The skills of all the players have improved during their six-week season, but in some cases attitudes have improved as well. Nick started deep on the bench, despite his proven skills as a defensive player and his potential as a hitter; his fear of failure made him unready to play. Little by little, he has begun to trust himself, and now Dave is ready to try starting him. ‘Nick finally figured out that the other guys weren’t going to give him a hard time if he dropped a ball or struck out,’ St. Pierre says. ‘For a kid like Nick, that’s a big change.’ Today, Nick cranks the third pitch of the game to deep center field. It is a hard, rising line drive, over the fence and gone before the center fielder has a chance to turn and look, let alone cruise back and grab it. As Nick Trzaskos rounds second and slows down, breaking into the home-run trot all these boys know so well from TV, the fans behind the backstop are treated to a rare sight: Nick is grinning. As he crosses home plate and his surprised, happy teammates mob him, he actually begins to laugh. As he enters the dugout, Neil claps him on the back, and Dave Mansfield gives him a brief, hard hug.
Nick has also finished what Dave started with his game of pepper: the team is fully awake now, and ready to do some business. Matt Kinney gives up a lead-off single to Carl Gagnon, the pest who began the process of dismantling Stanley Sturgis. Gagnon goes to second on Ryan Stretton’s sacrifice, advances to third on a wild pitch, and scores on another wild pitch. It is an almost uncanny repetition of his first at bat against Belfast. Kinney’s control is not great this afternoon, but Gagnon’s is the only run the team from Lewiston can manage in the early going. This is unfortunate for them, because Bangor comes up hitting in the top of the second.
Owen King leads off with a deep single; Arthur Dorr follows with another; Mike Arnold reaches when Lewiston’s catcher, Jason Auger, picks up Arnold’s bunt and throws wild to first base. King scores on the error, putting Bangor West back on top, 2-1. Joe Wilcox, Bangor’s catcher, scratches out an infield hit to load the bases. Nick Trzaskos strikes out his second time up, and that brings Ryan Larrobino to the plate. He struck out his first time up, but not now. He turns Matt Noyes’s first pitch into a grand-slam home run, and after an inning and a half the score is Bangor West 6, Lewiston 1.
Up to the sixth, it is an authentic four-leaf-clover day for Bangor West. When Lewiston comes to bat for what the Bangor fans hope will be the last time, they are down by a score of 9-1. The pest, Carlton Gagnon, leads off and reaches on an error. The next batter, Ryan Stretton, also reaches on an error. The Bangor fans, who have been cheering wildly, begin to look a little uneasy. It’s hard to choke when you’re eight runs ahead, but not impossible. These northern New Englanders are Red Sox fans. They have seen it happen many times. Bill Paradis makes the jitters worse by singling sharply up the middle. Both Gagnon and Stretton come home. The score is now 9-3, runner on first, nobody out. The Bangor fans shuffle and look at each other uneasily. It can’t really get away from us this late in the game, can it? their looks ask. The answer is, Of course, you bet it can. In Little League, anything can and often does happen.
But not this time. Lewiston scores one more time, and that’s it. Noyes, who fanned three times against Sturgis, fans for the third time today, and there is finally one out. Auger, Lewiston’s catcher, hits the first pitch hard to the shortstop, Roger Fisher. Roger booted Carl Gagnon’s ball earlier in the inning to open the door, but he picks this one up easily and shovels it to Mike Arnold, who feeds it on to Owen King at first. Auger is slow, and King’s reach is long. The result is a game-ending 6-4-3 double play. You don’t often see around-the-horn d.p.s in the scaled-down world of Little League, where the base paths are only sixty feet long, but Roger found a four-leaf clover today. If you have to chalk it up to anything, it might as well be that. Whatever you chalk it up to, the boys from Bangor have won another one, 9-4. Tomorrow, there are the giants from York.