LEWISTON — Time stopped for a few moments after sophomore Michael Dymkoski just smacked a walk-off, game-winning triple to give the Lewiston Blue Devils an 11-10 victory over Oxford Hills (14-2) in a grand, regular-season-ending baseball game on Wednesday.
When Nate Lyons came home with the winning run, everybody on the field paused to decide if this was the game-winning run after the Blue Devils (13-3) overcame a 10-2 deficit and scored nine runs in the bottom of the seventh inning.
The scoreboard was not being used and both teams did their best to stay on top of all the runs.
“To be honest, I thought the tying run was on third,” Dymkoski said. “So I just wanted the base hit and got it, and everyone was waiting to run out. They didn’t know what was going on, and we found out it was a walk-off.
“The best team around, we thought. We thought they were beatable, but….”
The Devils used five hits in the seventh to complete the comeback.
“We lost our first three (games) and won 13 in a row,” Lewiston coach Darren Hartley said. “We’ve proven that we can come back. We came back half of our games this year — nothing like that, obviously.
“We put ourselves in that position because we make too many mistakes to get there. We hit the ball hard off a great pitcher. We are very proud of our guys, but we really would like to prevent some the stuff that leads up to us getting behind by that many runs.
“We want to move our program to the next level of being a great program, not just a very good program. We have to correct our self-explosions, our mistakes.”
Lewiston pitcher Cooper St. Hilaire got the win on the mound after coming in relief for Keegan McLaughlin in the sixth inning.
It was the top of the sixth inning that Oxford Hills’ bats came alive when the Vikings erupted with eight runs of their own. The uprising featured a two-run triple by Ethan Cutler, who was tagged with the loss after coming on in relief for Elias Soehren in the fifth inning.
“Give them credit,” Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer said. “They came back. I thought we had it. They (hit) the ball pretty well in that last inning. They hit the ball hard. They deserve the comeback win — no question.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.