麻豆视频

From the success of the Haulers to the pluck of the Tornados, to the excellent weather and the hard work of volunteers to ensure Sunday's games went ahead, the provincial baseball championships held on the weekend were a great thing for the Energy City.

A ton of baseball was jammed into a very small area as 14 sets of players, coaches and parents made the cluster of diamonds at Cactus Park their home for three days.

There was also a nod to the city's past during the opening ceremony on Friday, with Estevan baseball builder Barry O'Handley throwing out the first pitch and being honoured with a plaque on the announcer's tower.

Following Saturday's thunderstorm, pools of water had formed on all four fields and it was worth wondering whether the tournaments would have to be moved or worse.

But coaches and volunteers got up at an ungodly hour on Sunday to make sure that at least two diamonds were in good shape, and there was only minimal disruption to the schedule that day.

Although Brandon Hutt was superhuman for the Haulers in Sunday's final and was the biggest reason they won that game, the team's biggest strength might be their depth.

The bantam club got important contributions from everyone over the course of four games. They didn't have to rely on one part of the order to provide the power at the plate, nor on a couple of pitchers to mow down batters, and that was a huge reason for their success.

In the era of strict pitch counts, tournaments are as much about managing your pitching as they are about everything else, and the Haulers did it well, having several of their top hurlers available for the final.

It was a warming sight to see Estevan win provincials on their home turf, and they had to earn it, with the kind of seventh inning that can make players come unglued in a hurry.

There was a lot of unnecessary frustration in the third inning too, but the Haulers regained their composure and got the job done, not an easy thing to do at that fragile age.

As for the Tornados, the Estevan peewee club had one of the most impressive outings of the entire tournament in Sunday's semifinal against Lloydminster.

If there had been Vegas odds, they would have been somewhere around 50-1 for the Tornados to knock off the defending Western Canadian champs.

No one outside the Estevan dugout expected them to win that game, but they must have, because their determination shone through their play.

Even after the disappointment of the fifth inning, when an impressive flying catch robbed them of tying the game and maybe taking the lead, the Tornados kept pushing and were one ground ball away from tying it up.

As last hurrahs go, it was a great one for the baseball season in Estevan.

Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at [email protected] or on Twitter at twitter.com/joshlewis306. Does anyone else feel like they were completely caught off guard by the fact that the Olympics start in two days, and now need to ramp up their Olympic readiness in a hurry?