NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton Post 28 Senior American Legion baseball team had a steep hill to climb heading into the bottom of the seventh inning of its regular season finale against Belchertown Post 239 at Arcanum Field on Friday evening.

Trailing 7-2, Post 28 needed five runs to keep their hopes of a first-round bye in the upcoming playoffs alive – and were looking to also be the first team to hand Belchertown a loss this summer.

Well, the Northampton’s bats may have come late, but as the saying goes, better late than never. Behind clutch hits from Aiden Keeling-Lococo (RBI double) and Andrew Gagne (two-run double) and aggressive base running following several Post 239 errors, Post 28 knotted the game up at seven apiece and forced extra innings.

Neither team pushed a run across in the eighth, and the game ended in a 7-7 tie due to darkness. Although they didn’t win, Post 28 head coach Adam Krol couldn’t have been happier with how his team performed with its back against the wall.

“I am so proud of these guys,” he said. “When you’re in big moments, individuals tend to try and take too much on. They take big swings and try to do too much. But your job is just to get it to the next guy, and I kept telling them that. And you can see the snowball effect and what happens when you get momentum late in a game. That’s the type of thing that this team can do, and I’m extremely proud of them.”

As is the case in every sport, there are two sides to every story. In the other dugout, Belchertown didn’t hold the same smiles Northampton did after the game.

Post 239 let one slip away, and five errors – including two in the seventh – haunted them late in the game. Throughout the entire summer, Belchertown has been the best fielding team across western Massachusetts, which must be the case to finish a season undefeated (15-0-1 after Friday).

The No. 1 seed is Belchertown’s, and was before Friday’s game even started. Head coach Todd McDonald isn’t too worried about the blunders shown. He knows his guys will be ready for whoever visits their home field on Monday in the postseason.

“First of all, we tip our cap to Northampton,” McDonald said. “They put pressure on us until the final out. They put the ball in play, and we didn’t make some plays. It’s a good lesson for us. We’ve been playing great defense all year, and it’s been winning games for us. Today that didn’t happen. Sometimes you need a game like this… It re-conditions us and resets our brain going into next week. We know we need to play from the first out to the last out.”

Through four innings, it was all Belchertown.

Cody West pitched three perfect innings (no hits, no walks, no runs, five strikeouts) before being replaced by Jake Waller.

A four-run second was propelled by a Chace Earle two-run single (scoring Evan Ferguson and Derek Gould) and a Brady Perkins blast that resulted in a two-run triple (scoring Ian McDonald and Earle). Two innings later, Post 239 tacked on two more, with Perkins ripping another hit to again plate McDonald and Earle.

What appeared to be a comfortable 6-1 lead was the result of assertive approaches at the dish from their lineup.

“We were aggressive, and that’s the way we’ve been all year,” Todd McDonald said. “We got hits early on, and we got base runners. We put the pressure on early, and we saw the results with those four runs in the second inning. That was the product of us doing things right. I don’t know if we get into that mentality of like, ‘We’re gonna cruise through this one,’ but I tip my cap to [Northampton] again. They didn’t give up, and I love that about them. That’s what I love about this game.”

Post 28 scraped across one run in the bottom of the fourth (Trey Kuzmeski scored on an error), and after a Beau Elson RBI ground out made it 7-1 Belchertown, Northampton added another in the home half of the sixth (Jamie Fowler sacrifice fly brought home Griffin Smiarowski) to bring the score to 7-2.

That set up the seventh inning flurry, and Elijah Rubinstein scored Gagne to tie it after he reached on an errant throw from third.

“We’re not going to quit until the final out,” Krol said. “I don’t care what the score is, I don’t care who we’re playing. We’re not the loudest team, we’re not the best team, but we will work hard and we will go to the final out. That showed today.”

Harry LaFlamme got the start for Northampton, pitching his first innings of the summer for Post 28. He earned the game ball from Krol for his 4 2/3 innings of work.

Both teams now shift their focus to the postseason. Northampton Post 28 (11-5-1) was in a three-way tie for third with Wilbraham and Greenfield, but that tie could boost them ahead of each squad depending on how the points system shakes out.

Belchertown plays Monday at 5:30 p.m. at Belchertown High School against an opponent to be determined in what will be the second round.