East Lyme — An observer along the fence Wednesday summarized this three-hour spectacle perfectly:

“There are two types of baseball coaches,” he said. “The ones who are crazy and the ones who are about to be.”

Just ask East Lyme’s Jack Biggs, who endured a month’s worth of angst in one afternoon, watching his team squander a 7-0 lead in the fifth, fall behind 8-7 in the sixth and then rally for two in the bottom of the seventh to do the survive and advance thing.

The second-seeded Vikings live on, after a 9-8 win over past nemesis North Haven, which defeated them in the 2015 state title game. East Lyme will play in the Class L quarterfinals at home Saturday against No. 10 Berlin, a 7-1 winner over No. 26 Pomperaug in the second round.

“Never say die, right?” Biggs said. “Play all 21 outs. Although this wasn’t good on the heart.”

The bottom of the seventh may be the most remembered inning of the season, even if East Lyme (22-3) makes more memories in the next 10 days and hangs the ultimate banner.

Blake Biggs led off with the Vikings trailing 8-7 and ripped a double down the left field line. At least it looked like a double. Biggs tripped rounding first, staggered to his feet, chugged to second and attempted a head first slide.

And came about three feet short of the bag.

He finally crawled his way to safety.

“I was like ‘what is wrong with him?’” Jack Biggs (his dad) said. “I wanted to run over there and carry him.”

Biggs scored when John Bureau reached on a throwing error and advanced to second. North Haven opted to walk Gavin O’Brien and Alex Dreyfus to lead the bases for Liam Cochrane.

“I took a little offense,” Cochrane said, “but I got back in the mindset and figured they were going to try to get ahead of me. I got what I wanted.”

He delivered a clean single to center touching off a celebration that was as much relief as it was joy.

“Rollercoaster,” Cochrane said. “They had a huge inning, we had a huge inning. Crazy. Playoff baseball.”

East Lyme scored six in the second inning, highlighted by O’Brien’s two-run double. But in the third, fourth and fifth, East Lyme left a combined seven runners on, including two straight failures with second and third and one out.

Meanwhile, the No. 15 Nighthawks dropped seven on East Lyme in the fifth. East Lyme starter Joe Stawski, who hadn’t allowed a runner to second base yet, was chased after three walks and two doubles. The inning finally went to O’Brien, the winning pitcher in last week’s ECC title game. O’Brien would have escaped the inning were it not for a misplayed pop up, leaving Tyler Kornacki to tie it with a two-run single.

North Haven went ahead in the sixth on Luke Blasi’s one-out RBI double, set up by an error earlier in the inning.

Happily for the Vikes, though, Blake Biggs staggered safely to second and Cochrane ended it.

“Up 7-0, then it’s 7-3, 7-4 and all the while you’re just try to keep your composure,” Jack Biggs said. “If we lose it, so do the kids.”

m.dimauro@theday.com