With their eyes on the prize, the St. Albert Red Cardinals refused to blink while staring down a provincial championship.
“They were on a mission from the very first practice of the year. The championship was on their mind and that’s what you strive for and they earned every bit of it all year long,” said Cam Houston with a look of satisfaction while surveying the post-game celebration of the Cardinals, united in victory as the Baseball Alberta midget AAA Tier I gold medallists.
Sunday’s coronation at Legion Memorial Park was the epitome of greatness for the winners of 40 out of 55 games after shutting down Calgary Dinos Black 5-0 in Sunday’s final.
“It’s awesome to win it in front of our families and friends,” said game star Colton Girard, who slugged a decisive three-run homer against Calgary. ”It’s a huge honour too doing it in front of everyone who have done so much for us to get us here.”
After last year’s controversial playoff exit at provincials in St. Albert as the team to beat, the Cardinals vowed to go the distance with an unbreakable bond of togetherness committed to the cause.
“We came together as a group. We’ve been a group all summer and stuck by one another and that's what got us through,” Girard said. “It’s the brotherhood in all of us. We’re just one big group including our coaches. They've always told us this is the strongest group they’ve ever had and we we’ve been together our whole lives so this moment is huge for us, just the build up to it and play hard every game because we knew it was coming to an end soon.”
As the no. 1 seed in the eight-team tournament, the Cardinals bulldozed a path of destruction into the final with two shutouts (6-0 against Sherwood Park Athletics with Liam Froment pitching and 16-0 against Okotoks Dawgs U16 with Tom Leathem on the mound) and nine runs against while piling up 34 runs during a 3-1 showing and the only loss was 8-7 in extra innings to the Red Deer Braves in a pool A game that had no bearing with a semifinal berth already clinched.
“Even in the loss we felt pretty solid. We had a few mistakes there we shouldn’t have made but we’ve been playing pretty solid,” said pitcher Joe Karall after twirling a 5-1 complete-game gem in Sunday’s semifinal against the defending champion Parkland Twins for a shot at the provincial title. “We had that loss (Saturday) night but we knew it didn’t really matter. We just had to come out here today and win and we’re in the final and that’s what we did.”
The Cardinals scored twice in the final in their first at-bat and Girard went yard in the second for the commanding five-run lead.
“We showed up. We were up all game. Everyone did everything. We got some big hits, got some runs and defence was unreal,” said Tylor Jans, the tournament MVP who went the full seven innings as the starting pitcher against Calgary. “We all deserved this win. We worked our asses off all summer. We came in and got the W and we got the championship and now it’s nationals.”
The U18 Baseball Canada championship starts Aug. 16 in Fort McMurray and the Cardinals will be without their two over-age players – Jans and Danny Tkachyk – and possibly second baseman and lead-off hitter Zach Froment, third baseman and cleanup batter Davis Pratt and Karall as all three have commitments with their college teams as freshmen this fall.
“We’ve still got a strong group after them and we’ll do whatever it takes at nationals to win it,” Girard said.
Houston agreed. “We trust everybody here and we love all the dudes here,” he said. “Our plan is to win a national championship and we’ll be ready to win.”
The Cardinals are the first St. Albert Minor Baseball Association midget AAA team to represent Alberta at the U18 championship since the 2014 national silver medallists with Houston as the dugout boss.
The Cardinals were also the 2015 Tier I provincial finalists and western champions with Houston at the helm.
“With these guys they’re together all the time. It’s a real tight group and I don’t know if there are too many teams that I’ve had that are this tight. They want to go and battle for each other every day,” Houston said. “It’s a really good group of kids and I’ve seen a lot of these kids grow up and I’m pretty proud of what they’ve turned into. They're awesome young men. They lay it on the field every day for guys like (SAMBA president) Kurtus Millar and the organization here. The family here in St. Albert baseball is unreal. Everybody chips in.”
The Cardinals positioned themselves for greatness by knocking off Parkland, a bitter rival.
“It feels good to beat Parkland. It’s a big game,” said Karall, who was stellar after giving up an RBI double with one out in the first inning and with two on and runners at the corners, Froment made a great play to get the out at first.
Karall retired the side in order in the second and third and a slick double play in the fourth kept the 4-1 lead intact.
“I struggled a little bit in the first so I just tried to come back out there and pound the zone. I was throwing a lot of balls in the first so I tried to work ahead more and I did a pretty good job of it,” said Karall, 17, who threw 97 pitches in the outing, the most by a Cardinal in the tournament.
In the first inning, Davis smacked a double down the line to score two runs with one out and Jans’ sac fly made it 3-1.
Jans also cranked the ball to the centre-field fence for an RBI triple in the third.
Mike Brisson’s RBI double in the fifth padded the lead.
Fantastic final
The Cardinals came out swinging against Calgary as Davis and Jans drove in runs after the top of the order loaded the bases to start off the first. A lead-off walk by Froment with a full count set the table for the team’s heavy hitters.The next inning, with two out and Tyson Kowaluk and Froment on base after stroking singles, Girard cleared the left-field fence with the signature play of the final.
“It was a first pitch change-up straight down the middle and I swung with everything I had,” Girard said of his third homer of the season. “I knew it was gone. It felt good.”
Girard was engulfed by overjoyed teammates in a mob scene after trotting across home plate.
“It was fun. I just wanted to get around the bases so I could see them and celebrated it with them. We just went up five runs so it was big,” Girard said.
Jans, 19, did most of the heavy lifting with the 5-0 lead after giving up two singles in the first but a double play and then a great stretch grab by Ryan Marples at first on a throw by Brisson produced the third out.
In the second, Jans stranded two runners with a first-pitch ground-ball out to end the inning.
Jans also picked off a runner at first for the third out in the third, which was highlighted by a snow-cone catch in right field by Girard for the second out.
“It was going in front of me and I thought it was going behind me at first, so I slipped but I recovered and got up and the only thing I could do was dive and I just did it. I jumped as far as I could and it ended up in my glove,” Girard said.
In the fourth, the 1-2-3 inning for Jans included the last two strikeouts and the next inning, with two runners aboard, he fired another strikeout to keep Calgary off the scoreboard.
In the sixth, Jans retired the side in order and in the seventh allowed one single while striking out three to seal the deal in his midget AAA swan song.
“I wanted this game all year,” said the teary-eyed fourth-year Cardinal. “It was quite emotional. My last game as a St. Albert Cardinal. It’s tough to think it’s done now.”
Jans overcame an injured elbow on his right throwing arm to pitch the game of his life.
“I’ve battled through some arm pains. The doctors told me to take a couple of months off and I did that and then I was back good to go and today I got the game I wanted,” Jans said. “I’m never going to forget this my entire life.”
Houston said the key to the victory was “just having Tylor on the mound, having a guy who has been here this long and putting him out there and putting him in that big situation. That’s the guy we wanted and the way he was commanding the zone was a big part of the game.”
As for the MVP award, “It’s good for Jans. He’s been here for four years and I’ve seen that kid do a ton of work and turn into an unreal player," Houston said.
Jans said his “four-seam, two-seam curveball was going good” against Calgary while registering close to 80 pitches and as the designated hitter racked up 10 hits in the tournament, including four against Red Deer and two in the final.
“I found a way to get the job done when I had to. I tried my best,” Jans said.
