For all the strengths the Moon Area baseball team has this season, from the booming bats to steady pitching, the Tigers' most important characteristic just might be their patience.

Here are a few examples:

Moon had to wait midway into the season before it could play a home game because its new field was not ready.

After 13 memorable innings in the WPIAL semifinals, it had to wait nearly 48 more hours to resume the deadlocked game and punch its ticket to the WPIAL title game.

It seems only fitting, then, that the Tigers were asked to wait another two days to get a shot at a WPIAL baseball championship, as the Class AAA title game originally scheduled for Tuesday was postponed until today because of bad weather.

Moon and Chartiers Valley meet today at 7:30 p.m. at Consol Energy Park with the WPIAL Class AAA title on the line. The game will serve as a rubber match for the two Section 3-AAA rivals. Moon got the better of Chartiers Valley, 9-4, on the road in the first meeting back on April 8 but fell to the Colts, 11-3, three weeks later at home.

"In the first game we hit them pretty good and the second game they hit us pretty good," Moon coach Dom Santeufemio said.

"Chartiers Valley is a scrappy team and they are probably improved from when we last saw them."

Moon carried over its hot bats that averaged double-digit runs during the regular season into the playoffs. It got by New Castle, 7-4, in the first round and pounded Laurel Highlands, 17-7, in the quarterfinals.

The WPIAL title game rematch against Chartiers Valley will not be the first time Moon ran into a familiar foe in these playoffs.

The 10-run win against Laurel Highlands set up a rematch between the Tigers and Section 3-AAA regular-season champion Hopewell.

Moon had lost to Hopewell twice during the regular season by a combined score of 15-3, but bounced back in a memorable game that spanned 14 innings and two days.

"I think our team proved to ourselves that we can do anything," senior captain Phil Bondi said of the 14-inning affair that started Tuesday night and resumed on Thursday.

"That was probably the best game I ever played in my life. Just getting through that and being successful through 14 innings of play, the confidence was unreal. We were high on our horse and now we feel like we can beat anybody."

In that memorable playoff game against Hopewell, Moon saw a one-run lead in the top of the ninth and a five-run lead in the top of the 13th disappear as Hopewell rallied back.

As midnight neared at Burkett Complex in Robinson Township, umpires decided to suspend the game after consulting with WPIAL officials.

Two days later Moon finished in 15 minutes what had previously taken 4 hours and 40 minutes with a two-run top of the 14th and a 1-2-3 bottom of the inning to advance to the WPIAL title game.

"That was a great momentum booster for us," said second baseman Scott Liller, the other senior captain on the team.

"They came back when we were up five runs and we thought they had all the momentum, we knew we had to come back. Now we know that we are capable of beating a good team and we bring that to the championship game."

It is the Tigers first trip to the title game since 2005, Santeufemio's first season. They lost that season to Pine-Richland, 6-5.

"We have to go in there and play our best game or Chartiers Valley is going to beat us," Santeufemio said.

"They are a good team and when you get a team like that, that is believing in itself, they go out loose. I don't know what you can take away from the two regular-season games, one thing you can take away is that it is going to be a great game."

The unexpected and unusually long playoff run for Moon has given the players some extra time to cultivate their admittedly slow-growing playoff beards.

"Yeah we got the playoff beards growing, it takes me two months to grow one," Liller joked.

"We are sitting on the same seats on the bus and stand in the same places. Different stuff like that -- we have been pretty superstitious."