Provincials Recap

The Bantam AAA Royals made a successful return to the league this season with an impressive regular season record followed by their first Provincial Semi-Final appearance since 2002.  After ten years of mediocrity the Royals finally got back to the cross-over games at Bantam AAA provincials and narrowly missed a ticket to the Championship game after leaving the winning run on 2nd base in the top of the 7th inning.  The Royals ended up losing to the eventual runner-up Vancouver Mounties 7-6 in yet another tightly contested affair.  If you discount the results in Richmond Tournament earlier this year these two teams played 5 extremely tightly contested games that ended up with a 2-2-1 record for each team 3 games decided by one run, one game by two runs, and of course a tie.

This tournament was expected to be fairly open as to who the winner might be with the top 7 teams having a legitimate shot at winning it all.  It was as advertised.  The Royals group consisted of 4 tough teams and an eventual sleeper.  With Cloverdale, White Rock, and North Delta the Royals had a combined 5-4 record from regular season play so you knew there were going to be no easy games.

With teams wanting to get a quick start the White Rock Riptide came out and threw (literally) everything they had at the Royals and grinded out a 4-3 win.  Not the start the Royals were looking for but later on that day the Royals pounded the ball against Victoria to earn a 7-1 win.  After day one, the Royals sat at 1-1.  Other big news from day one had the 7-seed North Delta Astros upsetting the 2-seed Cloverdale Spurs, this group was now wide open.

Day two saw the Royals lock horns with the Spurs and in a well-played tightly contested affair the Spurs came away with a 3-2 victory.  Although the Royals were keeping the runs against down they could not seem to break through offensively as they had all season long.  When the dust had settled on day two Victoria had upset North Delta, who then took care of White Rock later on in the day.  It was clear that this group of teams were taking it to each other.

On Day three it boiled down to a game between North Delta and the Royals with, essentially, the winner moving on because of defensive runs and records among tied teams.  Royals were ready for this game as they knocked around one of the better pitchers in the province picking up a 6-2 victory.  When all was said and done the top four teams in the province had moved on to the semi-finals but two of the teams had to take a tough road to get there.

The semi-finals saw the Royals meet the Mounties for the 7th and final time of the year.  Royals started crafty left-handed pitcher Ross on the mound who battled the Mounties for 3 innings giving up 4 runs with 2 more tacked on after he left the game.  Seeing as how this was a do or die game Royals brought Bailey out of the bullpen, which was very rare for him, as he was one of the top starters all season long.  Bailey couldn't keep the last two runs from cashing but provided 2 strong innings of relief.  Pelletier came in for the last 2 innings as the Royals pulled out all the stops to try and win this game and he shut the Mounties down.  Royals hitters battled all day and had a good approach at the dish but simply could not break through on Mounties starter Smith.  Royals batsmen worked the count and ran Smith's pitch count really high early forcing the Mounties to go to the bullpen.  Royals finally broke through in the 7th for five runs started by a Stadnik bunt for a basehit.  In the end, the Royals ran out of time and stranded the winning run on 2nd base in the 7th inning.  Mounties were forced to go to their 3rd pitcher on the day and just narrowly escaped with the victory.