From Left to Right: Marlon J, Ryan M, Matt M, Mitchell T, Nick D, Me, Samuel R, Isaac E, Cole H, Michael A, Justin F, Sawyer M, Kate R, Coach Daryl T, Todd D, Ronald J, Missing Andy J.

Well. It sure has been a while since we last spoke. Anyways my summer was pretty eventful. Well not many different things but a lot of baseball. Lots of baseball, I think that means a great summer. I will now be telling you the story of baseball this summer.

Intro

Back near the end of June there were try outs for the MSLL Juniors All-Star team. I managed to make it on as a normal bench player. Luckily for us BC folks we don’t have to go through Districts to play at Provincials. The format for the BC Provincials was a 6 team Double-Elimination Bracket. My team managed to get a bye in the first round. All we had to do to get to Nationals was win 3 straight games.

Provincials

Our first game was against New West. Typically this team would be really good so this should be a tough game. Top of the 1st inning we score 4 runs and get up on the 4-0 after 1 inning of play. I played 2 innings in the field and had 1 at bat. The final score was 15-0 mercy for us. This next game was the Winners bracket semifinal. We had to face a combination team of West Van, Highlands, and North Van Central. Our team just had a ton of nerves that game and we lost it 14-4 I think. I just got 1 at bat that game. Losing that game meant we were now in the losers bracket. Luckily enough for us that just meant win 1 game and we’re back in the finals. We had to face Forest Hills. Suprisingly I started at 3rd Base this game. All I’m going to say is I’ve never really played 3rd base. It didn’t matter though as I didn’t make a single error. I ended up with 5 IF Assists and played the entire game. Not to mention at the plate I smacked a hard hit double over the right fielders head. Final score 24-0 mercy for us. We were back in the finals.

Now because we came from the losers bracket to get to nationals we had to beat the Weat Van team twice in a row but they only had to beat us once. The first game couldn’t have gone better was we won 23-2. This forced a “winner takes all” game the next day. We were again the away team going into this final but to us that was an advantage as all the games we won we were away but that first West Van game we were the home team. This was a pretty tight and well fought game, but we always had an edge on them. We were leading all game, but it got as close as 2 runs in the bottom of the 6th. However in the 7th our bats came alive again and we score plenty of runs to gain insurance.

Bottom 7, 2 Outs, Pinch Runner on 1st base. On the pitch the runner steals. The catcher Marlon reacts fast and guns him out at 2nd. WE WIN!!!

We were officially Team BC!

Nationals Fun

August 2nd 2016 Team BC flew to Calgary not to play but to then take a bus ride to Lethbridge (the bus took longer than the flight)! I honestly don’t know where to start in describing the experience we had at Nationals.

Ah I got it! Lets start with our best friends Team Quebec. I think the way we really became friends with them was when we were playing Ping Pong and they were saying something rude to Matt. This rude phrase was in French so Matt (one of the few non-French speakers on our team) had no chance of knowing what it meant. This was probably the most fun night there. The Quebec players also introduced us to a song that would unite us and become an “anthem” for the tournament. Clap along – c’mon you know you want to….

Don’t worry it’s clean.

The same night we became good friends with Quebec, our team had a game of volleyball against the Lethbridge host team. Everyone on the team played on the “court”. There wasn’t any scoring. Or rules. I say we won, but I bet you anyone on that Lethbridge team would say they won. The only reason we stopped is because we accidentally broke the net. This was the night that all the teams had KFC for dinner. So we can thank Colonel Saunders for bringing all the teams together.

Later on in the tournament there were a few of us in my dorm (we were staying at Lethbridge College residences) just hanging and all of a sudden everyone else on our team and half the Maritimes team started shooting us with water pellet guns. It was scary at first because we all thought they were BB guns and that would hurt to be shot. By the next day all of us on our team also had the guns.

