BANGOR, Maine — Saint Dominic of Auburn baseball coach Bob Blackman, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, feels there is no place like home.
The 1977 Hermon High School graduate is now 3-for-3 in state championship games at Mansfield Stadium in Bangor over the last five years.
His Saints parlayed a five-hit shutout by junior lefty Chris Bryant and a 12-hit attack into a six-inning, 11-0 victory over George Stevens Academy of Blue Hill for the Class C title Saturday afternoon.
St. Dominic won its last nine games and finished at 19-1.
“I love coming back here. It’s a lot of fun. I look forward to it,” said Blackman, whose Saints scored four second-inning runs and three more in the third and the sixth.
“We couldn’t have played any better than we played today. In our minds, this was a perfect type of game: we fielded the ball, threw strikes and got ground balls,” added Blackman, whose Saints played errorless ball behind Bryant.
Bryant didn’t walk anyone and struck out four. He hit a batter while throwing 52 strikes among his 83 pitches.
“When we got the lead early, I knew all I had to do was throw strikes. We have a great defense, we’ve had it all year,” said Bryant, who is 8-1. “My curve worked real well. My changeup didn’t work well early but it came in handy at the end of the game. I tried to change things up. This was one of my better outings.”
He also picked off two runners.
“He had a fastball, curve and a soft changeup and moved them in and out. He kept us guessing,” said GSA senior leadoff hitter Peter Dickinson.
GSA had five singles but never advanced a runner past first.
The Saints’ attack was spearheaded by the bottom third of the order as the Nos. 7-8-9 hitters went 7-for-11 with four RBIs and five runs scored.
Sophomore Kurt Johnson, the No. 7 hitter, went 4-for-4 with two RBIs and two runs scored; No. 8 hitter C.J. Bergeron, a senior, went 2-for-4 with a triple, an RBI and two runs scored; and No. 9 man sophomore Alex Parker went 1-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored.
Johnson had gone 3-for-3 Wednesday in the 5-4 Western Maine Class C championship game win over Hall-Dale of Hallowell.
“That gave me confidence and it carried over,” said Johnson. “I had been struggling before. I focused and just wanted to hit the ball hard. I found holes in the infield a lot of the time. There was a little bit of luck there.”
Bergeron said, “We’ve been working on our hitting. The bottom of our order hadn’t been hitting that well besides Kurt Johnson. We came through today and it’s the game to come through in.”
“The bottom of their order killed us,” said GSA coach Dan Kane. “They did a great job staying on the ball, hitting it the other way and getting it into the outfield.”
“They’re the best team we’ve played, all-around. We’ve played teams that had [some] players who were better but not up and down the lineup [like St. Dominic],” said GSA senior righty Nick Saunders, who absorbed the loss.
Ben Randall started the four-run second inning with a solid base hit to center. He stole second and scored on Johnson’s opposite-field single to left. Bergeron tripled to right-center to score Johnson.
“[Saunders] didn’t have a great breaking ball so we were jumping on early fastballs,” said Bergeron. “I hit an outside fastball.”
“I tried to keep it down but he hit it pretty well,” said Saunders.
Alex Parker singled through a drawn-in infield to score Bergeron and he eventually scored on a Shayne Curtis groundout.
Two-out singles by Aaron Allen, Johnson and Bergeron, a late throw to the plate on a pickoff, two stolen bases, a wild pitch and an error produced the third-inning runs.
Dickinson, Nick Kane, Josh Gale, Rashad Frazier and Nate Hines singled for 16-4 GSA.
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