Last year’s silver medallists are on a mission to win gold at the U18 midget AA westerns.
The second crack at Best in the West honours starts Friday for St. Albert Cardinals Red at Legion Memorial Park.
“We’re pretty pumped. It’s our second year in a row hosting it and we’re all excited because we believe we have a really good team this year and have a better shot at winning it than last year,” said Nate Brisson, captain of the 46-5-1 Cardinals. “At the start of the year we were really all about pitching and defence. We were pitching really well and playing defence. Our hitting was pretty good too but it wasn’t the highlight of our team but over the last month or so we’ve really turned it on and we started hitting well.”
The Cardinals are flying high on the eve of westerns as back-to-back Baseball Alberta Tier I champions.
“Overall as a core we’re a better team, just stronger at every position,” said third baseman Jake Enright.
“Our pitching depth has definitely improved a little bit. We’ve brought on a couple of new guys that definitely have stepped up really well,” he noted. “Our pitching has been great all year. If you look at our scores we’ve really never given up that many runs in games.”
The Cardinals had their wings clipped only nine times in 55 games last year, including the western final, 7-1 to the Oak Park Bearcats of Manitoba.
“It was good last year. I don’t think anyone of us at the start of the year expected to go as far as we did so it was definitely great to not only win provincials but also do very well at westerns,” Enright said.
Last year at westerns the Cardinals finished 3-2 and the first of two losses against Oak Park was 12-5 on the tournament’s opening day.
The teams square-off 6 p.m. Friday.
“We’ve definitely got some history with that team so hopefully we’ll have a good game against them,” Enright said.
“We’re excited to play them again. We think we have a good enough team to beat them this year,” Brisson added. “We also faced a good lefty (in the final) last year and we faced a lot more lefties this year so we’re a lot more ready to face them.”
The Cardinals also play the North Battleford Beavers at 12 noon Friday, Lacombe Dodgers at 12 noon Saturday and Kamloops River Dogs at 9 a.m. Sunday.
If there is no tiebreaker Sunday, the final is 3 p.m. and if a tiebreaker is needed the big game is 6 p.m.
“This year we’re going to be a little bit more prepared for some of the teams because we had a little bit of past experience with a couple of them,” said Enright, referring to last year’s games against Oak Park and the 5-0 decision against Kamloops on July 16, en route to winning the Valley of Champions tournament in Kelowna. “We’re definitely going to have to humble up a little bit because we know there are some great teams coming in so we’re going to have to be ready.”
Last year’s westerns set the stage for another winning season.
“We just learned to rally together a little bit more and not get down on each other,” said Brisson, 17.
The versatile second baseman, shortstop and pitcher is one of nine returnees on the roster, plus two players who moved up from last year’s Cardinals Blue team and one import from the Northeast Zone.
The Cardinals also picked up six players – all pitchers – from the Edmonton Angels (two), Leduc Giants (two), Barrhead Orioles and Cardinals Blue, the Baseball Alberta Tier III champion, to help offset the loss of over-agers’ Tanner McLean-Poll and Mitch King, who are ineligible for westerns because of Baseball Alberta rules.
McLean-Poll and King twirled shutouts at provincials in the semifinal (5-0 over Barrhead) and final (mercied Lacombe 12-2), respectively, as the Cardinals swept all five games for what is believed to be the first midget AA repeat in Baseball Alberta history.
“We played really well. I don’t think we made an error in provincials. We really pitched well. We had two complete games at provincials and we were putting up a ton of runs on teams. We ended up mercying the final so we did really well,” said Brisson, a St. Albert Catholic High School graduate and the second of four baseball-playing Brisson brothers. The others are Mat (Nanaimo’s Vancouver Island Baseball Institute), Mike (bantam AAA) and Marc (peewee AAA).
The momentum from provincials should give the Cardinals a big boost for westerns as the hometown favorites.
“We’re very excited because it’s definitely an honour to be representing Alberta again at westerns,” said Enright, 17, a Bellerose Composite High School graduate. “We had a good time last year. It’s definitely great to see a bunch of teams come from around the country.”
FOUL BALLS: The U15 bantam AA and U13 peewee AA westerns are also on tap for the second year in a row in St. Albert.
Visit www.stalbertbaseball.com or www.ballcharts.com/wcba for tournament schedules and results.
Organizers for westerns have secured the services of baseball comedian Domingo Ayala for a performance Thursday night at Legion park.
The YouTube star is appearing from 6:30 to 8 p.m., followed by a meet-and-great and autograph session.
Gate admission is $20.
Ayala’s bio is available at www.domingpbeisbol.com.
