Sometimes you don’t need a run to score or a batter to strike out or a grounder to be bobbled to know that one team has it and one team doesn’t.

It was pretty clear early in Saturday’s Class C championship that George Stevens Academy was the “have” and St. Dom’s was the “have not” on this particular day.

The Eagles didn’t get a hit until the third inning, but they swatted a couple of stinging line drives off starter Ian Pullen in the first two innings that had to send up red flags for the Saints’ faithful.

Meanwhile, Pullen’s counterpart, Dan Hilts, was pitching like he had been here before, which, in fact he had. The diminutive junior was dealing, as they say, mixing a 12-to-6 curveball with a sneaky fastball to keep the opposition off balance.

It took awhile for the Saints, who hadn’t faced a lefty all season until yesterday, to even look comfortable in the batter’s box against the Eagles’ southpaw. They didn’t get a ball out of the infield until the fourth.

Still, there was some semblance of hope in the second, when Jack Lavoie led off the inning with an infield single down the third base line. Then, before Lavoie could even get a look at Hilts’ deceptive pick-off move, he was dead meat. So was, for all practical purposes, the Saints’ running game for the rest of the day.

From there, GSA’s line drives quickly went from outs to hits in the scorebook, and the Saints’ pitching staff, tired and banged up, didn’t have the juice left to keep the Eagles from pulling away. Any hope of making a serious charge at a laboring Hilts in the later innings faded.

By the time it was over, St. Dom’s had suffered the worst Class C title game defeat since Livermore Falls demolished Searsport, 17-3, in 1999. But few Saints were hanging their heads after the loss, and with good reason.

For one, these Saints are smart enough to know deep down that they were beaten, flat out, by a better team. They probably would argue that they didn’t play their best game Saturday, and they would be correct. But these kids have enough baseball acumen (it will be interesting to see how many of them become baseball coaches in their adulthood) to know that GSA had the better pitching, better hitting and a better grasp of baseball fundamentals.

The Saints wouldn’t have made it this far if they didn’t have a better command than any other team in Western C of all three of those facets of the game. They also wouldn’t have made it this far if they hadn’t rallied around each other under some difficult circumstances at the start of the year.

The team reported for practice in March with high expectations after finishing second in Western Maine last year, but also with a new coach at the helm after two years under Allan Turgeon.

Things didn’t start off on the right foot. The players saw the practices as little more than organized chaos, and some began to lose interest. Turgeon came on as an assistant and soon was the de facto head coach running the team, despite a broken shoulder. The new coach, to his credit, recognized it wasn’t working and stepped aside.

Bob Blackman came on board as Turgeon’s assistant and the two quickly discovered that they were philosophically simpatico. With the coaches finally on the same page, the players soon followed.

“We really started getting things done and started having organized practices,” said Pullen. “That’s what got us to the state championship game, organization from them and hard work from us.”

Pullen and fellow seniors Jack Lavoie, Jim Mayo, Ryan Turgeon and Josh Dwinal kept the ship afloat in the early going. Soon, underclassmen like Jon Rutt, Brady Blackman, Mike Carpenter, Jake Albert and Brent Cary were making significant contributions.

After two frustrating defeats at the hands of North Yarmouth Academy, they knocked off NYA in a mid-May slugfest (for, as it turned out, NYA’s only loss of the season). That was the start of a seven-game winning streak, capped by a victory over Jay in the Western C final to avenge an agonizing season-ending loss to the Tigers in last year’s final.

Since the Saints had done so well in rallying during the regular season, it seemed as though they could muster one last comeback yesterday.

But Hilts, who threw a shutout in last year’s state title game against Jay, stood in the way, all 5-foot-4 or so of him. As the Eagles’ lead grew, so did the Saints’ frustration. The reality that they would finish one victory short was sinking in.

After the game, Turgeon gathered his team and told the seniors what a pleasure it was for him to coach them, then reminded the underclassmen of what they had to do to get back here next year. They probably already knew, which just may make them a “have” next year.