AUGUSTA — While the tension of the moment had Lewiston fans trying to remember if they took their blood pressure medication, Lewiston junior Corbin Hyde was calmly hearkening back to last summer.

It was the bottom of the seventh of a tied Eastern Class A baseball championship game when Hyde stepped up to that plate with his older brother, Mekae, representing the winning run at second. Corbin, a junior, thought back to last July’s play-in game for the state American Legion tournament, which several of Lewiston’s players participated in as members of Gayton Post.

Against Libby-Mitchell of Scarborough, he had ripped a double to drive in the winning run from second in the game’s last at bat. The win was the springboard to the state legion title for Gayton.

Early Wednesday evening at Morton Field, he found himself in the same situation. And he delivered yet again, lining a 1-2 off-speed pitch into the gap in left-center field to give the top-seeded Blue Devils a dramatic 5-4 victory over No. 2 Bangor.

“I was seeing the ball great and I knew he was going to throw me an off-speed (pitch), so I knew I had to wait on it and shot it into the gap,” Corbin Hyde said. “I was actually the least nervous in that at-bat. I was more nervous in my other at-bats. I was just thinking of Legion, when we won against Scarborough to go into states.”

Lewiston fans would have to be in their late 60’s to be able to remember the last time their school played for a baseball state championship. It was 1950, when the Blue Devils defeated Bangor, 6-4. They will try to win the second state crown  when they face Western A champion Cheverus at 2 p.m. Saturday back at Morton Field.

“That’s 61 years. That’s history,” said senior pitcher/outfielder Joe Sullivan, who picked up the win in relief.

It looked for a time like the game would be the type of history Lewiston would never want to re-live. Leading 4-3 in the top of the seventh with the tying run at second, Bangor was down to its last strike when Sullivan’s 2-2 pitch went off the glove of Mekae Hyde and to the backstop to his right.

Hyde had no idea where the ball was, so Sullivan ran in from the mound to retrieve it with Bangor pinch runner Jacob Searles rounding third and racing home. Sullivan’s throw back to the plate was high, and may not have beaten the speedy Searles anyway.

“It was my fault,” Mekae Hyde said. “It was a low pitch. With two strikes, I was trying to bring it in for a strike and it just tipped off the bottom of my glove. Whenever I don’t know where it is, I always look at my feet, because usually it’s right there. I had no clue where it was. Then I saw it was in that little corner over there. I’ll never forget that corner.”

“(Hyde’s) hands were up and I tried to run after it, but it was just too late,” Sullivan said. “It’s a freak thing, but we battled through it.”

Even before the thought crossed Corbin Hyde’s mind, the Blue Devils (18-1) recalled battling adversity before.

“The seniors, Sullivan, Keene, Mekae, pulled the team together,” Lewiston coach Todd Cifelli said. “Players words mean way more than coaches’ words, so they rallied together.”

“We were pretty down, but we’re used to (adversity). We’d had some comebacks in Legion,” Mekae Hyde said. “I knew I had to step up and get a hit.”

He did that, leading off the winning rally with a single, then moved into scoring position when Bangor reliever Luke Hetterman balked, setting up the younger Hyde’s heroics.

Lewiston never trailed but had a couple of chances to break the game open. The Devils loaded the bases to start the first inning, but only got one run home on Keene’s sacrifice fly.

Jeff Keene drove Mekae Hyde home with a single that put the Devils up 2-1 in the third. Corbin Hyde (two hits) scored from third when Bangor starter Joe Stanevicz was called for a balk, making it 3-1 Lewiston.

Lewiston loaded the bases again to start the fourth, but again had to settle for just a sacrifice fly, this time by Scott Ouellette, and a 4-1 lead.

“Bangor is coached real well and they’re going to do damage control, and Stanevicz did that,” Cifelli said. “Stanevicz is a really, really good pitcher, and we had quality at-bats against him. While we only had five runs, per se, those are quality runs against a team like Bangor.”

The Blue Devils lost senior first baseman Ben Wigant to a knee injury suffered during a rundown where the base runner, Nic Cota, dove into his legs trying to avoid the tag.

The Rams (15-4) had a couple of chances to keep pace early against Corbin Hyde (5 2/3, 0 earned runs, 6 hits, 5 K’s, 4 walks), but they left six men on base through the first five innings and nine for the game.

“We missed some opportunities and we gave them way too many,” Bangor coach Jeff Fahey said. “We made seven or eight mistakes that we don’t normally make and just didn’t play well enough to win.”

Bangor threatened in the fifth but had a runner cut down at the plate by center fielder Nate Berube on Anthony Capuano’s single.

Jack Stacey’s two-out, two-run double made it 4-3 in the sixth. After a walk, Sullivan came on in relief of Hyde and stranded the tying run and go-ahead runs by getting Adam King to fly out to left.

Click here to see more photos of the game.