The St. Albert Cardinals are peaking towards their second Baseball Alberta championship in four years as the host team for the Tier I midget AAA provincials.
The high-flying Cardinals are winners of 13 in a row as the No. 1 Norwest league team at 29-3 while averaging 9.2 runs per game and 2.8 against.
“We’re playing well right now and we’re hoping to keep it rolling into provincials,” said pitcher/third baseman Joe Karall. “We’ve got a good group of guys here and we all get along pretty well. Hopefully we can come together as a team and go out there and win provincials.”
Provincials are Aug. 6 to 8 at Legion Memorial Park.
The tournament dates are different than the traditional August long weekend provincials because of the upcoming Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg and the baseball finals are Aug. 4.
Tylor Jans and Liam Froment of the Cardinals made the Team Alberta roster as pitchers.
“It’s always nice to host provincials and have home field advantage,” Karall said. “We’re all pretty excited.”
The winner of the eight-team tournament advances to the U18 Baseball Canada championship, Aug. 17 to 20 at London, Ont., and the runner-up competes at westerns, Aug. 11 to 13 at Steinbach, Man.
Last year’s early exit from provincials for the Cardinals ended a run of three consecutive appearances in the final.
The 2013 Cardinals won westerns after losing the provincial final and the next year the Red Birds were silver medallists in their first trip to nationals as the Alberta reps since 2008.
The 2015 team was also the silver medallist at both provincials and westerns.
This year’s Cardinals are 37-12 in league, tournament and exhibition action after beating the Calgary Cubs (1-35) three times last weekend. The home team mercied the Cubs 13-0 and 12-1 before completing the sweep with by a score of 12-3.
“Right now we’re probably at the top of our game. We’ve been playing well and early in the season we were played well too and we’re kind of getting back into that and we hope to keep it going until the end of the season,” Karall said.
The Cardinals started off the Norwest season with a bang by winning 12 in a row and were 17-5 overall before suffering their first league loss on May 31.
A stretch of seven losses in 12 league and tournament games, including two setbacks in Fort McMurray to the Oil Giants (16-19) in the Norwest circuit, was followed by a rash of victories.
“We had a few games that we probably should’ve been able to win and ended up not doing the best and we’ve been coming out stronger now knowing that we have to come out hard to win,” Karall said. “Our pitching has been good and we’ve been hitting pretty well, especially when we need to when the game is on the line. We’ve been coming together well to get the wins as a team.”
Karall, 16, came through in the clutch recently with his team-leading second home run as the Cardinals rallied to defeat the East Central Bulls (12-23) last week 5-4 at Veteran. His two-run shot in the top of the seventh knotted the score at three.
“There were no outs and a runner (Danny Tkachyk) on second. I had a pretty good AB. I was working at the count and it was about nine pitches or so. I was just trying to hit a ball up the middle and I ended up hitting it out. I got a good piece of it,” said Karall, who is batting .360 with 14 RBIs. “You’re just trying to do your best to help out the team and when you come through like that it’s good. We ended up getting two more after that.”
Karall also closed out the win in relief.
The second-year midget AAA Cardinal ranks among the league's top pitchers at 5-0 with 33 strikeouts in 32.2 innings.
“I get ahead pretty well with my fastball usually and I have a few not too bad off speeds that I use,” said the Grade 12 student at Bellerose Composite High School.
Tuesday the Cardinals played the Sherwood Park A’s (26-9), a provincial contender, but the score was unavailable at press time.
The Cardinals wrap up league play this weekend when they host the Okotoks Dawgs (14-8). Game times are 1 and 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday.
