The top team in Western Canada was crowned on Sunday afternoon at Ross Wells Park.
The Border All-Stars won an all-Manitoba match-up against the St. James A's, 5-4, in the final of the 2018 Western Canadian Senior Men's Baseball Championship, which was hosted here in Moose Jaw over the weekend.
"We came into this with a thrown together team and just what we wanted is guys that love the game of baseball and wanted to come out and have some fun and to win this with this team is awesome," said Jeremy Matuszewski with the Border All-Stars.
The All-Stars split their round-robin games, picking up a 15-9 win over the Saskatoon Outlaws on Friday and handing the host Moose Jaw Padres an 8-0 defeat on Saturday night.
They lost 15-2 to the A's in their round-robin meeting and dropped an 18-5 game to the Prince George Grays on Sunday morning.
Matuszewski said that they never gave up over the course of the three days, "We battled and everyone contributed, we had 18 guys that contributed to this and the difference was the fact that we were a group of guys that wanted to battle," he said.
After losing to the Athletics in the round-robin, the All-Stars knew that they needed to start strong in the final and they did just that, scoring three in the third inning to take a 3-0 advantage. They went in front 4-0 after the top of the fourth, but St. James found some life in the bottom of the frame with one run.
The All-Stars struck back with one run to start the fifth, making it 5-1. That run ended up being pretty important as the A's scored three times in the bottom of the fifth to make it a one-run game.
That score held up the rest of the way as the All-Stars captured the title.
"We're a good hitting team and we knew that we just had to stick with it and play defence and it's baseball," said Matuszewski.
The A's threatened in the home half of the seventh inning, but a great defensive play by the All-Stars ended the game.
"Manny made a fantastic play on that pop-up," said Matuszewski. "Our pitcher Mike Gershman, he battled all day and I went out there and talked to him, see what he wanted to do, that was their best hitter (to end the game) and he went after him and hats off to him, hats off to all these guys, they battled their hearts out all weekend."
The All-Stars were pieced together from teams around southern Manitoba and Matuszewski said it was great to see everyone gel and perform well.
"We had a really good time, here the facility was excellent, the host team was awesome, it was just a great time all around," he said.
Padres Just Miss Appearance in Final
The Moose Jaw Padres may have come up short of the playoff round at Westerns, but they're walking away pleased with how they performed against the top teams from around Western Canada.
"We competed pretty well with the teams, being the host team, usually they don't perform as well as we did, we went 2-and-2 and lost out in a tiebreaker, a little bit of a heartbreaker," said Padres catcher Brett Walchuk.
The Padres split their four games at Westerns, scoring a 9-6 win over the Prince George Grays and a 7-3 victory over the Saskatoon Outlaws.
They lost 13-6 to the St. James A's and 8-0 to the Border All-Stars in their two games against the finalists.
"We impressed ourselves in how we handled ourselves against the competition that was here," said Walchuk. "One game was a bad inning and the other, the bats went quiet, other than that, we were in every game."
The Padres, Border All-Stars and Outlaws were all tied at 2-2 after the round-robin, but Moose Jaw's shutout loss to the All-Stars knocked the Padres out of the running for the final.
Walchuk said going out in a tiebreaker formula is a tough way to end things, "It was kind of expected after we got shutout in that last game," he said.
"(The Border All-Stars) can swing a pretty big bat and their pitcher held us down, so congratulations to them."
Fri, Apr 19, 3:55 PM
Hourly, Part-time, Permanent, Education
Featured
