SOUTH PARIS – Two constants have emerged in the young Zone III American Legion season – rain and victories for Bessey Motors.

The pattern continued yesterday at Bessey’s home-opener against Smith-Tobey of Bath as pitcher Corey Tielinen and a potent lineup guaranteed a 10-0 win between the rain drops in a game halted after five innings due to the 10-run mercy rule.

Tielinen frustrated Smith-Tobey with five innings of shutout pitching and the Bessey lineup, led by the tandem of Brent Grenier and Kyle Keniston at the top of the order, smacked 10 hits as to improve to 3-0.

Grenier and Keniston sparked the offense in the first and third, leading off each inning with back-to-back doubles. The duo combined to go 4-for-5 with four runs scored.

“I changed (the top of the order) up a little bit,” said Bessey coach Shane Slicer. “Brent hasn’t played for a while, but he obviously can hit the ball. He struck out more the first couple of games than he probably did his whole high school career, so I put him up there to get him more relaxed. He’s starting to hit the ball and Kyle’s playing excellent ball.”

“Brent was getting on and I was trying to do my job and get him over and I was lucky enough to get a good pitch and get it in the gap both times,” said Keniston.

Bessey shot the gap for six extra base hits on the night. Keniston’s two-bagger in the third doubled Bessey’s lead to 2-0 and opened the floodgates for five straight hits off Smith-Tobey starter Jon Tefft. Chris Henderson followed Kenniston with a triple into the left-center field gap, then scored on Matt McDonnell’s single. Tielinen followed with a single of his own and scored on Cory Saunders’ RBI single.

Bessey plated two more in the fifth on a Tielinen triple and a Jim Bower sacrifice fly, then scored an unearned run in the fifth to end it.

It was the second time in three games Bessey has scored 10 runs, although the last time they did it, Saturday against Poland, the game was cut short in the fourth inning by rain. Still, Slicer thinks his team has yet to hit its stride at the plate.

“I think as the season goes on, we’ll start to hit the ball better. These guys have had some time off,” he said. “I have a lot of good hitters I can bring in off the bench. It’s a luxury.”

“More impressively, I think our pitching staff’s doing pretty well,” he added. “Andrew Stacy gave up one run in six innings (in a win over Gayton Monday), Tielinen threw a shutout today and Baker threw pretty well in the rain against Poland.”

Greg Henrickson had three of the five hits for Smith-Tobey (0-3), but they couldn’t break through against Tielinen (five Ks, one walk, one hit batter), leaving men on base in every inning and seven on overall.