BANGOR, Maine — A fortunate bounce and a quality pitching performance enabled the Trenton Acadians to force a winner-take-all championship game in the State Senior American Legion Baseball Tournament on the Ronald J. St. Pierre Field in Mansfield Stadium early Wednesday evening.
Trenton topped the Greater Southern Maine Riders, 3-1, thanks to a bad-hop, run-scoring single by Dawson Curtis and the combined six-hit pitching of Jackson Barry and Spencer Young.
That was Trenton’s third straight tourney win following a tourney-opening loss to Sanford-based GSM, which was 2-0 entering Wednesday’s championship-round opener.
The final followed the first game.
Trenton was trailing 1-0 entering the third inning when Logan Crowley blooped a single to right to open the inning and Evan Haskell grounded a single to right.
Following a strikeout, Curtis engaged in a 10-pitch at-bat against GSM’s Parker Bjorkland and bounced a routine grounder to first that took a bad hop and sailed over the head of first baseman Parker Soule-Parent to deliver Crowley and send Haskell to third.
It was Curtis’ seventh consecutive hit in the tournament to go with two walks.
Curtis stole second and he and Haskell scored on Hollis Grindal’s RBI grounder to short and a throwing error on Soule-Parent, who tried to throw out Curtis racing to third.
The Riders had taken a 1-0 lead in the second on two walks, Kasey Bean’s sacrifice bunt and Tyler Do’s ground ball single to center.
The hard-throwing Barry pitched 5 ⅔ innings of impressive six-hit, one-run ball. He struck out nine and walked five. He left when he reached the 105-pitch limit.
Barry pitched out of a number of jams and stranded eight runners.
Young came on to retire all four hitters he faced including a great play by third baseman Trent Goss and first baseman Barry on Do’s check swing grounder to open the seventh. Barry scooped the throw by Goss.
Curtis and Haskell each had two hits for the winners.
Soule-Parent had three singles for the Riders and Bjorkland turned in a strong outing on the mound. He allowed seven hits and three runs, two earned, with eight strikeouts and one intentional walk to Curtis.
Landen Richard threw two innings of hitless, four-strikeout relief.