Sometimes you play picture-perfect baseball, and sometimes you play anything but.

Windham experienced both sides of that coin during the American Legion state tournament last week, opening with a dominating 13-1 win over Post 51 (made up of players from Class A champions Messalonskee) and following that with a textbook 6-0 shutout of rivals Westbrook, sending them into the winners bracket final with First Title (Cheverus High players) last Friday for a chance to advance to the tournament title game.

That’s where the flawless play, and the easy wins, stopped.

After losing to First Title on Friday, Windham fell to the two-time defending champs, Pastime Club of Lewiston, to drop out of the tournament.

On Friday, First Title jumped out to a 9-0 lead after five as Windham was sloppy in the field and couldn’t get anything going off hurler Mitchell Powers. The Merchants were able to get four back in the sixth, but that was all as First Title belted 16 hits in a 9-4 win.

That meant Windham hand the unenviable task of turning around and playing again less than 17 hours later in an elimination game against Pastime Club.

“It’s tough when you play the first two games so well and are so dominant, you get almost overconfident in a way and it showed (Friday) night when we came out and booted the ball around,” Windham manager Nick Dubay said. “We didn’t play the way we did in the first two games. It’s just tough to rebound.”

Pastime opened a 1-0 lead Saturday, but Windham fought back, scoring three runs in the third. Conveniently, they did it without having to hit the ball out of the infield thanks to two errors and four free passes from Pastime starter Edward Emerson.

But that’s where Windham’s luck ran out. The three runs would be all the Merchants would get as Pastime’s Ryan Riordan relieved Emerson after three innings and shut the door with six innings of shutout ball.

Meanwhile Pastime’s aggressive attack continually chipped away at Windham ace Cody Dube, out of necessity pitching on just two days rest. His defense didn’t give him much help, committing costly errors in the third, fourth and fifth innings as Pastime went back on top 5-3.

“(Dube) threw well, they didn’t get too many hits,” Dubay said. “I mean he’s such a competitor if he’d pitched yesterday he could have said he could pitch today too. But we didn’t give him any defense and he got rattled and it kind of shook him up, and he couldn’t recover after that.”

Windham could have tied it in the seventh when it loaded the bases with two outs. But Pastime center fielder Corbin Hyde was able to track down a hard-hit line drive off the bat of Joe Francoeur to end the threat, and when Pastime got two more in the bottom half of the inning it was game over.

“They were more focused,” Dubay said of Pastime. “They just made the plays and got the hits when it mattered, and we couldn’t get the big hit. They made plays, we didn’t it sucks to go out that way.”

After opening the state tournament with such promise, Windham had fallen twice in less than 24 hours to crash out. Dube said it wasn’t just the losing, but how the games were lost, that hurt.

“The worst part is it feels like we beat ourselves, we played horrible in both of the games and you don’t know what the outcome would be if we made certain plays,” Dube said. “Once they got up and we started playing like that, it kind of just shut down from there.”

Windham’s Cody Dube fouls off a pitch in the third inning against Pastime Saturday. Dube went 0-2 with two walks and an RBI and pitched 6 2/3 innings on two days rest, but it wasn’t enough as Pastime eliminated Windham with a 7-3 victory.
Shortstop Spencer Hodge tries to turn a double play and avoid Pastime’s Joe Sullivan in the fourth inning of Windham’s 7-3 defeat Saturday.