Westlock Red Lion Nathan Brown lines up the bat with the ball in a 9-3 win over the Sherwood Park Athletics at Keller Field July 3. The victory improved the club to 6-3-1 and second place in the North Central Alberta Baseball League, just behind the Athletics.
Despite a rained out doubleheader July 7, the Westlock Red Lions still managed to notch a couple of wins to maintain their second place standing in the North Central Alberta Baseball League.
The Red Lions doubled up the Edmonton Athletics, 8-4, in a July 2 matchup in Fort Saskatchewan and racked up another victory at Keller Field the next evening with 9-3 win over the league leading Sherwood Park Athletics. A scheduled doubleheader July 7 against the Edmonton Blackhawks was cancelled due to wet conditions.
The Red Lions are in second place in the league with a 6-3-1 record, just behind the Sherwood Park Athletics who stand at 8-2.
“Our schedule, with all these rain-outs happening, is going to be really busy and challenging ... League manual rules request that we make up all the games we’ve missed. Supposedly, in 50 years (in the NCABL) there has never been a schedule that was not played, so all the games are played every season,” said Red Lions manager Chris Brand, adding that diamond availability may become an issue, especially with the city teams.
“I’m almost certain that this year set a record for most rainouts. It’s probably one of the worst summers for baseball this year.”
As for the time the team did spend on the field, Brand said he saw good things.
“The week was good. We had two solid outings by Carmen Brown and Curtis Burlet. Our hitting was there. We had 22 hits in those two games. With runs and hits comes a good possibility of winning ball games,” said Brand.
The Red Lions travelled to Fort Saskatchewan July 2 to take on the 2-10 Edmonton Athletics and came away with an 8-4 win.
“It was a back-and-forth type game,” said Brand. “We made a lot of errors that game, we were a little bit rusty, but our bats were there to kind of help us through the game and we scored enough runs to stay ahead of them. It wasn’t our best performance, by any means, but we were able to get the job done with our offense, so that was good to see.”
On July 3, the Red Lions were at up against some tight pitching in the Sherwood Park Athletics which kept the two leading teams in the league in a dead heat until the sixth inning when the Athletics bullpen took over and promptly handed the home team six runs to finish the game.
Burlet settled down after a balk and a hit batter in the second inning.
“He threw a lot of strikes and our defence was solid and as the game went on we were able to get to their bullpen and we hit them around a bit,” said Brand.
The Red Lions will be back on the road July 10 with a trip to Stony Plain to take on the Mets before returning home to Keller Field July 11 to face the Edmonton Athletics.
