Oxford Hills entry clobbers Mid Coast in Legion tourney
By Justin Pelletier
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – Bessey Motors has relied on offense to win games, pounding out hit after hit seemingly with ease. On Monday, the Oxford Hills legion team was humbled by Nova Seafood, held to just one run on eight hits while allowing nine runs on home runs alone.

Tuesday’s goal was to avoid a similar disappointment. Coach Shane Slicer got that and more.

Corey Tielinen and Andrew Stacy eached smacked a two-run home run, Tyler Bryant had two triples and a single and Brent Grenier added two doubles as Bessey Motors rolled over Zone III rival Mid Coast 13-2 in seven innings at Morton Field.

Tielinen pitched a four-hitter over seven innings to earn the win.

“Corey pitched a great game for us, and that will help with depth as we go,” said Slicer. “And once we got past the first time through the lineup, we started hitting again, too. We needed that.”

In all, Bessey battered three Mid Coast pitchers with 15 hits, seven for extra bases, and took advantage of two costly errors to score its runs. Six of the 13 runs were unearned.

“I don’t know that we had our best effort out there today,” said Midcoast coach Walt Foster. “We didn’t hit the ball as well as we had hoped, or as well as we had been.”

For the first three innings, it seemed as though the sparse crowd would witness a pitcher’s duel. Tielinen and Mid Coast starter Jon Tefft each allowed one hit in three speedy innings, but in the fourth, the Bessey bats came alive.

With one out, Bryant reached with a single. After Chris Henderson was hit by a pitch, both runners came home on a triple by Cody Wall. On the next pitch, Tielinen helped his own cause by belting a home run deep to left field to bring the score quickly to 4-0.

“I don’t even know what the pitch was that I hit,” said Tielinen. “I just saw it coming in belt high and turned on it.”

Bessey added one more in the fifth and two more in the sixth to jump ahead 7-0.

The only other base runner Tielinen allowed through the sixth was Tefft, who he tagged with a pitch to the back in the fifth.

“I was pitching mostly change-up’s,” said Tielinen. “I didn’t pitch too many curve balls, but the changes were dropping well.”

Mid Coast finally scored in the sixth, plating one earned run and one unearned on a Brady Williams single, a fielding error, a Pierce Wiegman single and an Anthony Ames single. But that would be all the team could muster.

“Holding them in that situation to just those runs was huge,” said Slicer. “Tielinen settled down and only allowed them the two.”

Bessey pounded out six runs, all unearned thanks to an early fielding error, in the top of the seventh to ice the game.

Henderson reached first base on a bobbled grounder to second and looked to be stranded as relief pitcher John Kowtow sent the next two batter back to the bench empty handed. Grenier put an end to that theory with an RBI double, and Stacy followed with a home run to raise the score to 10-2. After Kyle Kenniston reached on an error, Garrett Olson and Jeff Austin followed with singles. Bryant smacked his second triple of the night three pitches later.

Tielinen struck out three of the last four hitters he faced and finished with eight on the afternoon.

“Hopefully we can build on this Wednesday,” said Slicer. “After taking the beating that we did on Monday, we really needed this one.”

Bessey will play Andrews at Morton Field Wednesday at 4 p.m.

jpelletier@sunjournal.com

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