BANGOR — After a day of controversy, Coastal Landscape rallied to defeat Bessey Motors 4-3 Wednesday night in the American Legion baseball state championship game at Husson University.
Bessey Motors, of South Paris, endured an emotional day, starting with ace pitcher Colton Carson and Coach Shane Slicer being ejected from Wednesday’s first game against Coffee News of Bangor because of a pitch-count dispute. Bessey shook off the ejections and eliminated the defending champions with a 1-0 victory.
In the championship game, Emery Chickering pitched well in the first two innings for Bessey Motors, and James Sinclair pitched two perfect innings for Coastal Landscape, a Portland-based team.
Sinclair ran into trouble in the third inning. Wyatt Williamson led off with a single to right field, followed by a single by Brayden Bean. Both runners advanced on a bunt, then scored on a catcher’s interference call and a groundout.
Coastal battled back with four runs in the bottom half. Griffin Watson led off with a hard single to right, Luc Harrison drew a walk, and Dylan Francoeur singled to load the bases. Watson scored on Tim Greenlaw’s groundout, Sinclair followed with a two-run double, and Barbecue Yee doubled home Sinclair.
In the fifth, Cam Slicer reached on a single and eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Rodney Bean. But Sinclair was able to close out the win, sending Coastal to the Eastern Regional starting Aug. 8 in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
“He is the heart and soul of the team,” Coastal Coach Dan McCarthy said of Sinclair. “He pitched a couple innings earlier in the tournament, and we were saving him for this big day.”
Bessey thought until Tuesday night that it would have Carson available to pitch Wednesday, after he beat Yankee Ford of South Portland 1-0 on the first day of the tournament on Saturday. Both Bessey Motors and Yankee Ford had Carson throwing 79 pitches in that game, one below the cutoff that requires a pitcher to rest for four days, but the official scorer credited Carson with 81 pitches.
Slicer was informed that if Carson threw a pitch Wednesday, he’d be ejected along with Slicer, who elected to start Carson anyway as a show of protest.
REGENCY MORTGAGE LEAGUE
NOVA SEAFOOD 7, WINDHAM 3: Nick Frink and Jack Clark each hit a pair of doubles to help Nova Seafood win the championship game, which was halted after five innings because of rain in Scarborough.
Ryan Sargent had a triple for Windham.
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