In a game that never seemed to end — a game that somehow got wilder by the inning — the No. 2 Stearns Minutemen walked it off 6-5 versus No. 4 Woodland late Tuesday night, punching their ticket to the Class D state title game after nine innings of deliberation.
Stearns veteran head coach Donny Boyington said it was the craziest game he’d ever been a part of. The eighth inning alone had two successful, and two unsuccessful, steals of home plate.
“I’ve had state championship games and northern Maine title games in the past, but nothing like this,” Boyington said. “Nothing like this.”
The unorthodox nature of Tuesday’s contest was clear from the get-go, as the clouds opened up in the first inning to form a mist that turned into showers and back into mist, morphing Mansfield Stadium in Bangor into a cradle of slick unpredictability.
Fortunately for the Minutemen of Millinocket (15-4), their senior ace Caden “Bobby” Raymond was able to withstand the wet conditions, throwing six innings of no-hit ball with nine strikeouts as his teammates backed him up with four runs through four.
Yet the resourceful Woodland Dragons of Baileyville (15-3) still found ways to score, turning four Raymond walks and two wild pitches into two runs in the third and two more in the fifth, knotting the game up at 4-4.
“It was the small ball. They’d get one runner on and bunt him all the way around. It was hard to deal with,” Raymond said. “Nail biting the whole time, that’s for sure.”
Both sides were aggressive on the base paths all night, with Stearns (five hits, 11 walks) stealing eight bases and Woodland (one hit, four walks) snagging seven.
The action on the diamond peaked in the eighth.
Woodland freshman Micah Chesebrough kicked things off with a double to right at the bottom of the Dragons order, before senior Brogan Brown bunted a ball into and out of Raymond’s glove at first. Dragon senior Evan Curtis tried squeezing another bunt, but Stearns junior pitcher Owen Wilson flipped the ball to sophomore catcher Lucas Pelkey just in time for the tag at home.
The Dragons finally broke through on a sacrifice fly to right, and when Wilson (3.0 innings, one earned run) turned his back to Pelkey after the play, Curtis broke for home.
Wilson threw the ball back to Pelkey, and after a violent play at the plate, Curtis was suspensefully called out.
“You gotta be aggressive, and you gotta make teams make plays,” Woodland head coach Ryan Lincoln said. “Fortunately for [Stearns], they made some big plays in some big situations. The ball goes a foot the other way, maybe we’re talking a little differently here. People are gonna think about this game for a long time.”
Trailing 6-5 in the bottom of the eighth, the Minutemen promptly loaded the bases and then scored on a passed ball, eager to win their first regional title since 2015.
In a cloud of irritability and confusion, Stearns somehow struck out into a double play, as their pinch-runner was tagged out at home on the passed ball, and senior Caleb Shearer headed to the dugout after running halfway down to first.
Playing with new life, Chesebrough (4.2 innings, two runs) induced a Pelkey groundout to send it to a ninth inning.
“I don’t think I’ve played baseball for nine innings in a long time,” Raymond said. “It was crazy.”
Somehow finding himself on the mound again, Stearns’ Wilson locked back in to get three outs in four at-bats, setting up Raymond’s walk-off finish at 10:30 p.m.
With men on first and second and one out, Raymond smacked a ball under the glove of Woodland’s first baseman, winning it all in Buckner-esque fashion.
“You can only dream of something like that,” Raymond said. “I’ve dreamt of that since I was a kid. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with a better group of guys.”
