Matt Verrier usually has Erik Henderson’s ear, especially on a baseball field.

It stands to reason that Henderson would defer to Verrier, perhaps the best baseball player to ever wear Oxford Hills’ green-and-gold who is weeks away from enrolling at the University of Maine on a baseball scholarship.

But there was at least one time when Verrier had to listen to his boisterous best friend and long-time teammate.

“We were doing intrasquad last year,” Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer said. “He struck Matt out and he went absolutely berserk, “Matty, when you sign that contract, you remember I struck you out!'”

Where that ultimately falls in Henderson and Verrier’s memory banks is anyone’s guess, particularly after an incredible playoff run that Henderson capped with the gutsiest of state championship shutouts Saturday.

In the midst of throwing his third complete game in 10 days, this time under a hot mid-day sun, Henderson kept everyone on the edge of their seats for 1-hour and 34-minutes.

But while hundreds of Oxford Hills fans were gnawing their fingernails down to the nub, Henderson and Verrier were playing a game of pitch-and-catch like the thousands they’ve had in each other’s backyards.

Not that there weren’t some pesky bugs in the yard. In five of the first six innings, Biddeford’s leadoff hitter reached base. At the conclusion of all seven innings, at least one Tiger was flipping his helmet toward the dugout and waiting for a teammate to meet him with his glove and hat.

“Getting a guy on is no big deal to him,” Slicer said. “It is to me, but …”

“He worked great out of the stretch,” Verrier said. “He was low in the zone. Today he brought all of his stuff.”

In each of the first two innings, Henderson stranded a Tiger at third base. The Vikings faced the same frustration through their first three frames against Biddeford starter Trevor Fleurent, who matched Henderson’s grittiness pitch-for-pitch.

Ethan Davidson’s clutch two-out single broke the scoreless tie. It didn’t do anything to break the tension. It only strengthened the pitcher-catcher bond between Henderson and Verrier.

“We just wanted to mix (Biddeford) up. They were good. They put the ball in play,” Verrier said. “We figured if we keep them off-balance a little bit, they’re going to pound the ball into the ground and we could get quick outs.”

Many of the outs did come quickly. Henderson threw just 78 pitches, perhaps the most important stat of the game given the heat of the day and the strain of the situation.

Such circumstances can often give a high school pitcher a short fuse. But Henderson, known to let his emotions flow freely from time to time, kept a lid on it for most of the game.

“Eric’s a loose cannon,” Slicer said. “He has the perfect mindset to pitch in these games, but Matt’s the one that settles him down. He’s the one, I think, out of anybody in the world, that he listens to.”

“He was very calm and collected on the mound,” Verrier said. “I didn’t need to go out and talk to him much.”

Henderson’s hackles finally went up after a hard ground ball shot past shortstop Cody Hadleyin the sixth. Henderson thought he’d thrown an inning-ending double-play ball, but instead, it put runners at first and second for Biddeford with one out.

At that instant, Verrier knew he needed to talk, and Henderson knew he needed to listen.

“I love him like a brother,” Henderson said. “He knows when I’m stressed up, he comes out and is just like ‘Yeah, Eric, calm down. We got this,'” and I just listen to him. I trust him with everything.”

The Oxford Hills coaches showed they trusted him, too, in the game’s pivotal sequence. Assistant coach Joe Oufiero, who calls the pitches for the Vikings, signaled three straight curve balls to Biddeford captain Travis Vigneault, who swung and missed at the last one for the second out. It was Henderson’s first K of the game.

“They had guys on base to start the inning a lot of times, and that’s when we were going first-pitch fastball,” Oufiero said. “It’s not real deep to 320 (down the lines at Mahaney Diamond) and I didn’t want to see a game ended on a home run. His best pitch today was the curve ball, and we were going after it.”

“You have Matt behind the plate,” Slicer said, “so the ball is not going to get by him.”

Henderson then punched out Chris Jones with a fastball on the outside corner. The collective sigh of relief from the Viking partisans on the first base side was about as close as Mahaney Diamond got to a cool breeze early Saturday afternoon.

Batting third in the seventh, Henderson was hit with a pitch in the lower leg. Lifted for a pinch-runner, the flighty righty doffed his helmet to an appreciative crowd.

Still, Henderson, and Verrier, weren’t done. They got the first two outs of the bottom of the seventh on three pitches. Of course, the next batter had to reach, which pinch-hitter Cody Chalout did with a single.

Or perhaps Henderson, who ended the game by fanning the next batter, was just looking to get in one last word with Verrier.

“We wanted to go curve ball last pitch, but the competitor that he is, he wanted to blow him away with a fastball,” Verrier said. “He did, and we’re celebrating.”

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. His e-mail [email protected]