PEABODY – For nearly four and a half hours on Saturday at Bezemes Diamond, Malden Catholic and Peabody went toe-to-toe in a game that felt like a title fight instead of a first-round game in the Division 1 North sectional.Befitting a game between two of the powerhouses in the tournament, it took nearly 13 full innings for an outcome to be determined as Steve Girolamo’s walk-off double scored pinch runner Brady Doyle with two gone in the bottom of the 13th for a 6-5 Tanner victory.”I told coach (Steve) Freker after the game that the biggest shame is that we met this early,” Peabody coach Mark Bettencourt said. “That game felt like a North final in terms of intensity and spirit. And you feel for the losing team because they deserve to win just as much as the team that does.”All night long, the Tanners (17-4) had let chances to win escape them. But the 13th inning proved to be the lucky charm for Peabody.With two outs, Ramses Vittini singled and was lifted for Doyle. The fleet-footed Doyle then stole second before Girolamo was able to put an end to the 4:17 marathon on the diamond when he found the gap in left-center.”It was like, when was someone going to get a big hit on either side,” Bettencourt said. “But I’m glad it was us doing it before them.”From the way things started, it looked like the Tanners were going to breeze into a quarterfinal meeting with Lawrence as Pat Ruotolo held the Lancers scoreless through six innings and saw his team score twice in the second and fifth innings and again in the sixth for a 5-0 lead.Then the Lancer bats awoke in a big way, tying the game at 5-5 on a Paul Yanacopoulous 3-run homer.Ruotolo finished with 10 strikeouts and one walk in his nine innings of work before yielding to Nick Allen in the tenth. Allen worked around trouble twice but the Tanners left runners at second three times in extra innings.”That was a game that any kid who participated in it will remember and anyone who sat here all night walked away with a great memory,” Bettencourt said. “There were just so many peaks and valleys.”