The Lewiston-based American Legion baseball team made sure of that with a 6-0 victory over Gardiner in the second game of a doubleheader Saturday at Oak Hill High School. Gardiner won the opener 9-0.

The split, coupled with Franklin County’s sweep of Locke Mills, makes Pastime (13-5) the No. 3 seed in the zone tournament, which begins Tuesday. Franklin County (13-5) is the No. 2 seed, owning the head-to-head tiebreaker with Pastime. The top eight teams advance to the tournament with the higher seed hosting a first-round game. 

“We rebounded really well and I challenged the guys and said that our destiny is in our own hands,” Pastime coach Andrew Cessario said. “We can either have a home game in the playoffs or we’re going to be traveling. I think they knew the stakes.” 

After being blanked in the opener, Pastime found a way to generate runs despite recording fewer hits in Game 2 than it did in Game 1. Pastime registered seven hits in the finale compared to eight in the opener, but had six more runs to show for it. 

“We were more excited,” Wong said. “I think our guys finally woke up. We realized we needed to go get the win and we knew what kind of situation it was and we decided to go show up and be energetic and hit the ball.” 

Pastime turned to the squeeze for two of those runs. Hunter Landry laid down the first in the second inning with his team already ahead 1-0. Eddie Turgeon slid under the tag of Gardiner catcher Jake Bannister on the squeeze play and Landry came around to score on an RBI groundout to short off the bat of Gage Cote. 

Pastime again called for the squeeze in the third, and it was Austin Wing who delivered. Wing’s sacrifice bunt scored Wong from third as Pastime built a 4-0 lead. 

“I just wanted to get ahead,” Cessario said. “I wanted to put pressure on them with our speed. We had a good pitcher on the mound throwing strikes, so I felt one of two runs was going to win that game so I wanted to put to the pressure on.” 

Cote picked up his second RBI of the contest with an infield single that scored Caleb Dostie in the fourth. Cote plated Pastime’s final run in the same inning when he touched home as Wong was caught in a rundown between first and second. 

Defensively, Pastime overcame two first-inning errors and played clean over the final six frames. It committed six errors in Game 1. 

Austin Wing pitched an efficient complete game for Pastime, tossing seventy pitches. He threw 10 or fewer pitches in three innings, including just five in the seventh. Wing scattered four hits, striking out one. 

Pastime’s performance in Game 2 was nothing short of a complete turnaround from the team that was on the field in Game 1. Just over 12 hours after handing Bessey Motors its first loss of the season in the completion of a suspended game from earlier in the year, Pastime didn’t look like a team set to host a playoff game. 

Baserunning mistakes, errors and runners left on base plagued Pastime in the opener. It started in the first inning when Brock Belanger singled with one out and was picked off a couple pitches later. In the third inning, Dostie was thrown out from right field trying to go from first to third on a single by Cote. 

“Nothing really went well that game,” Cessario said. “We came out flat. We came off a big win yesterday finishing up with Bessey and we just came out today flat. You can’t do that against a good team like that.” 

Pastime had something brewing in the fourth when it loaded the bases with no outs. But Belanger and Wong were thrown out at the plate in a 1-2-3-2 double play off a grounder to the pitcher by Wing. Brady Cusson flew out to third to end the inning. 

“They had bases loaded with no outs and we get two outs out of that somehow,” Gardiner coach Dan Burdin said. “That was huge. It kept the momentum with us and we were able to get out of that. That was the big play and probably the turning point of that game.” 

Meanwhile, Gardiner (12-6) plated three runs in the second on just one hit. Kyle Fletcher and Dalton Therrien drew bases-loaded walks and Bannister scored on a wild pitch. 

Gardiner would add two more in the third, fifth and sixth, respectively, for the Game 1 victory. 

Brady Dion finished the doubleheader 4-for-5 with a double and four runs scored for Gardiner. Wong went 4-for-6 with a double and a run scored. 

“I was seeing beach balls,” Wong said. “I’ve been feeling real good lately. Everything’s just coming together at the right time.” 

Wong also pitched four innings of relief in Game 1. 

Pastime will host sixth-seeded Rogers Post in the first round of the zone tournament on Tuesday at 4 p.m.