The Bangor Coffee News Comrades, unbeaten through the first 15 games of their 16-game regular season, have clinched the No. 1 seed for the Zone 1 Senior American Legion baseball tournament that begins Friday night at Husson University in Bangor.
Coach Dave Morris’ club, which has won three of the last four Senior Legion state championships, took a 15-0 record into Tuesday evening’s scheduled regular-season finale against Quirk Motor City at Hadlock Field in Portland.
Hampden (11-4) has clinched second place in Zone 1 while Quirk Motor City (7-8) will finish third.
The Trenton Acadians (2-12) and Post 51/16 of Oakland-Skowhegan (2-13) are battling for fourth and fifth place. Post 51/16 has won two of its first three meetings with the Acadians this summer with the two teams scheduled to meet again Tuesday night before the Acadians host Hampden on Wednesday to close out the regular season.
Postseason play begins with a single-elimination play-in game at 7 p.m. Friday between the Acadians and Post 51/16.
The double-elimination portion of the Zone 1 tournament begins with a doubleheader Saturday as No. 2 Hampden plays No. 3 Quirk Motor City at 4 p.m. and No. 1 Bangor faces the play-in game winner at 7 p.m.
The tournament continues with games at 1, 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday, with a championship round of one or two games to follow Monday.
The top three teams in the zone will advance to the eight-team state tournament that is scheduled to begin Aug. 28, also at Husson.
Each of the state’s three zones will send two teams to the event, with Zone 1 gaining a third berth as the host zone. The third-place teams from Zone 2 and Zone 3 will square off at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 26, at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham to determine the final state-tournament qualifier.
One significant change in zone and state tournament play involves playing seven-inning contests instead of nine-inning contests, which had been the tradition for Senior Legion postseason games.
“At the World Series last year they ran into some weather issues after the first couple of days and they had to knock the games down to seven innings,” Zone 1 commissioner Dave Paul said. “They’ve decided to stay with it.”
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