Stratton upsets Sight & Sound

The Stratton Bobcats did it.
The eighth-seeded team came to VanJura Stadium here last night to square off against top seed and defending champion Sight & Sound and took it to them in the first round of the Rainy River District Fastball League playoffs.
“My hat is off to Stratton,” Sight & Sound’s Don Copenace said as he reflected on his team’s 8-7 loss. “They hit the ball and they took advantage of our mistakes, and the score shows it.”
The game, though, almost wasn’t even played at all as Sight & Sound only showed up eight players. The team was able to pick up a last-minute outfielder.
Because no league bylaws were on site, there was some confusion over whether such a move by Sight & Sound was allowed and Stratton played the game under protest.
“I was pretty sure that you’re allowed to pick somebody up as long as he’s not a pitcher,” said Derek McKinnon of Sight & Sound.
“I thought that’s the way it was but they thought that maybe it wasn’t, so we just decided to play it [the game] and they played it under protest, so even if we won, it could’ve been for nothing,” he added.
As well, due to the time needed to field a full team, Sight & Sound was considered late in starting, so Stratton was given an automatic two-run lead with the first inning being negated.
When the game finally did get underway, the Bobcats came out swinging as Guy Arpin scored from third base on a single by Curtis Sheloff. Then they built their lead in the next inning with runs coming from Colin Heyens and Shawn McDonald to make the score 5-0.
“It just wasn’t working for me today. There was no movement and bad placement,” said Copenace, who had the second-best pitching mark in the RRDFL with an 8-2 record.
The game’s most confusing play gave Sight & Sound their first run in the bottom of the fourth.
After Andrew Watson had reached first base, rookie Emmanuel Moutsatsos swung and missed at the 1-2 delivery but Stratton’s catcher failed to haul in the pitch and Moutsatsos, being waved by his teammates, hustled to first and caused an overthrow.
Watson came around and scored on the error.
Copenace, the league’s home run leader, then smacked an inside-the-park homer that made it 5-2.
But the Bobcats stormed back with three more runs in the next inning coming from Sheloff, Ted Heyens, and Brent Anderson.
“You can’t win games without hitting the ball. No matter what the pitcher does, if the guys don’t hit the ball, you’re not going to win ball games,” said Arpin, whose appearance as Stratton’s pitcher was only his third in three years.
“That was the key thing—the guys hit the ball,” Arpin added.
Ed Vold’s two-run homer in the seventh brought Sight & Sound to within one but it wasn’t enough.
Sight & Sound, who dropped down to the ‘B’ side of the playoffs with the loss, next will play Tuesday night against Big Island, who lost 18-4 to Barwick yesterday.
Other first-round action last night saw second-seeded Rainy River dump seventh-ranked Pinewood 9-1 while Big Grassy (#3) topped Red Gut Bay (#6) 13-11.
The defending champs still have a chance to win the league crown (the playoffs feature a double-knockout format), but this road is much longer and it wasn’t a path the number-one team wanted to take.
“I was just hoping to at least win this first one and it would give us a little bit of a cushion,” said Copenace. “With a win, it would’ve put us in a comfortable position to advance a little further and hopefully defend in the finals again.
“But now we’ve got to come around the long way and we can’t make any mistakes,” he stressed.
The other ‘B’ side game Tuesday will feature Pinewood versus Red Gut Bay while the two ‘A’ side match-ups will see Stratton against Big Grassy and Barwick playing Rainy River.