‘Miraculous’ day for the WCBL’s all-star game
WCBL’s showcase game a first-class affair played under — surprise! — sunny skies
It wasn’t your normal All-Star Game.
But for nine glorious innings, the seldom-seen sun in Edmonton shone down on Re/Max Field and the inaugural all-star game in the rebranded Western Canadian Baseball League.
The story wasn’t that the West won 5-4 but that at the end of a wild and crazy day it ended up being an exceptionally professional game.
“It was kind of miraculous the way it worked out,” said Edmonton Prospects owner Patrick Cassidy. “Considering how the weather has been through the month of June and into July, how it has rained all week and how we were looking at a forecast with 100 per cent rain and thunderstorms throughout the day, it really was kind of miraculous the way it worked out.” Thunderstorms were all over the area but they seemed to swerve around the ballpark. Normally an all-star break lasts three days. Not this one.
There was a doubleheader Saturday in Brooks. Melville at Yorkton was postponed due to rain. Night games were played in Fort McMurray, Lethbridge and Edmonton, where the Prospects were clobbered 15-2 before only 1,114 fans by the league-leading Okotoks Dawgs.
“It rained for six innings,” said Cassidy.
What was supposed to be the highlight stretch of the season for Cassidy’s Prospects turned out to be a double-downer until it finally stopped raining Sunday evening.
Set up for a possible record crowd in the 9,211-seat Triple A jewel of a ballpark in Edmonton’s river valley for their Canada Day game against Moose Jaw, the city was hit with cold and rain. While they got the game in, the announced attendance was 4,988.
“You don’t expect to get 7-8 degree weather on Canada Day. Damn, it was a cold July 1.
“But despite the weather it was an incredibly fun day. And we sold out of our blankets and hoodies. That was something,” said the owner who is always in search of the silver linings in the clouds over Edmonton.
The rain and cold stayed around all week with thunderstorms predicted and projected from beginning to end to kill the advance sale for the inaugural event of the rebranded league. And the Prospects went on a fivegame losing streak to drop out of a playoff position as well.
Cassidy clearly took a bath on the all-star game that provided an announced attendance figure of 1,543 — about 1,500 more than it looked like they’d have at mid-afternoon. The way it worked out Cassidy considered it a worthwhile investment.
He paid the league $40,000 for the rights to hold it this year and next and covered expenses for hotels, mileage, per diem, and appearance money for ex-Edmonton Trapper and Toronto Blue Jay Matt Stairs. There were also costs to provide a four-camera webcast production to all the team sites, the costs of umpires and baseballs, advertising and promotion.
“Often the forecast hurts us more than the actual weather. Fans these days make their decisions based on all the weather apps,” said Cassidy as he checked the sky and stands where there was a scattering of people under umbrellas and tarps on the field.
The home-run contest had to be put on hold due to another deluge.
Kaleb Warden of the Lethbridge Bulls hit eight out of the park to defeat Alex Stinnett of Swift Current when rain came again.
Warden, along with three teammates and six Wayburn players, jumped into a van after their game in Lethbridge on Saturday night that had a 5 p.m. start. They arrived in Edmonton at 1:45 a.m.
“It was a long day,” said the designated hitter for the West All-Stars in the starting lineup who said despite the weather and everything else involved was an excellent experience.
When the starting pitcher Hunter Boyd — the medical marvel who had seven surgeries and seven cadaver bones inserted into his right arm where two plates and 16 screws remain — threw the first pitch, a strike, at 5:04, it was like a triumph.
By 5:19, the field was bathed in sunshine, they’d managed to get the first inning in and the West led 1-0 on an RBI single by — guess who? — home run derby winner Warden.
Richard Mascarenas of Okotoks drove in another run for the West in the bottom of the second.
The sun was still out when the West came to bat in the bottom of the six with the score still 2-0. That’s when Tanner Hess of Fort McMurray and Travis Hunt of Edmonton drove home a run each.
Wayburn’s Barrie, a runner-up in the home run contest, homered in the top of the seventh.
A couple of East errors in the bottom of the eighth resulted in three runs and a wild pitch cost the West a run in the top of the ninth.
But that was it. A two-hour, 26-minute ball game.
“It was a real clean game until the end. The pitching was phenomenal. And for them to pull this off says this league is organized really well,” said winning manager Mitch Schmidt of Okotoks. Minor miracle?
“Well, it was an important Sunday for the league and all I can tell you is that there are 108 beads on a rosary and 108 stitches on a baseball.”
Game MVP was Travis Hunt of the Edmonton Prospects.