The first pitch has been thrown in the Sunburst Baseball league with the St. Albert Tigers Black falling 9-2 to the Fort Saskatchewan Athletics.
The result was definitely not what the team had in mind, according to Tigers’ coach Kurtus Millar.
“The end result wasn’t that great but we really only had one bad inning so it wasn’t too bad. We definitely wanted to start the season off with a win. In all it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t that great,” said Millar.
While giving up nine runs to an opposing team will never make management happy, the pitching rotation has had a few setbacks prior to opening day. Combined with a late start in the practice schedule due to the weather, the squad has been feeling some strain.
“Our pitchers haven’t had enough practice yet. They are still a little green on the season but we are doing better now. We are practicing twice a week,” said Millar. “But we are a little short on the pitching side. We lost a huge pitcher, Jeremy Goodall, who is staying down in Iowa to play post-secondary ball and Matt Hammond is teaching English in Thailand. Those are two quality guys that we lost.”
The Tigers Black, who finished fourth in the league last year, took the field last night in the battle of St. Albert against the Tigers AAA Junior Orange. The score was unavailable as of press time. With the Tigers Orange being a late addition to the Sunburst League, Millar said priopr to the game he didn’t know what to expect when his team faced them. He just warned his troops to hit the field with a better mindset than they showed in their season opener.
“I told my guys we better come out prepared for payback after not playing so well on Tuesday. I’d like to say that we will come out with the win but it’s baseball and you never know,” said Millar.
“As for Tigers Orange, they have a lot of really young talent but besides practicing with them, we don’t really know what they’re like.”
The Tigers AAA Junior Orange will play in the Sunburst League this season but move to the North Central Baseball League next fall.
