All’s well in land of the Giants

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This article was published 19/08/2020 (2116 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kevin Burnett touched ’em all — the bases, not the hands of his teammates.

The Elmwood third baseman launched a ball over the left-field wall to spark a five-run second inning as the Giants registered a 14-2 victory over the Interlake Blue Jays in Manitoba Junior Baseball League playoff action Wednesday night.

The two-time defending champions wrapped up Game 3 of the best-of-three semifinal series in convincing fashion under the lights at Koskie Field in Elmwood, and will pursue a third consecutive league championship against the Altona Bisons, starting Friday at their home park.

“It feels sweet to win this and have a chance for another (title). We’ve worked hard to get here and we want it bad,” said Burnett. “To start it off early and get the bats going, we couldn’t have asked for anything more. Now, we just gotta keep it going. All through the order, one through nine, we got guys who can get on base. Runs should not be a problem for us in the final, hopefully.”

The Giants and Bisons, a confrontation between the top squads during the MJBL regular season, will play a best-of-five series. Bisons pitcher Jayden Gerbrandt tossed a complete-game shutout in a 7-0 rout of the visiting Carillon Sultans in the clincher of that semi-final showdown.

When Burnett crossed home plate, he doffed his batting helmet, raised it into the air and slapped the palms of his jubilant teammates as they lined up to greet him. Celebrating a crucial hit in a new way during the COVID-19 crisis has become routine for the offensively gifted Elmwood ball club.

“We practise the safety methods. It’s knocking helmets or elbows, we’ve got hand-sanitizing stations. All the balls are cleaned off. It’s a little different this year, but by now it’s just like muscle memory. It’s just playing baseball,” he said.

The Blues Jays forced Game 3 with a 10-7 win in Stonewall on Tuesday. Elmwood manager Ed Kulyk said his was a resolute group just 24 hours later.

“We were locked in right from the first pitch. The boys were ready to go. They didn’t like what happened (the previous night) and it showed,” Kulyk said. “That was just a perfect baseball game.”

Giants’ lead-off hitter Justin Scott had a monster night at the plate, reaching base five times and scoring five runs. He came just a single short of the cycle, belting a triple in the bottom half of the first, a round-tripper in the third and a double in the sixth.

Dawson Tanner’s three-run shot in the sixth triggered the 10-run mercy rule.

The Blue Jays used three pitchers, Brandon LaFournaise, Ryan Wasilewski and Noah Ducharme, and all wrestled with their control, issuing a combined nine walks.

Elmwood starter Brandon Racette, meanwhile, had a tidy performance, yielding two runs on seven hits while hitting a batter and striking out five.

In Altona, Gerbrandt surrendered just four hits over seven innings and fanned seven Sultans hitters. Jesse Dowswell smacked a bases-loaded triple in the fourth inning to break open a 1-0 game.

The clubs will play for provincial pride only, as Baseball Canada has cancelled all regional and national championships for 2020. However, the MJBL winners will book a spot in the ’21 nationals — and for one year only, the eligibility age will increase by a year so that graduating players will be able to compete for a Canadian junior crown next fall.

MJBL president Jamie Bettens said the league is exploring the possibility of hosting that championship.

Speaking Wednesday afternoon, Bettens said he couldn’t be more content with how a season potentially scrapped owing to the pandemic has progressed safely and relatively problem-free since opening day on June 28.

“It’s been very successful on a number of different fronts. To me, the hope we had going in was exactly what came to fruition — parity in the league, from top to bottom,” Bettens said.

Winnipeg South, last during the regular season with just five victories, pushed the second-place Bisons to a third and deciding game in their preliminary series before bowing out, while the Blue Jays had five fewer wins than Pembina Valley but slipped past the Orioles in three games to move on to the semis.

Bettens said all eight teams played a 21-schedule without any hiccups, despite some wrinkles added in as part of the league’s return-to-play guidelines.

“It was all about minimizing contact and opportunities for contact. Players couldn’t shake hands behind home plate. We asked that they celebrated with fist pumps and things like that. A lot of spray (sanitizer) bottles, wiping down the dugouts between innings, the teams using their own balls,” he said. “I kind of employed spotters that would send me reports of what it was like around the parks, what fans were feeling and if there was any level of concern. I literally heard nothing after the second week of play.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell