The silver lining for the St. Albert Cardinals Red losing the last game of the year was finishing second at the Best in the West showdown.
The ninth loss in 55 games for the Baseball Alberta midget AA Tier 1 champions was 7-1 to the Oak River (Man.) Bearcats in the Western Canada U18 final Sunday afternoon at Legion Memorial Park.
“It was a really good season. We all had our moments that helped out each game and it all summed up making it to the final at westerns,” said southpaw Tanner McLean-Poll, the starting pitcher and player of the game for the Cardinals in the final.
“It could’ve gone better,” he added. “We came in knowing we would have a tough game. We tried to play our best and we just didn’t have enough I guess.”
It was a dream come true for the Cardinals to play for the western championship on their home diamond.
“It’s amazing seeing all the fans here and everyone watching. It gets everyone energized. It’s helped us win games,” said Nate Brisson, a second baseman and the team’s leadoff hitter.
The Cardinals put themselves in position to play for gold while going 3-1 in the five-team round robin.
“I was extremely proud of my boys for representing specifically the City of St. Albert and obviously the province of Alberta. Our boys here at home put on a great show all weekend and I could not be more proud of all of them for that,” said Jason Enright, head coach of the 46-9 (474 RF/196 RA) Cardinals. “This has been an unbelievable season, right from January when the huge majority of my team started working out together and training and going to hitting camps and knowing that they were going to play this season generally together.
“It’s been a long journey. We entered a lot of tournaments this year to get ready for this and it definitely helped. We were also the only Alberta team here to make it to the finals in all three (midget AA, U15 bantam AA and U13 peewee AA) divisions.”
Oak River joined Lethbridge as the only teams to beat the Cardinals twice in a weekend tournament. Friday's 12-5 setback left the Red Birds at 1-1 with two must-win games remaining for a shot at the final.
“We knew they were going to be a strong team. We had kind of estimated coming in that they would be the strongest team maybe besides us,” Enright said. “It was a little disappointing today. We thought we were ready to play but we got behind a little bit early against a very good team. I give my kudos to them; they played well, they had a pitcher that we have not faced all season – a hard throwing left hander – and I really think that was our undoing. We can hit hard throwers, but normally from the right hand side, but whenever he threw his off speed or curve stuff, we hadn’t seen that all season so it caught us off guard big time.
“Normally when we have Tanner on the mound we do that to other teams because they’re not used to it and it was very rare for us to have that done vice versa coming against us.”
Mitch Lyall, a pickup for Oak River and the team’s player of the game, scattered five hits while striking out seven over seven innings.
McLean-Poll fanned five while giving up 11 hits over six innings.
The Cardinals were charged with four errors and Oak River committed one.
“It was a good game. Their lefty threw well,” said Derek Shamray, the Oak River head coach. “The meat of our order got the hits when we needed, we played good defence and Mitch pitched a heck of a game.
“It really felt like a final for a Western Canadian with the hometown crowd. They were intense so it felt good.”
In the first inning an error helped Oak River load the bases and with two out singled home its first run.
Oak River pushed two runs across in the third after an error by the Cardinals with a double deep to right field and single into the gap in centre-right field with one out. McLean-Poll got out of the inning by picking off a runner at first base and then grounder for the third out.
“The errors at the beginning kind of set the tone but towards the end we sort of picked it up and tried to get into the pitcher’s head a bit,” said McLean-Poll, the team’s No. 4 hitter.
In the fourth with one out, McLean-Poll legged out a throw to first base. With two out and two on Jared Ference, a pickup, laced a single into right field and McLean-Poll beat the tag at home plate.
The Cardinals turned a double play to end the bottom half of the fourth and in the fifth the home team left a runner stranded at third base after the leadoff batter earned a walk.
In its next at-bat Oak River singled, tripled and singled to make it 5-1 with none out. A crafty move by shortstop Mitch King to tag out a runner at second base kept Oak River from adding to its lead.
In the sixth Oak River tacked up two more runs with a two-out single.
“I wouldn’t say there was one big moment that put us behind the eight ball, just a little thing here, a little thing there,” Enright said. “They put a few balls in play that landed in the right spots and they got up 3-1 early. We tried to battle a little bit and the more we battled it kind of put us in the hole. We were taking some chances to get caught up.”
Ference collected three hits and Rob Sullivan walked twice for the Cardinals.
Riley Shamray drove in four runs on three hits as Oak River finished 5-0.
“They have a few really good players that just carried them throughout the whole tournament. They had lots of hits and lots of extra base hits,” said McLean-Poll, 18.
Oak River won westerns two years ago and in this year’s provincial final rallied to score 14 runs in the seventh to punch its ticket to St. Albert.
“These kids have a history of winning big games and they just seem to get it done,” said coach Shamray, who loses only a few players to graduation. “They played tight D, our pitching has been good all weekend and we hit the ball when we needed to.”
So where is Oak River anyway?
“Oak River is a town of 100 people and we have a surrounding 20 mile radius that these kids come from, which is small population. We had 11 kids all year and we had two pickups that came here,” said coach Shamray. “They’re a good bunch of kids.”
In the round robin Oak River tied it at four in the bottom of the first and led 9-5 after three innings while out-hitting Cardinals 12-5 overall.
Ference started for the Cardinals and Brisson was the team’s player of the game with four hits.
“They stormed back and kept on hitting. Our defence was a little bit shaky too,” Brisson said.
“Our pitcher pitched well, they just hit the ball through field goal posts every time,” Enright added.
The Cardinals opened the tournament by mercying the North East (Sask.) Red Sox 13-2. McLean-Poll started before Harrison Cabel took over in long relief. Sullivan was the team’s player of the game.
Saturday against the Olds Spitfires, who the Cardinals beat 5-4 in the provincial final on McLean-Poll’s liner into centrefield with the bases loaded and two out and the score knotted at four in the bottom of the seventh, King went the distance with the maximum 105 pitches in the 4-2 decision.
“Mitch was fantastic in the last game of his midget career pitching,” Enright said.
In the fifth and the score even at two, the Cardinals pulled off a successful suicide squeeze as Jake Enright, the team’s player of the game, bunted home King on the first pitch he saw with the bases loaded and one out.
“We haven’t got many of those down this year but that was the first one,” Brisson said of the TSN turning point. “That was huge for us. They’re a good team and we’ve struggled with them but towards the end there we just beat them out.”
Coach Enright agreed. “It was a gutsy call at that time in the game to do a suicide squeeze but it worked for us and it was awesome. We needed that win.”
Sunday morning the Cardinals assured themselves of a spot in the tiebreaker or the final by overpowering the winless New Westminster (B.C.) Twins 18-3 in only four innings.
Dylan Wood started, Mason Libich worked in relief and Cole Stasow was the team’s player of the game.
“All of our pitchers have pitched really well and they’ve tried to get us deep into games and then we can win it with the offence,” said Brisson, 16, a Grade 11 St. Albert Catholic High School student. “Four different guys have got MVPs (before the final) and none of them have been a pitcher.”
Coach Enright was impressed how westerns unfolded.
“It’s been fantastic. Our grounds crew had a difficult day (Saturday) waking up to flooded diamonds and they’ve put a lot of time in so just to get the baseball in has been great and the baseball has been pretty competitive too,” said the dugout boss, who graduates four players off his roster.
