BANGOR – Ballpark franklies.

Hot, hotter and humid. Still, Monday was an almost perfect day at Mansfield Stadium.

The afternoon game in the Senior Little League World Series was between a couple of teams that could take the heat. While some of us might have preferred to be sitting in front of a fan, or in a room cooled by an air conditioner, the heat was no big deal to the players and coaches from Spring, Texas, and Curacao.

It was as much celebration as baseball. A small group of umbrella-toting, whistle-blowing, shouting fans from Curacao made sure of that.

The whistle was almost as constant as their disagreement with the home plate umpire, whose strike zone was pitcher-friendly.

Cheers came after almost every pitch. Arms-waving dances were done after each Curacao run scored. If someone had been beating on a drum you might have thought a soccer game had broken out.

While the whistle may have precipitated a headache or two, it really added to what was a fantastic atmosphere. As did the smell of the sausages cooking in the concession stands and the flags of Texas and Curacao that flew near the teams’ dugouts.

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The Curacao players played solid, fundamental baseball for six innings. They hit cutoff men. They bunted to move runners along. But then, inexplicably, they turned into the Keystone Kops in the seventh inning. Leading 5-3 with one out in the final inning. They had a catcher’s interference that wiped out the second out of the inning. That was followed by a dropped fly ball in the outfield. Three runs scored on the play. By the time the dust was settled, Spring, Texas, had put up an eight spot.

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Curacao manager Norval Faneyte delighted the crowd with the flick of a right foot. Standing in the third base coach’s box, a low bouncing foul ball came his way. Faneyte popped the ball into the air with his foot, caught the ball and tossed it to a bemused Spring pitcher Braxton Watson.

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Listening to the radio announcers calling the game on Radio Geminis (106.1 on your FM dial) in the press box was interesting. The folks of Curacao, which is an island in the Dutch Antilles, speak a language called Papiamentu. It is described as a Creole language derived from a combination of Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and various African languages.

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One of the radio announcers had a Jugs gun he used to determine how fast the pitchers threw. Curacao pitcher Jair Jurrjens had hit 90 mph on a scout’s gun earlier in the game. In the seventh inning he hit 86 mph on the Radio Geminis’ gun and was consistently in the mid-80s.

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Reggie Plaisir was on the move Monday. Plaisir drove to Bangor from Boston and jumped out of his car and went right to work.

Plaisir is a scout for New England Recruiting, a company that recruits players to schools such as perennial Massachusetts football power St. John’s Prep in Danvers.

Plaisir said he was interested in Jurrjens, but had a special interest in Curacao outfielder Eugene Offerman.

“He is Jose’s cousin,” Plaisir explained.

Yes, that Jose. The former Red Sox player Jose Offerman.

Plaisir was born and raised on the island of St. Martin, another of the five islands that make up the Dutch Antilles.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or dperryman@bangordailynews.net.