AUBURN – With the way he was swinging the bat and working quickly on the mound, Corey Tielinen was clearly trying to make quick work of New Auburn Post 153 in Sunday’s Zone III American Legion semifinal at Pettengill Park.
After all, he had a train to catch.
Top-seeded New Auburn wanted to keep Tielinen and the rest of the fourth-seeded Bessey Motors squad around. They were pesky enough to keep Tielinen waiting and the Bessey Motors fans a bit nervous, but couldn’t overcome the tall right-hander and a potent offense in Bessey’s 15-10 win.
Bessey (16-7) will host No. 7 Mechanic Falls (8-15) in the zone championship game at 5 p.m. today. The winner earns a spot in next weekend’s state legion tournament. New Auburn already earned a berth by winning the Zone III regular season title.
Currently enrolled in the second summer semester at Northeastern University in Boston, Tielinen is limited to weekend duty for Bessey now. But he made the most of his weekend visit yesterday, going 4-for-4 with a home run, a double and three runs scored, while giving up two earned runs in seven innings on the hill.
“I did what I could do to help the team win a game,” said Tielinen, who was planning on catching the last train into Boston last night and will miss today’s championship. “Hopefully, we all get to play again next weekend.”
Bessey pounded 16 hits off New Auburn pitching, led by Tielinen, Kyle Keniston and Matt McDonnell (three hits each). Andrew Stacy added a double and a solo home run.
“We’re hitting the ball well. There’s no question about that,” said Bessey coach Shane Slicer. “They put a scare into us, obviously. They’re hitting the ball well, too.”
New Auburn (17-6) belted out 13 hits, led by Brady Blackman (three hits, four RBIs), Justin Ciszewski (two hits, three runs) and Ben Dyer (two hits, two RBIs). They came close to being 10-run ruled on two occasions, trailing 9-1 in the fifth and 15-6 in the eighth. But they got back off the canvas on both occasions, getting the tying run to the plate in the fifth and batting around in the eighth to keep things interesting.
“We didn’t stop battling. I’m proud of the way we competed,” said New Auburn coach Jeff Benson, whose team already knows it will be playing the Zone IV winner at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in Bangor. “Usually 10 runs will be enough to win, but against an offense like that, it just wasn’t enough today.”
Tielinen’s long single in the second put Bessey in front for good, and Stacy added to the lead with his solo blast to right on an 0-2 pitch in the third. New Auburn cut the lead in half on Ciszewski’s RBI single off Tielinen in the bottom of the inning, but Tielinen more than returned the favor in the fourth with a two-run shot to left field off Ciszewski to make it 4-1.
“He was trying to throw me low and away, and he made a couple of mistakes, I guess, by leaving it up and in, and I hit balls that are up and in,” Tielinen said. “They threw me a lot of fastballs. I was surprised that they didn’t throw me more curve balls.”
Bessey broke the game open with five in the fifth to make it 9-1. It should have stayed there through the rest of the inning, but back-to-back two-out errors by the Bessey third baseman opened the door for Blackman’s bases-clearing triple to pull New Auburn back within 9-4.
“That’s one thing that we have to straighten out is our defense. We’re making our pitchers throw too many pitches,” Slicer said. “Corey kept them off balance. They didn’t really smoke the ball, but we gave them runs.”
Bessey tacked on two more runs in the sixth, but New Auburn responded with two of their own in the seventh, the only two earned runs Tielinen (nine hits, seven Ks, two walks) allowed. A four-run eighth by Bessey finally put New Auburn at a comfortable distance.
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