The last thing I’m gonna talk about before baseball is Ping Pong. The way we played as a whole team was Kings Court. This just got through people quickly. Basically the first point if the king wins it the challenger is already out. If the challenger wins the game goes to 0-0 and they play to 3. Definitely the top 4 players were Kate (you should know who Kate is), Mike, Justin, and I. It would often rotate around the 4 of us for King. Every once in a while though you would see someone like Isaac or McEachern get there for a few rounds. In the last few days of the tournament we got new “Ping Pong” balls. I definitely don’t think they were real. If you just dropped it would bounce a few centimetres. They were also very slow and very easy to spin. So I turned out okay cuz my game is all spin. It was funny for someone like Mitchell though cuz with the normal balls he would maybe hit the ball in 1 out of 5 attempts up. But with these new weird balls he couldn’t hit them too hard. Anyways I think it’s about time to talk about baseball.

Nationals Baseball

So we started the tournament off with a bye. It was good to have an extra day to settle in when we arrived, but meant we didn’t have a day off at all between our games. We were also unlucky in our schedule as 5 out of 6 of our games the team we played had a bye the day before meaning they were rested (schedule whining now over)!

Our first game was at 8:30 AM against the Alberta team. I think we were all a bit nervous (or maybe just half asleep) as we didn’t play well. We made too many errors and didn’t hit the ball. I went 0-1 at the plate and the ball never came to me in the field. The final score was 8-3 Alberta. Next day, we faced our favourite Quebec team. Finally the bats came alive and fielding was solid. Here is a Snap I posted after the game.

Anyways final score 12-4 Team BC.

Game 3. Now we had to face the host Lethbridge team. These guys were the favourite to win it all, so this was likely to be a tough game.

I don’t remember the score by inning but as a team we scared them. They had expected to cruise past us, but at the bottom of the 4th the score was 6-6. The only problem was the bottom of the 4th. We went into the half inning at a tie game, and ending the half inning down by 12 runs. Although it sounds really bad, it wasn’t because of a ton of errors. The Lethbridge team were just really good hitters and they were pounding the ball and getting runs across the plate. The final score in the game was 18-6.

After a big loss we had come back better the next day. We were now playing Team Ontario. This is a game we really felt we could win. Going into the 7th inning we had a 2 run lead and just had to get 3 outs to finish the game. In that top of the 7th, we managed to give up 5 runs and lose the lead. So we had to get at least 3 runs back in the bottom half of the inning. Spoiler alert, we didn’t. Final score 10-7 and a pretty grumpy team that weren’t happy with giving up the win.

So we were now 1-3 in the tournament. To qualify for the semifinals we had to go 3-3. So we had to win our last 2 games in the round robin.

This next game was against Saskatchewan. We were the away team and went into the bottom of the 7th leading 17-9. We almost blew the game as the final score was 17-14. You know it’s not a good sign when I have to go warm up in the bullpen (I am really not a pitcher). It didn’t matter though because we won the game without having to put me on the mound. This meant we were still in contention to make the semis.

The final game of the round robin was upon us. We had to beat the Maritimes who were in the same spot as we were to make the semis. We were the home team in this game which definitely was an advantage in a tight game like this. When the Maritimes were up to bat in the top of the 5th we started to get momentum. Even though we were losing 6-5 we had gotten 2 quick outs and wanted to win. All of a sudden, there was a strike of lightning visible from the field. That means we had to delay the game. So both teams went underneath the grandstand. We were under there for about an hour and a half waiting for the storm to clear up.

After the delay something inside us made the team click together. We went back out there as a team not as individuals. We got the final out and went to work on the bats. Final score 10-8 for Team BC. We were officially in the semifinals.

We were in the first versus fourth seed semi-final against Team Alberta, the team that beat us in our opener. Team Alberta played an amazing game – they hit the ball well and didn’t make errors. They just straight up beat us and were clearly the better team that day. There was nothing special about this game other than we got killed. Final score 19-3.

After losing in the semifinals we had to play a bronze-medal game. I don’t think either team was motivated to win that game. It was just a plain game of baseball. We lost it 8-2. After this game we watched the final. The host Lethbridge team played really well and cruised past Team Alberta in a 12-2 mercy to win the Nationals and earn the right to go to Taylor, Michigan as Team Canada.

The next day we flew home to Vancouver. The whole experience was amazing and something I will never forget. I have been playing baseball since I was 4 and have always dreamed of representing my province (or better still my country) in baseball. Going to Nationals was a way I achieved part of that dream. Now I am just hoping to get back there again next year and maybe go one step further to make it to the World Series…