If any group of athletes was due for a little good fortune it was the Portland Sea Dogs.

The hard-luck team blew a four-run lead Monday, but scored a hard-to-believe run in the bottom of the ninth to escape with a 5-4 victory over the Trenton Thunder before an announced crowd of 5,493 at Hadlock Field.

First baseman Sam Travis, batting with the bases loaded and two outs, hit a groundball that Trenton shortstop Ali Castillo fielded while running to his right. He tossed the ball to his nearest teammate, third baseman Cito Culver, who desperately lunged toward the base in an effort to force out a hustling Reed Gragnani. Umpire Dan Merzel ruled that Culver didn’t get his foot on its intended target and Gragnani jumped up to celebrate while Tzu-Wei Lin crossed home plate with the winning run.

“It’s one of those plays where it’s so important to run hard for 90 feet. You just never know where the play’s going to go,” Gragnani said. “I don’t think the third baseman was expecting the throw and he was a little bit further away from third base than he thought. He missed it.

“It was very bizarre. But it was actually exciting. I haven’t seen the team feel that way or look that way in a while.”

It was a second consecutive victory for Portland, which is in last place in the Eastern League with a 34-62 record.

The Sea Dogs scored four runs in the first inning off Thunder pitcher Brady Lail, who played in the Eastern League All-Star Game at Hadlock on Wednesday. Gragnani started that rally with a double and scored on Travis’ double. That blast made it six consecutive games with a hit for the red-hot Travis, who raised his average to .308. He singled later in the game.

Portland starter William Cuevas, also an All-Star, was in command through six innings but tired in the seventh and allowed two runs. Simon Mercedes came on to extinguish that rally and was in line for a rare save for the Sea Dogs until he had one strike to go. That’s when Trenton right fielder Danny Oh looped a soft double into left field to score Culver with the tying run. It was a league-high 15th blown save for Portland, which has just 14 successful ones.

But Mercedes became the winning pitcher thanks to a dramatic bottom of the ninth.

Cole Sturgeon led off with a single off hard-throwing right-hander Andury Acevedo. Lin hit into a forceout and was still at first after Manuel Margot popped out.

Gragnani followed with the key at-bat of the game, one that was interrupted for a few scary moments after he lined a foul ball over the third-base dugout that hit a fan in the forehead. The umpires stopped play while the young man was attended to. He eventually rose and bowed to the fans, getting a loud ovation before heading to the hospital for stitches.

When play resumed, Gragnani grounded a perfectly placed single into left field after Castillo went to cover second base on a Lin steal attempt. That sent Lin to third. Carlos Asuaje was intentionally walked to set the stage for Travis’ fortuitous fielder’s-choice winner.

“Obviously, I feel for the person that got hit by the foul ball. I was trying to stay in it so much and kept telling myself, ‘That guy, he’s going to be OK and you need to focus on where you are right now and keep this inning going,’ ” said Gragnani, who missed time earlier this season with a nagging right hamstring injury.

“(Acevedo) throws so hard and his ball moves away from lefties, so I was just trying to shoot that hole and luckily Lin stole. It was just a two-strike piece of hitting.”