The St. Albert Tigers capitalized on some suspect pitching early in Tuesday’s game to beat the top team in the Sunburst Baseball League 11-7.
Leading by a score of 9-1 at one point, it looked like the Tigers were poised to finish off the Fort Saskatchewan Athletics (7-3) before the regular nine innings wrapped up at Legion Memorial Ball Park, but the visitors fought their way back into the game.
“They’re not going to give up,” said Tigers catcher Brad Wolansky. “If they’re down a few, it doesn’t really matter. They kept chipping away at us. We would fight back with a few runs here and there, but we outlasted them pretty much in this one.”
The win improved the Tigers’ league record to 2-4, with both wins coming in St. Albert. The Tigers beat the 2009 senior AAA national champions 8-3 in the final of the St. Albert tournament, but Fort Saskatchewan responded in the team’s next meeting back in Sunburst League play, winning 11-2 on June 17.
“It’s always a pleasure when you beat these guys,” said Jessy Beley, the Tigers’ third-baseman. “They’re a really good team and you’ve got to play your best ball to beat them and we played a really good game today.”
The Athletics got their first run in the opening inning with Andy Herman sneaking home under Wolansky’s tag while Ben Herman was caught in a rundown between first and second base.
In the home side of the inning though, it was the Tigers who pulled ahead, thanks to some bruising bean balls.
Fort Saskatchewan pitcher Chris Adams saw his first duty on the mound this season and plunked four St. Albert batters with wayward pitches in the first inning alone. He also offered up three walks, and received little help from catcher Henry Duke, who threw a ball past first base trying to pick off a runner. St. Albert left the inning with a 4-1 lead.
In the bottom of the second inning, Adams’ struggles continued. He hit two Tigers, threw four wild pitches and had one passed ball. Beley, in his first season with the senior squad after suiting up for the junior Tabbies last year, was actually hit in the first two innings.
“It seems like I’ve got a target or a magnet on my back lately,” the 22-year-old joked. “I got hit a little bit, but I’m just trying to crowd the plate a little bit and take that outside fastball.”
The Tigers scored five runs in the inning and led 9-1 after two.
“You always want to jump out to a good lead on these guys and I think we did good job,” Beley said.
The Athletics brought in James Fischer to get the final out of the second inning and the Fort Saskatchewan bullpen held the Tigers to just two runs in the final seven innings.
The Athletics slowly chipped away at the Tigers offensively with two runs in the third, one in the fourth and two in the fifth before Tigers’ starting pitcher Dave Ross was pulled in favour of right-handed reliever Matt Hammond.
St. Albert stopped the bleeding with another insurance run in the bottom of the fifth inning. With men on first and third, Joey Carr hit an RBI single to centre field to put his team up 11-6.
The Athletics narrowed the gap to four runs in the top of the seventh inning, but Hammond would shut things down the rest of the way for the big home victory.
St. Albert was coming off a 1-2 showing at the Red Deer Stags tournament last weekend, where they were outscored 21-13. They opened with two round robin games against the Red Deer Riggers, losing 10-2 and winning 8-7, and were eliminated with a 14-3 loss to the Athletics in the quarter-finals.
“We’ve got to work hard on being a team that people fear one through nine, hitting-wise. As soon as we keep hitting the ball hard, teams will not want to play us because we have the pitching to do that,” Beley said.
The Tigers hosted the Riggers (5-3-1) at Legion park Friday but the score was not available at press time. The next game is Tuesday in Fort Saskatchewan at 7 p.m.
