[Alsfastball] Men's 18th Annual World Senior Fastball Tournament

[Al Doran]

From: mohearn at uoftbookstore.com
To: fastball at pmihrm.com
Subject: Men's 18th Annual World Senior Fastball Tournament
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 15:09:50 -0400



North Bay, ON


North Bay, Labour Day weekend playing fastball, where else would you rather
be?  Perhaps at the Senior Canadians in Nova Scotia, but with the complaints
and prices charged for admission I've been reading about, perhaps not.
Perhaps in Cobourg for the Canadian (tongue in cheek) Masters Fastball
Championships.  What was it....8 teams with 6 from Ontario or 10 teams with
8 from Ontario.  Does it really matter?  Even some of the best Ontario teams
weren't there.  Cold Springs and Oshawa for example both chose to take their
skills to North Bay.

I enjoy playing in the annual North Bay tournament,  as many others
obviously do as well.  Thirty-two teams, and can you believe it, a waiting
list to get in.  Playing for Cold Springs Cats this time around we had a
relatively easy time of it in our first two games.  Beating Powassan 10-0
and a local North Bay team (Casey's) 7-2, but after that it was time to go
to war.  In our third game we played against a very capable team out of
Orillia and lost 2-1 with wile veteran Gary Latchford tossing for us.  I
should mention that it was Gary's third game in succession.  After all the
calculations were done, unbelievably we were paired against Orillia once
again in the first round of the playoffs.  Orillia sent stalwart Billy
Michelle to the mound and we countered with Gary Vowles.  Gary outdueled
Billy for a 1-0 Cold Springs victory.  In the quarter-finals we had to face
the always tough Blair McBratney and the defending champion Oshawa Ravens.
It took two extra innings for Cold Springs to eke out a 4-3 victory with
Gary Vowles once again getting the win.  In the semi-finals Cold Springs
took on the Edge/North Stars out of Sudbury and again it came down to the
last inning with Cold Springs scoring two to take the lead and then throwing
the tying run out at the plate in the bottom half for the final out and a
hard fought 4-3 win.  In the final, Cold Springs asked Gary Vowles to take
the ball once more, only his fourth game in a row, against a very good team
we understood to be from the Ottawa area (if I'm wrong I apologize to them).
Cold Springs jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first only to have it disappear
courtesy of of a two run blast.  Tied 3-3 going into the last inning Cold
Springs was facing runners at 2nd and 3rd with two outs when the fellow who
had hit the homerun earlier came to the plate.  We decided to put him on,
thereby creating a force at any bag.  In trying to give him the free pass an
unexpected wild pitch ensued scoring the runner from third and forcing Cold
Springs to accept 2nd place.  Nobody felt worse than Vowlesy, but you
wouldn't catch anyone blaming him as we had our chances to score more and
besides,  we wouldn't have gone that far if it hadn't been for him.

Thanks Gary Vowles, Don Goodfellow, Mike Racioppo, Mike McCaw, Rob Ellis,
Dave O'Connell, Steve Mo, Gary Latchford, Mark Thompson Jeff Brown, John
Mohns and Ewart Timlin as well as all the wives and family that came North
to cheer us on, for a great weekend of ball and comraderie.  Thanks as well
to the folks in North Bay for once more running a tournament they should be
proud of, and thanks to our opposition for providing the most exciting
moments of my summer on the diamond.  With luck someone will pick up this
old man again next year for the trek north to a very fine tournament.

Mike "Red Dog" O'Hearn
   mailto:mohearn at uoftbookstore.com




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