Lucas Punkari
It was a contest worthy of a championship finish—with a finish that will be talked about for a long time.
Trailing by a run with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Riel Councillor hit a towering three-run shot over the right-field fence Sunday afternoon to give Northwest Bay a dramatic 13-11 win over the River Rats in the ‘A’ final of the annual Kingsley Downs/Gus Lindberg Memorial slo-pitch tournament in Devlin.
“I just wanted to be the hero,” Councillor smiled following his late-game heroics.
“When I went up to the plate, I wasn’t feeling any nerves at all, to be honest, and I was able to come through and win the tournament,” he added.
Heading into the final half-inning, Northwest Bay found themselves trailing 11-8 after Marcel Pagee’s three-run blast had move the River Rats into the lead.
But Northwest Bay refused to give up. A pair of RBI singles drew them within one, which set up Councillor’s game-winning shot off River Rats’ pitcher Mike Sheppard.
“You win some and you lose some, that’s just how it goes,” Sheppard reasoned.
“It was a close game all day long and everyone on both teams played well,” he added.
“Everyone had offence, and everyone was playing great defense, so it could of gone either way.”
It looked early on as if the River Rats would run away with the tourney title as they jumped out to a 6-0 lead after two innings, thanks to home runs by Tarran Romyn and Eric Shute.
“That’s kind of what it was like for us all weekend long,” Sheppard noted, referring to his team’s early dominance.
“Everyone contributed in all of our games, and that made for a pretty enjoyable tournament in that sense,” he remarked.
As the game wore on, however, Northwest Bay began to chip away and eventually tied the game at 7-7 thanks to a four-run fourth inning.
Ryan Smith was the catalyst for the comeback, hitting a pair of solo shots to kick-start the offence.
“Once we saw Ryan starting to hit a few balls there, that really started our team’s momentum,” Councillor noted.
“And for me, I know that it really made me want to hit one out of the park myself,” he smiled.
Both teams traded runs in the fifth to make the score 8-8, which set the stage for the dramatic finish.
Even though blazing temperatures were the norm throughout the week-long, 12-team tournament, which is put on each year by the Devlin slo-pitch league, those involved in the event failed to let the heat bring them down.
“Whether it’s the organizers, the people who support the tournament, or the players themselves, they all get that there is a big-spirited meaning to this event,” said Scott Downs, son of the late Kingsley Downs and a member of the Downs Family team.
“You saw today in the final that there was a lot of competitiveness involved, which is what Dad and Gus liked to see as umpires,” he noted.
“But both sides were able to to get along at the end of it.
“The people here in the Devlin slo-pitch league do a fantastic job, and it’s a great honour for our family to be a part of it,” Downs added.
In other tournament finals Sunday, Dirk Digglers defeated defending champion Fubar in the ‘B’ title game while Shade captured the ‘C’ crown.
