Home sweet home
Sydney Sooners return to comfort of home field to host Halifax
Sydney Sooners open homestand tonight against Halifax
Chris Farrow doesn’t have to be told how important this weekend is to the Sydney Sooners season.
The local senior baseball team will return to home field for the first time since June 30 when they host the Halifax Pelham Molson Canadians.
Halifax (10-9) is a half game back of the Sooners (12-10) for second place in the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League standings.
Game 1 of the three-game series kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. at the Susan McEachern Memorial Ball Park. The teams will also meet on Saturday at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
“We have to win,” said Farrow, who’s played in the senior baseball league for the past six seasons.
“Halifax is playing good ball and they won the series last time we played them, so we definitely have to win.”
After starting the season with
a 10-2 record, the Sooners, who have played four consecutive series on the road since the start of the month, have struggled recently, dropping eight of their last 10 games, including three of four contests last weekend in Kentville and Truro.
“I think every weekend now is big,” said the 25-year-old shortstop.
“We’re on a slide, but we just have to focus more.”
Sooners head coach Jim (Rico) McEachern hopes the team can turn things around with the club’s remaining 10 games of the regular season at the comfort of the Sydney ballpark.
“We’ve basically brought ourselves to where Halifax and ourselves are probably chasing second place now and that’s important to us because, as the record would suggest, we seem to play better home,” said the veteran bench boss.
“Defensively, we have not played well. Offensively, we’ve struggled and our pitching has pitched well enough for us to win 50 per cent or more of those games but our defence and offensive didn’t pick it up – it hasn’t been fun”
The Sooners enter Friday’s game coming off an 8-6 loss to the Bearcats on Sunday in Truro.
Meanwhile, the Canadians picked up a key, 8-6 victory over the Kentville Wildcats on Tuesday in Halifax.
Sydney is led offensively by Jordon Shepherd, who’s hitting .392 with 23 RBIs on the season. As for Halifax, Jake Pelham leads the way hitting .348 at the plate.
“They have a couple of good pitchers and a lot of left-handed batters, but I think we have better defence than them,” said Farrow of the series.
“I think if we can play our game, play good defence and don’t make mistakes we should be OK this weekend.”
McEachern considers the weekend to be a “pivotal series.”
“We have to create some winning ways, we haven’t had a winning weekend in five weekends, so I’m looking for a series win,” said McEachern. “We will take it one game at a time, but we have to get ourselves back in the win column.”
The road doesn’t get any easier for the Sooners after this weekend’s series with the Canadians. Sydney will kick off the month of August with a pair of back-to-back series’ against the league-leading Dartmouth Moosehead Dry (17-0), beginning with a three-game series, starting Aug. 3.
The team will finish the regular season with a two-game series against the Canadians, Aug. 17-18, before participating in the Canadian Senior Men’s Baseball Championship in Victoria, B.C., Aug. 23-26.