Joe Baker goes the distance as Oxford Hills blanks Brunswick.

SOUTH PARIS – With an even playing field thanks to another mid-spring rainstorm, Oxford Hills went looking for a little revenge.

Last year, with a perfect regular-season record on the line, the Vikings faced Brunswick pitcher Dustin Zubron. The pitcher shut them down.

On Monday, the Vikings would again face Zubron, and even though there was no perfect regular season on the line, Oxford Hills exacted its revenge.

Corey Tielinen drove in Joe Baker with a sacrifice fly in the fifth inning and Baker pitched seven innings of shutout baseball to lead the Vikings to a 2-0 win over the Dragons.

“That was a tough game,” Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer said. “Zubron pitched a solid game and their catcher (Nate Brunette) kept us off balance on the basepaths.”

Twice in earlier innings, Oxford Hills tried to advance runners from first to second, but twice Brunette picked them off with a strong throw from behind the plate.

As far as offense went, Zubron went through the lineup in order through four innings. In the fourth, he allowed a walk and a single, but both runners were pegged at second base trying to steal.

“This was a revenge game for us,” Baker said. “He was throwing a lot of first-pitch strikes, and the second time through the lineup we started jumping on those.”

In the fifth, Baker led off with a single on the first pitch he saw. Chris Henderson followed with another single and Baker advanced to third. Two batters later Tielinen hit a rocket to deep centerfield, and Ben Giroux made an over-the-shoulder catch to hold the Vikings to just the one run on the sacrifice fly.

It was all Baker needed.

“We breathed a bit easier knowing we had Joe on the mound after we got the one run,” Slicer said. “In these conditions it was pretty safe.”

“I wasn’t trying to throw anything by them,” Baker said of his 91-pitch outing. “I knew with the wet infield not much was going to squirt through, and the defense played really well.”

In the sixth, Matt McDonnell came around after a hit and an error allowed him to scamper home. Brunswick DH Ben Jacobs smacked a double in the top of the seventh with just one out, but the Dragons couldn’t bring the runner all the way around.

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