SOUTH PARIS – Jeff Keene got the pitch he was expecting and got as much of his bat on it as he could have hoped.

What Keene didn’t expect, and neither did anyone else at the Gouin Athletic Complex, was for the ball to keep carrying and carrying, and carrying, to left field. But that’s what it did, aided by a timely breeze, until it went over the fence, for a first-inning grand slam that sent Gayton Post 31 on its way to breaking Bessey Motors stranglehold on the Zone 3 American Legion championship.

Keene’s blast, his first homer of the season, capped a five-run first, all that Gayton would need in an 11-4 pounding of defending champion Bessey Motors in Sunday’s final.

Gayton, which lost to Bessey on the last play of last year’s championship and dropped two of three this season, earned its first title since the zone established a post-season tournament in 1999.

Both teams already had clinched a spot in next weekend’s state tournament in Augusta by virtue of Bessey winning the regular-season crown. Gayton’s victory assured it the top seed out of the zone and a first round bye. Bessey, which had won five of the last six zone titles going into Sunday, will face the winner of Zone 4 at 1 p.m. next Saturday at Morton Field in Augusta. Gayton will play at 3:30 p.m. Saturday against the winner of one of the morning games.

Dan Millett led Bessey Motors (16-6-1) with three hits and three runs scored. Travis Dyke, Eddie West, Kyle Neagle and Will Emerson had two hits apiece for Gayton (17-6).

The game-changing rally started off with a whimper – bleeders, bloops and infield hits off Bessey starter Evan Humphrey. Mekae Hyde’s seeing-eye single to left drove in Travis Dyke with the game’s first run, then Kyle Neagle beat out an infield hit to load the bases for Keene.

“I was up in the count, 2-0, and he came back with a fastball, and I was just ready for it,” Keene said. “I thought I got a good piece on it, but then I thought again and looked and couldn’t see it so I just watched the umpire.”

“The last two days, we got timely hitting,” Gayton manager Todd Cifelli said. “A couple of times today, we got them on, got them over and drove them in, but the power of the extra-base hit were big, game-changing plays. That’s something that Bessey is great at – hitting doubles, triples and home runs – and we kept them in the park today.”

Bessey answered with an unearned run in the bottom of the first, but Gayton starter Joe Sullivan kept them from putting crooked numbers on the board in his 7 1/3 innings despite enjoying only one 1-2-3 frame.

“All I could think about this morning was how this was the game that I wanted,” Sullivan said. “You really want to be that No. 1 seed going in. So I just focused on getting ahead and making good quality pitches.”

“We felt he matched up well with them,” Cifelli said. “He worked ahead in counts and pitched to contact. That’s a great hitting lineup considering they (10-run) ruled the last two teams that they played in this tournament. He did a good job of stopping their momentum.”

After Neagle’s RBI double extended the lead to 6-1 in the third, Sullivan yielded an RBI double to Ryan Yates in the bottom of the frame to make it 6-2. Unfortunately for Bessey, Yates pulled up with a pulled hamstring and had to leave the game.

Bessey continued to hit the ball hard off Sullivan (nine hits, six strikeouts, four walks), but usually right at a fielder or without anybody on base.

“I thought we struck the ball fairly well, but with runners in scoring position, we didn’t get any two-out hits, and they did a great job with two outs,” Bessey Motors manager Shane Slicer said.

Eric Waite’s two-out single in the sixth widened the margin to 7-2. Bessey made a bid to get back into it by loading the bases with one out in the seventh. Sullivan hit Brandon Chase to send home one run. With two outs, Travis Fillebrown then laced a single to left, scoring Millett, but Emerson made a perfect relay throw to the plate to cut down Matt Verrier to end the threat.

“We weren’t stringing any hits together. That was the biggest thing in my mind (in sending Verrier home),” Slicer said. “They executed very well. If it was a closer game, maybe (I hold him at third). That was a momentum changer.”

Bessey’s defense erased what ground its offense had gained with three errors in the eighth which led to two Gayton runs. Greg LaBonte pitched 1 2/3 innings of perfect relief and Gayton added two more in the ninth on Dyke’s triple.