Although Mother Nature wreaked havoc with Rainy River District Fastball League’s schedule this summer, the playoffs got underway last night with eighth-place Pinewood hosting ninth-place Red Gut Bay.
The winner will move on to meet first-place Rainy River, who went undefeated in 13 regular-season games tomorrow night while the loser is done for the season.
The double-knockout portion of the playoffs also will kick off with second-place Barwick (11-5) meeting seventh-place Sabaskong (5-10), third-place Sight & Sound (9-4-1) taking on sixth-place Big Island (6-9), and fourth-place Stratton (7-7-2) versus fifth-place Big Grassy (6-8-1).
Sight & Sound’s game gets underway at 8 p.m. at VanJura Stadium here.
The next round will be played on Tuesday (Aug. 16), with the league final slated for Aug. 30.
Sight & Sound closed out its regular-season action last Thursday night with a 20-12 comeback win over Big Island at VanJura.
The home team was trailing 10-5 when they exploded for nine runs in the fifth inning, and added another six in the sixth, to pull out the victory.
Harvey Flamand got the rally going with a solo homer to open the fifth. Paul Visser followed with a single, then after a one-out walk to Eric Shute, Matt Sweigard singled.
Sheldon Bourassa and “Beeker” Watson each doubled before Duane Carlson delivered a two-out single.
Flamand doubled in his second trip to the plate that inning, which was followed by a single by Derek McKinnon, a walk to Visser, and a triple off the bat of Shute.
“Harvey kind of got down on himself,” said Visser, referring to Big Island’s five-run lead. “[He] is pretty much the heart of the team and led off with a solo home run and we just carried it on from there.
After having games cancelled against Rainy River on Aug. 2 and Pinewood on July 28, last Thursday was the first time Flamand had pitched since he tossed two innings in the league’s all-star game July 19 at Stratton.
“There was rust there, and I made a couple of bad decisions and made some mistakes, but that happens,” said Flamand, who helped his own cause by going 4-for-4 at the dish.
That was apparent from the get-go when Big Island scored three runs in the first, but Flamand wasn’t getting help from his defence, either.
None of Sight & Sound’s outfield, which consisted of Shute in centre, Ryan Flamand in left, and Emmanuel Moutsatsos over in right, had played a full game at their positions and a few expected mistakes cost the team some runs.
But the infielders weren’t much better as it seemed everyone was feeling rusty after not having played for two weeks.
Though McKinnon knew his team’s offensive prowess usually is never in question, he was doubting their defensive abilities that night.
“I wasn’t worried so much about getting the runs, but we were having such a poor game defensively that I was afraid that if they kept scoring that we wouldn’t get by them,” he admitted.
While the two-time defending champs finally got their bats going in the fifth, Big Island deserved credit for going toe-to-toe with Sight & Sound in the early going.
Jesse Tom led the visitors by going 4-for-4, including a home run, with Jayson Indian and Randy Morrison also hitting balls out of the park.
“We’ve got some good bats, but they just had the better bats tonight,” said Tom.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
