The senior St. Albert Cardinals just missed out on flying through the back door to make the A final of the Fall Classic at Legion Memorial Park.
In Sunday’s B final they lost 8-7 to the Edmonton Heat in extra innings. A win would have lifted the Red Birds into the A final.
After going 1-1 in the round robin, the Cardinals fell behind to the Heat, then came back to lead 5-4 but couldn’t hang on, giving up runs in the seventh and eighth innings.
“It was really tough,” said Cardinals coach Gary Tater. “The bottom line is we didn’t make enough plays, especially in the first couple innings, and they scored some runs off our starting pitcher, Jay Barley.”
Tater called the second annual Alberta West Central Baseball Association (AWCBA) tournament the “unofficial” provincial championship because of the strength of the teams participating, but there isn’t really a provincial tournament for senior players over 30 years. There is another tournament this weekend in Red Deer and Tater said some of the teams he was hoping would come to St. Albert chose to go to Red Deer instead. He would like to see senior baseball in Alberta become more unified in the near future.
“Senior baseball is kind of disjointed in the province right now, so it would be nice if we could get everybody working on the same level and working together and playing tournaments against each other.”
It was a tough start for St. Albert in the B final, falling behind 2-0 in the first inning with Barley on the mound. After Jason Murphy of the Heat got on base with a single, Adrian Ballack hit a ball to the left side of the infield that should have been a double-play ball, but St. Albert’s Raul Cartagena couldn’t cleanly field the ball and both runners were safe. Shawn Provencal and Brad Hoekstra hit back-to-back singles to score the game’s first two runs.
Down 4-0 in the bottom of the second inning, St. Albert got on the board with an RBI single to right field from catcher Paul Radchenko.
After two more runs in the bottom of the third inning courtesy Don Litven and Tully Lutz, Tater took out Barley in favour of reliever Dave Ross. The 42-year-old, who pitched the St. Albert Tigers to victory in the final of their home tournament in June, joined the Cardinals to help them out on the final day of the tournament.
In the tournament, Tater knew his pitchers could only play a maximum of four innings in one game, so he put Ross on the mound in the fourth with the hope of taking the lead and then close out the game in the seventh. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, that’s not how things worked out. They scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth to pull ahead 5-4, but in the top of the seventh, after Ballack stroked an infield hit and stole second base, Provencal knocked in the tying run with a single to right field.
“Personally, I’m a little disappointed in myself that I let that run get across,” Ross said. “I just tried to come and help out these guys. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it done for them.”
Up until that point, through 3.1 innings, Ross had not given up a hit and struck out four batters. After the game, he pointed out he hadn’t picked up a baseball for about a month.
In the bottom of the seventh, the Cardinals went three up, three down, but in the top of the eighth, with Ross out of the game and Lutz now throwing, the Heat didn’t let up and scored three runs, going up 8-5.
The Cardinals came back with two big runs in the bottom of the inning, but couldn’t get the eighth to tie it.
St. Albert started the tournament Saturday with a 9-7 win against the Heat and 10-0 loss to the Westlock Red Lions.
The Spruce Grove Eagles defended their tournament title with a 10-7 win over the national champion Cadogan Night Hawks.
Meanwhile, in the AWCBA playoffs, St. Albert lost its series opener last week 11-4 to the Edmonton Blues and is now in the B side bracket. The Cardinals play two games this week, starting with a matchup with the Heat. Tater said the game was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.
For schedule updates, visit /www.ballcharts.com/awcba.
