are plenty of boys out in Maine that could be out here playing.”
