The St. Albert Senior Cardinals are not ready to settle for second best in the Alberta West Central Baseball Association.
Last year's B-side champions are one of the top seeds in the eight-team, 10-game playoff draw this weekend at Legion Memorial Park.
"Going into the playoffs, our goal is to win the whole thing. We expect to win. We have the team to win it too," said pitcher/first baseman Jeff Calkins.
The Cardinals tied the Fort Saskatchewan Red Sox for the most wins in the 30-plus league with 12, but the Red Birds played one less game than the pennant winners.
"Absolutely we're happy. This is our best year ever," Calkins said. "At the start of the year, we thought we had potential to be in the top four, but I don't think any of us would be telling the truth that we thought we would be where we're at right now."
The first game for the Cardinals today is 9 a.m. against the Edmonton Heat. Games are also scheduled at noon in the tournament. The winners and losers of those two games play either at 3 or 6 p.m.
Sunday's finals are noon (B-side) and 3 p.m. (A-side).
"We're going to do everything we can to win all of our games. You lose once and you have no chance of winning the [A-side] championship," Calkins said. "We want to win our league. We've never done it before as a team. We've never finished at the top, not even the top three or four ever, so this is our year to really go far."
The season to remember for the second-place Cardinals (12-5) includes some rare success against strong opposition.
"There are two teams in the league that we've always struggled with, Spruce Grove [Eagles] and Fort Saskatchewan, and we were able to take two of three from the Fort and split with the Eagles this year. We're very happy with that," Calkins said. "Spruce Grove [10-4] is a perennial champion, it seems, in our league. They've won a number of years in a row. But [July 25] in Spruce Grove is the first time I believe we've beaten them in a number of years. I've played in this league four years now and it's the first time I've beat them. It was 9-0 so we really beat up on them."
The Cardinals are championship contenders because of some wily pitching and clever defence.
"Our offence has not been quite what it has been in the past but definitely pitching and defence has been our mainstay this year," Calkins said. "We're playing quite well on defence this year as opposed to other years. Our pitching has been strong too. We've got two great starting pitchers and then some other pitchers that fill in well when they're not here."
Among the many season highlights for the Cardinals was righty Dave Edwards striking out 15 in a complete game victory.
Boys of summer
The 20-man roster ranges in age from 32 to 52-year-old outfielder Don Litven.
"We have ex-college players that played many, many years ago to guys who didn't play as kids but picked it up as adults and have developed into decent ball players. We have a couple of guys that played with the [St. Albert] Tigers years ago and a couple of guys that played in a premier league out in Vancouver in the '90s," said Calkins, who grew up playing baseball in Abbotsford. "Of course, we're all older and a bit slower now. We're not getting quite to as many balls as we used to. We're not hitting the ball as far as we used to either."
Calkins said the brand of baseball would surprise a lot of people.
"It's good calibre. We make errors that, obviously at the major league level, they're never going to make, but we never were major league players," said the 43-year-old exercise physiologist at Grant MacEwan University. "Pretty much everyone is in the same boat. They just love playing baseball. It's in our blood, I guess.
"We have a lot of fun playing too. We've got a great team with lots of joking around going on on the bench. One of our guys [Nick Padow] hit a deep ball down the left field line and I don't think I've ever seen him hit a ball that far before. We gave him a bit of a hard time for steroid use and that kind of stuff to hit a ball that far."
Calkins hooked up with the Cardinals after moving east from Vancouver 11 years ago.
"I played baseball up until I left Vancouver and I couldn't find a baseball team initially to play with so I played modified fastball and slowpitch until I found these guys," said the father of four. "It's just a better game. There is more strategy involved. There is stealing involved and bunting — all the different parts of baseball that to me makes it a better game and a lot more fun to play."
Next weekend, the Cardinals host their annual tournament at Legion park. Ten teams will play in the 30-plus division and four teams are entered in the 45-plus division.
"We're going to be a little short on pitching next weekend so our goal is to come out and have fun. Every team is guaranteed four games, so if we get to play on Sunday in some kind of meaningful game, then absolutely we'll enjoy that. But if we don't, I think we'll be OK with that as well," Calkins said. "But definitely this weekend is the weekend for us. If we had to choose between one of the two, we want to win this weekend."
