It didn’t look good for Farmington to start Wednesday night’s Senior Legion baseball state championship at Mansfield Stadium in Bangor.
The Farmington squad from Roderick-Crosby American Legion Post 28 quickly fell behind 5-0 to Trenton in the first inning. But Farmington stormed back, and eventually outlasted Trenton in extra innings to take home the state Senor Legion title.
“That was our only bad inning the entire season. And they overcame it,” Farmington coach Peter Decarolis said after the comeback win. That’s the first time they’ve had to overcome that big of a deficit, and I’m proud of them.”
The championship team is made up of players from Mt. Blue, Mt. Abram, Spruce Mountain, Dirigo and Mountain Valley high schools.
Decarolis said it was the team’s first state Senior Legion title in what he believed was 70 years as a program, after the Roderick-Crosby post squad fell just short in the title game a year ago.
“This is exciting. This was definitely a team effort,” the Farmington coach said, noting that his team lost some players from last year’s lineup. “The new players just stepped up.”
That included Parker Smith, who came off the bench in the bottom of the eighth to deliver a game-winning, walk-off single that scored Nolan Leso and finished things at 7-6.
“He’s one of our junior players, came up just in case,” Decarolis said about Smith. The young player had just one at bat earlier in the tournament and had been fooled by a couple of changeups, his coach explained. But that didn’t shake the team’s belief in him.
“We still had confidence in him, and hey, he went out and performed,” Decarolis said about Smith.
Farmington went undefeated in the double elimination state tournament, and now heads to the Northeast Regional starting on Aug. 6 in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Logan Dube took home the tournament MVP nod for the victorious team from western Maine.
“We were here last year, we came up short, runners up,” Dube said. “It feels awesome to get it done this year.”
Leso said the team was able to battle back from the early deficit by “just chipping away” inning by inning.
“That’s what we did during the regular season too,” Leso said.
The Trenton Acadians from Post 207 are made up of players from Ellsworth, Bucksport, Sumner and MDI high schools along with George Stevens Academy.
Trenton headed into Wednesday night’s championship needing two wins against their Farmington opponents, having already dropped a game earlier in the tournament.
It looked early on like that second game would be necessary. Trenton put up five runs in the first inning with help from four Farmington errors. Trenton’s Ayden Maguire did damage with a two-out, two run double in the top of that first inning.
But Farmington punched back in the second, third and fourth innings to tie the game at 5-5 when Dube singled in a run.
Leso then scored on a wild pitch to put Farmington up 6-5, racing home and sliding under the attempted tag from Trenton relief pitcher Logan Crowley.
Jackson Barry then came in to pitch for Trenton and got out of the inning before Farmington could grow that lead.
Trenton’s Dawson Curtis knotted the game up at 6-6 in the bottom of the sixth, and some heroics on the mound from Barry got his team out of a bases loaded jam in the bottom of the seventh to force extra innings.
Despite that momentum, Farmington was able to regroup in the first extra inning and set up Smith for his big moment.
Leso reached on an error, Gage Decarolis walked, and Smith sealed the game with his clutch walk-off single.
Smith said he was nervous but focused on keeping his eye on the ball. And now it feels good to be a state champion.
