HOST CENTENNIALS PERFECT
(click logo to visit official site)
From Diamond Dirt Editor, John Thompson:
Click here to view Issue Number 4 for the Sr. Canadians (PDF)
Other “Diamond Dirt” news at Fastpitchwest.
Text version of this issue after the jump. (more…)
(click logo to visit official site)
From Diamond Dirt Editor, John Thompson:
Click here to view Issue Number 3 for the Sr. Canadians (PDF)
Other “Diamond Dirt” news at Fastpitchwest.
Text version of this issue after the jump. (more…)
GLACE BAY METS 7
BROOKFIELD ELKS 1,
WP-Corey Avery
LP-Trevor McCabe
VANCOUVER GREY SOX 2,
KITCHENER RIVERSHARK TWINS 0
WP-Derek Mayson
LP-Donnie Scott
Derek Mayson tossed a 2 hit shutout against the 2009 ISC World Tournament champions. Mayson also had two hits, scored both runs and drove in one in the win. The 26 year old British Columbian is one of the finest young talents in the game today, already with years of experience competing at the top levels of the game.
ST.THOMAS EVERGREEN CENTENNIALS 4,
GLACE BAY METS 2
WP-Scott Wagar
LP-Donnelly Archibald
BROOKFIELD ELKS 5,
ST. JOHN’S CBC CANADIANS 4
WP-Brian Urqhart
LP-Darryl Tilley
ST.THOMAS EVERGREEN CENTENNIALS 5,
ST. JOHN’S CBC CANADIANS 2
WP-Sean Whitten
LP-Sean Cleary
JARVIS GAMBLERS 5
CHARLOTTETOWN FAWCETTS 4
WP-Paul Koert
LP-Frank Cox
(Predicted winning team in UPPERCASE
Sunday August 30 (record to date (0-0)
9:00 am BROOKFIELD ELKS vs Glace Bay Mets
11:00 am Vancouver Grey Sox vs KITCHENER HALLMAN RIVERSHARK TWINS
1:00 pm Glace Bay Mets vs ST. THOMAS EVERGREEN CENTENNIALS
3:00 pm Brookfield Elks vs ST. JOHN’S KELLY’S PUB
7:00 pm St. John’s Kelly Pub vs ST. THOMAS EVERGREEN CENTENNIALS
9:00 pm JARVIS GAMBLERS vs Charlott
2009 Senior Canadians
August 30 to September 6, 2009 – St. Thomas, ON
Official website:
2009 Canadian Senior Men’s Fastball Championships
Diamond Dirt will be published each day from St. Thomas during the 2009 Canadian Senior Men’s Championships. It will be available each day at Al’s Fastball.
Diamond Dirt by John Thompson
Diamond Dirt Issue No. 1 (PDF)
P.E.I. squad begins play on Sunday
The Guardian
The Charlottetown Hunter’s Ale House Fawcetts have set a high goal for themselves at the national senor men’s fastpitch championship in St. Thomas, Ont.
The Fawcetts are looking to finish in the top five and make a run deep into the playoffs in the eight-team tournament which gets underway on Sunday. No P.E.I. team has ever finished that high at the nationals.
The Fawcetts will face the Jarvis Gamblers from Ontario their opening game Sunday at 10 p.m. AT. The Gamblers have Islander Jeff Ellsworth in their lineup. The Fawcetts are rated at 6-1 odds in the Diamond Dirt 2009 championships newsletter at winning the tournament.
“(Pitcher) Frank Cox is a horse and can be ridden while back-up Ward Gosse makes this team a prime contender and quite capable of grabbing a medal,†stated the newsletter. The Fawcetts’ pitching staff is talented and deep and also features Mike Bishop and Mitch Hardy.
Gosse is also expected to help the team offensively.
The Kitchener Hallman Rivershark Twins are the pre-tournament favourites. The Fawcetts will be hosting the 2010 championship. (http://www.canadians2009.ca)
Fawcetts’ schedule at fastpitch nationals:
Sunday – vs. Jarvis, Ont., 10 p.m.
Monday – vs. Glace Bay, N.S., 5 p.m.
Tuesday – vs. Kitchener, Ont., 11 a.m.; vs. Brookfield, N.S., 5 p.m.
Wednesday – vs. St. Thomas, Ont., 9 p.m.
Thursday – vs. Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 p.m.; vs. Vancouver, B.C., 5 p.m.
Phillies miss playoffs at Westerns
By Eric MacKenzie, The Daily Graphic
A tough start to the Senior B Men’s Western Canadian Fastpitch Championship in Regina was too much for the Portage Phillies to overcome, as they missed the playoff round at this weekend’s tournament.
The Phillies, who captured a bronze medal at last year’s Westerns in Brandon, went 1-5 through the round-robin to finish eighth out of the nine teams.
Portage’s bats were relatively silent at the event, as they posted a tournament-low 14 runs in their six games, and batting just .220 as a team.
“The other teams had really quality pitching, so we didn’t hit the ball the way we normally do,” said Phillies’ pitcher Gregg Waldvogel. “The teams were a lot deeper than we saw last year in Brandon, and every game was a tough game for us.”
Meanwhile, Waldvogel had a rare off-weekend, struggling to an 0-3 record and a 14.00 ERA in his 13 innings of work.
Look for the full story in The Daily Graphic newspaper, or subscribe to our online edition.
sports.dailygraphic@shawcable.com
Written by Jason Peters
Citizen staff
Peter Ghostkeeper stands in the middle of the toppled ticket booth at Spruce City Stadium. A vandal, or vandals, broke into the local ball park earlier this week. (Citizen photo by David Mah)
Dumb.
That’s the word Peter Ghostkeeper used to describe the act committed by an individual or group of individuals at Spruce City Stadium.
Sometime prior to Thursday afternoon, the local fastball park was vandalized. The most serious damage was inflicted on the ticket booth, located at the front entrance of the facility. The booth, built in advance of the 2006 Canadian senior men’s fastpitch championship, was tipped over and part of its roof was ripped away.
“What reason would there be for them to do that?” asked a frustrated Ghostkeeper, a Spruce City Men’s Fastball Association committee member. “The ball season’s over, the gates are all locked. The only way they could get in was to climb the fence.”
A fence, standing about eight feet high, protects the stadium grounds.
A plywood wall in the concession area was also torn down and part of its roof was damaged. Ghostkeeper said vandals also went to work at the park about a month ago.
“They tried to break into the concession by climbing the backstop,” he said. “And it seemed like they were hitting the door with a pick or something. They tried to get in there. They were unsuccessful, but they damaged the door. And those doors are 1,500 bucks apiece, maybe.
“Every year, we have a bit of something,” he added. “We had the storage shed (vandalized) too. We had a piece of plywood over the window and that was ripped off. There’s nothing in (the shed) but they tried to get in there. And on the other side of the storage shed, a couple years ago, they took off one of the boards for the wall.”
The RCMP attended the scene on Thursday but Ghostkeeper said there’s little the police can do.
“All they can do is just record it,” he said. “Their hands are tied. There’s no evidence, other than the ticket booth being pulverized.”
Ghostkeeper said the booth will be repaired.
“We’ll put it back up and we’ll have to do some fixing,” he said. “We’ll make it work. We figured that building was heavy enough to withstand a big wind so we didn’t bother chaining it to the fence. Now, we’ll have to do something.”
From the National Post
By Darren Zary, Canwest News Service
Team Canada saluted their fans following their tournament-ending loss versus New Zealand at the ISF World Men’s Softball Championship in Saskatoon
Photograph by: Liam Richards, The StarPhoenix
Canada loses to New Zealand in semi-final of men’s softball worlds
SASKATOON — To counter New Zealand’s traditional Haka warrior dance, Team Canada players and coaches wrapped arms around shoulders in the pitching circle and together sang an inspiring rendition of O Canada on Sunday.
However, the home-run trot, not the Haka dance, would prove to be Canada’s demise.
The defending world champion Kiwis erupted for six runs in the bottom of the fifth inning – including three homers during a span of four batters – to erase a 4-2 deficit for a 8-5 victory before an estimated crowd of 5,000 fans at Bob Van Impe Stadium.
Australia defeated New Zealand 5-0 in the final.
It was the same song and dance for the Canucks, who settled for bronze with the loss as they closed out their 2009 International Softball Federation world championship run.
“It all happened in a hurry,” Team Canada coach Mark Smith said of New Zealand’s big fifth inning. “They’re a team that really feeds on their own momentum. They’re world champions for a reason.
“They do this over and over. They believe in themselves. They’re a very well-coached team. They’re disciplined. There’s no shame in being beat by a team like that. Offensively, they can take the ball out of the park, (Nos.) 1 through 9 in the lineup.
“If you give up eight runs, you’re going to lose the ball game. We scored five and, normally, that’s enough to win. It wasn’t today.”
A week of sunshine may have left them with a bronze tan, but the Canucks were looking for a slightly different colour of medal Sunday, playing the ISF world softball championship in their home country.
It wasn’t to be. The Kiwis made sure of that.
“They’re the best hitting team in the world and they proved that today,” said Team Canada infielder Keith Mackintosh, whose team had lost its first of two playoff lives with a 2-0 loss to Australia on Saturday night.
“We were really let down after [Saturday’s loss]. We felt we had a really good opportunity to put ourselves in a really good spot … But it is what it is. We threw it all on the field and left it there.”
Canada jumped ahead 1-0 on a solo homer by their top hitter of the tournament, Ian Fehrman. New Zealand answered right back in the bottom of the inning with a pair of runs off Canadian starter Sean Whitten, thanks to a double by Nathan Nukunuku and RBI single by Brad Rona.
Canada made it 2-2 in the third on an RBI single by Ian Fehrman and later went up 4-2 in the top of the fifth when Fehrman smacked a two-out shot down the first-base line to score a pair of runners, Jeff Ellsworth and Ryan Wolfe.
“I may have had a good week, personally, by putting the ball in play most of the time and a few key hits, but we came up a little short at the other end,” said Fehrman, who was 4-for-4 with two RBIs at the plate.
Todd Martin, who replaced Whitten, had a solid outing going until the bottom of the fifth when he gave up back-to-back homers to Nukunuku and Jarrad Martin before walking Rona. Dean Holoien faced two batters in relief, giving up a two-run blast on his first pitch to Donny Hale and single to Travis Wilson. All of a sudden, it was 6-4.
Patrick Shannon hit a single up the middle and Daniel Milne stoked a double off reliever Trevor Ethier to finish the assault and give the Kiwis a commanding 8-4 lead.
“That was the difference,” said Fehrman. “We had just put a rally together and took a two-run lead and then put together their big inning there. We were playing catch-up ball all week and we just couldn’t do it anymore.
“We left a few too many guys on. Against a good team like that, you’ve got to make it count.”
Canada cut the lead to three when Jody Eidt’s double in the sixth scored Derek Mayson, but that’s where it ended.
“We came from behind so many times this week that it didn’t really bother us,” said Eidt. “We could have folded up the tent, but we scored the next inning and gave it everything we had.
“If you at the scoreboard, we scored in four different innings. If you would have told us, before the game, we could do that, we’d be happy with that.”
Marty Grant pitched a complete game for New Zealand, allowing seven hits, three walks and striking out four.
Dean Holoien, who gave up two runs and two hits while facing just two hitters, suffered the loss. Ethier allowed two hits and struck out two in two innings of relief work.
“With a lineup like that, they can explode on you at any time and they did that,” said Ethier.
“It’s tough. No question it’s disappointing.”
Saskatoon Star Phoenix
Todd Martin had 10 strikeouts over five innings as Canada routed South Africa 7-0 on Wednesday at the world men’s softball championship in Saskatoon.
Martin of Bracebridge, Ont., gave up only one hit and two walks as Canada stayed undefeated at 6-0 to remain one game ahead of Australia atop Pool B.
Canada went ahead 3-0 in the third inning and closed out South Africa with another four runs in the fifth.
Sean O’Brien of St. John’s, N.L., led Canada with two hits and three RBIs. Derek Mayson of North Vancouver, B.C., and Dale Levy of St. Mary’s, Ont., each added two hits and one run batted in.
In the fifth, Kevin Schellenberg of Squamish, B.C., Ian Fehrman of Townsend, Ont., and Mayson each hit home runs, while O’Brien’s RBI finished the game on the run rule.
South African starter Tidima Kekana was pulled after giving up three runs and six hits over four innings. Reliever Monte Sadler fared no better against the Canadians, giving up four runs and five hits.
In other scores it was: Argentina 15, Indonesia 1; Philippines 7, Botswana 5; Australia 5, Czech Republic 1; Japan 14, Denmark 7; Venezuela 13, Puerto Rico 2; and New Zealand 13, Mexico 1. The United States faced Britain in the late game.
Canada will finish the round-robin portion of their schedule against Puerto Rico (2-4) on Thursday.
The playoff round will begin on Friday.
