Sep 08, 2015 | James Whitchurch | 2253 views
2015 Minor Rookie AA Champions
The St . Thomas Minor Rookie Cardinals bring home their first Ontario Baseball Championship after winning the "AA" tournament labour day weekend in Brantford.
After a solid season in LDBA league play taking the league pennant with a 20-2 record and sweeping the playoffs with 4 straight wins to take the playoff championships the boys found themselves bumped to the AA tournament at the classification deadline. That didnt break their spirits but drove them to work harder in preperation for the tournament, they battled in 2 close exhibition games the weekend before with the now AAA champs from Kitchener proving they could play with any team in the province. After a tough 9-5 loss in the first game Friday to Waterdown the boys came back Saturday on fire beating Markham 16-5 and setting up an afternoon rematch with Newmarket who beat the Cards in the finals of the Bob Stark tournament early in the year. After a tense heated game the boys held on to a 14-9 win and earning them a bye to the final 4. Sunday we faced off with the Barrie Red Sox upsetting them 17-6, in just 5 innings and setting up mondays final 3 after Lasalle upset the undefeated team from Waterdown. Monday morning seemed to be the game of the weekend against the strong team from Lasalle, after 2 innings we found ourselves down 9-3 but some solid D and timely hits the the boys came back for the 10-9 upset and setting the stage for a rematch from Fridays game against Waterdown in a 1 game gold medal match up. Both teams came out strong putting up runs, but the boys managed to shut them down to 1 run in the 5th and managed to take an 8 run lead going into the bottom 6, after a 3rd out fly ball to end the inning and clinch their 1st championship.