Sometime, somewhere, the Sight & Sound Wolves will figure out a way to beat the Barwick Blue Knights again.
That time just wasn’t last Thursday.
Barwick spent the regular season as the only spoiler for the Wolves and little changed in the playoffs as the visitors won 3-0 at Sight & Sound’s VanJura home.
“Pitching on both teams was good,” Barwick starter and manager George Oltsher said.
“They might have had an off night. They hit the ball (well). They’re a tough team and you can’t take any of them for granted,” he added.
Pitching was key for both teams, as catcher Kevin Gemmell’s first inning home run registered as the only earned run of the game. Lefty Oltsher and reliever Jason Wilson combined for the shutout, while Sight & Sound’s starter John Desaulniers allowed just three hits and struck out a whopping 15 batters over seven innings, striking out the side in both the fourth and seventh.
The closest the Wolves came to making a game of it came in the bottom of the fifth, when Joe Sinclair ran what looked like a seeing-eye single into a double to lead off the inning. The next batter, Paul Visser, struck out but reached first on a botched play by Gemmell, while Sinclair advanced to third.
Oltsher pulled himself from the game in favour of Wilson, who struck out Cole Kaemingh and Sheldon Bourassa before hitting Mark Kellar in the ankle to load the bases. Grant Swire then grounded out to shortstop Vaughn Wilson to end the inning.
“George started the game—he’s our leader, so we just wanted to do our best for him,” Jason Wilson said.
“It seemed to work to switch pitchers,” Oltsher admitted. “When we got in to trouble . . . it seemed to work. It doesn’t always work, but it worked that time.”
“He knew when to come out at the right time. George is a veteran,” said Sinclair.
Desaulniers termed his pitching “okay” but insisted it wasn’t the story. “Don’t matter if it’s 1-0 or 15-0, you gotta get runs to win. I’m not critical of the guys,” he insisted, pointing out he—like most of the hitters in the game—didn’t have a hit to show for the night.
“They stay up when I play them it seems like, and they earned everything they got tonight,” he said.
Desaulniers allowed a run in the second when he issued two walks with two out, one of which was brought in for a run after a pair of passed balls. The last run of the game came in the fifth, when after two strikeouts, Vaughn Wilson earned a double, advanced to third on a passed ball and scored when JJ Landry hit a grounder that drew an error out of a fumbling Kaemingh.
Desaulniers was quick to say he had fun, but added that “we might have outplayed ourselves instead of them outplaying us.”
He explained that he thought the team was trying too hard the few times they had runners in scoring position. “Maybe us putting too much pressure on ourselves,” he said.
Wolves manager Derek McKinnon agreed, saying he thought it was a well played game, but he was “disappointed in our bats.”
“Going a little too hard for the fence, maybe,” he opined. “We held ’em down to not too many hits, but it doesn’t matter if we can’t score a run. We were a little flat with our bats in the last game (against Sabaskong) too, I think.”
Barwick advanced to play the Stratton Eagles last night, while the Wolves faced the Rainy River Royals. The final rounds of the playoffs are slated for tomorrow and next Tuesday, but a number of players from the Rainy River District Fastball League have headed to Des Moines, Iowa today for the North American Fastpitch Association World Series tournament.
