Wolves fall short of NAFA crown

The Sight & Sound Wolves brought a contingent of the Rainy River District Fastball League’s finest into the weekend’s North American Fastpitch Association “A” World Series in Mankato, Mn., but still fell a little short in their quest to bring home some hardware.
The Wolves dropped their fourth and final game to Cary’s Trucking by a 6-2 margin—but the score was seemingly tied before a tough umpire decision went against the Wolves.
“We were right there, but a huge blown call against killed us,” infielder Marcel Pagee said.
“We were losing 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth inning, and I led off with a stand up double and John Desaulniers cracks a ball right up the gut and I proceed to advance to third but the umpire calls me out for interference,” he explained. “She said I made contact with the shortstop, but I was nowhere near him. I would’ve scored on it and Johnny would’ve been on second with nobody out.”
Instead of the score being tied, they were forced to continue to press for a tying run while the visitors put up a three spot in the final inning to ice it.
“If we hadn’t been a run down we wouldn’t have been bunting and getting sacrifice outs, guys would’ve been swinging away,” Wolves’ manager Derek McKinnon said.
“I think it was error-free ball after the first game but when it’s tough competition like that any little slip and you can be out,” he added. “Not much you can do, but maybe if we had a healthy Bob [Andy] and a couple more guys it might’ve been different.”
The Wolves opened the tournament on Aug. 21 against the Manor Dirtbags from Texas, and dropped a hard-fought 6-5 decision. The Wolves had a 3-1 lead going to the bottom of the sixth, paced by two home runs from Jesse Tom, but the Dirtbags put up a four-spot in the sixth to steal the victory. Murray Armstrong took the tough luck loss despite fanning six Dirtbags through six innings.
The Wolves would bounce back on Aug. 22, beating Alabama Fastpitch in an extra inning, 6-5. Guy Arpin pitched all eight innings and helped out his own cause with a home run. But putting a damper on the win was the fact McKinnon blew out a calf muscle and had to sit out the remainder of the tournament,
“I just jogged over to the fence to grab a foul ball and it felt like somebody threw a rock and hit me in the back of the leg,” McKinnon explained.
Despite that, they’d follow the win up with a convincing victory in Saturday’s first game, beating Clark Construction in five innings, 12-5. But that win would set them up for disappointment in their heartbreaking loss to Cary’s Trucking later that day which eliminated them from the tournament.
“We might even jump a class next year and go “A” major, as some of the pitchers we might have been able to use can’t because they’d throw too hard [for “A”],” McKinnon noted.
“Desaulniers is playing left field for our team because he’s not allowed to pitch in “A”, but he went in for a team from Saskatoon [in “A” Major] and dominated.”
With 50 teams, the Wolves would’ve had to play 13 games, including eleven over Saturday and Sunday, to make it to the finals.
“It’s not that we didn’t have a good enough pitcher, it was just that we didn’t have enough of them,” McKinnon said, mentioning the fact the full RRDFL season is just 18 games. “We would be playing Saturday from 9:45 [a.m.] to 9:00 at night, and a few more on Sunday, and we didn’t have enough pitchers to pull that off.”
Sight & Sound had to turn around and play a league elimination playoff game against Rainy River last night, which was still in progress at press time.