STANDISH — Welcome to the world’s weirdest two-hitter. Perhaps ever, and almost assuredly in the history of regional championship baseball.

Buckfield’s 9-6 victory over Valley for the Western Class C title Thursday was not a pitchers’ duel in any conventional sense of the word.

There was dueling, discord and strife, alright, but almost all of it was internal or symbolic.

Jonah Williams versus the strike zone. Cody White against the height of the mound. Everybody clad in garnet juxtaposed with the stress and strain of a sectional final, something they hadn’t experienced in any sport during their high school careers.

“It’s a Western Maine championship, so tension’s high and pressure’s high and people can get down on themselves,” Buckfield senior catcher Alan Lebel said. “That kind of pressure can crush a team. Really we just kind of pulled together. That’s one thing we struggled with and I think we pulled it together pretty good.”

Good as they needed to be, and good as it gets. Here in the medals-for-all, trophies-for-both, triumphant-pictures-for-one environment at Saint Joseph’s College, nobody gets to the end of the afternoon and asks how. Only who.

And for the first time in 15 years, the answer was Buckfield, a team that developed the contradictory habits of making it look easy and exhibiting a flair for the dramatic all spring.

Ten of the Bucks’ 17 wins were shortened by the mercy rule. Four other games were settled by a single run, with Buckfield winning three.

The win that vaulted them into Saturday’s state final against Bangor Christian showed flashes of each.

Williams, a sophomore southpaw, picked up the win. White, a senior right-hander, registered the save. Their combined line: Seven innings, two hits, six runs, three earned, 11 walks, 10 strikeouts, two hit batsmen, 11 left on base, 160 pitches.

“It wasn’t pretty. That was the first game that we’ve been that wild,” Buckfield coach Joe McLaughlin said. “But our guys made good pitches in tight spots. They dug out of it.”

Buckfield fell behind 2-0 in the first inning before rallying for an 8-2 lead through three, at which time Williams still nursed a no-hit bid.

Seth Malloy’s leadoff single in the fourth inning ended that. Four more Valley base runners without a hit spelled the end of Williams’ workday in the fifth.

Enter White, which is something the Buckfield faithful have said, well, never.

“Usually I start,” White said. “I don’t even remember if I’ve come in like that before.”

Nobody would admit to the idea of saving White’s arm for the prospective state final. The bottom line was that he’d be eligible to start Saturday if he worked three innings or less.

Bases-loaded walks to Luke Malloy, Caleb Wade and Dylan Belanger weren’t exactly the easiest way to punch that title game ticket or minimize the pitch count.

“He’s used to having all Saturday morning to warm up for the first end of a doubleheader,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a big adjustment for a lot of these guys.”

I’ll go a couple of steps further and say it’s impossible to overstate the difference.

At basketball tournament time, we talk and write incessantly about the culture shock of Class D teams moving from cramped gymnasiums to the cavernous Augusta Civic Center. You can make a strong case that the change of venue for baseball is even more dizzying.

Seven schools play baseball in the widely scattered East-West Conference. My sincere apologies in advance for saying that most of them do so on glorified sandlots. Perennial power Richmond’s field rests adjacent to a cow pasture.

Buckfield’s road games are traditionally in such remote outposts as Jackman, Bingham and Greenville, where the home teams are sometimes lucky to have a field free from snow and ice by May 1.

“Our mound is a lot thinner than this one,” White said. “I struggled with it.’

Champions adjust, though. White whiffed Carrington Miller to end the fifth inning, rang up Matt Hunnewell and Andrew Tremblay looking to bookend a 1-2-3 sixth, then allowed a harmless single before coasting through the seventh.

How far Buckfield is able to go Saturday at Mansfield Stadium may be determined by how much White has left in the tank. He’s now permitted to pitch on 48 hours rest. Williams is not.

“Depending on how the game went, we wanted to save both of them for Saturday,” Lebel said. “That would have been the ideal thing. The plan was if we had a good enough game to switch them both out.”

“They’ve been 1A and 1B. They have different stuff, different makeup,” McLaughlin added. “Jonah, his curve ball breaks a little bit better. Against some lineups Jonah will be more effective. Cody, you’re guaranteed to get a bunch of strikes. That’s always good as a coach.”

Regrets? Buckfield has none. Second-guessing? No need for any.

Apologies and style points? Those are so regular-season.

Just call Buckfield armed and dangerous. And Western Maine champions.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com.

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