The Cabri River Rats celebrate with the Sask-Alta Baseball League championship trophy after winning the championship game by a score of 16-5 over the Richmound Rockets on July 29 in Cabri.
Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
The Cabri River Rats are Sask-Alta Baseball League champions and the team won its final games in convincing fashion on its home turf at The Swamp.
The league finals were held in Cabri on July 29 and the home team did not disappoint the more than 300 baseball fans in attendance. The SABL does its semifinals and final on the same day with the four teams playing in one-game showdowns for all the marbles.
Cabri hosted the league finals as a result of placing in first after the 14-game regular season. The other three teams had to qualify for the league finals by winning a wildcard game. The Richmound Rockets, Swift Current Yard Goats and Shaunavon Badgers made the trip to Cabri for the finals.
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In the first semifinals, the River Rats defeated Shaunavon by a score of 16-7 to advance to the finals. Tyrell Olfert of Cabri pitched in relief and he threw 2 1/3 innings to pick up the win. Shaunavon’s Kade Behm and Cabri’s Reid Fritzke both hit solo home runs during the game.
Richmound defeated the two-time defending league champion Yard Goats by a score of 8-2 in the second semifinal. Richmound’s Jamie Duchscherer hit a solo home run to lead off the game for the Rockets, and his teammate Brad Paridis pitched a complete game for the win.
The Rockets have won three SABL championships since 2009 with the most recent coming in 2015. Swift Current won the championship in 2016 and 2017. Richmound defeated Cabri in the 2015 final, so the River Rats got redemption in the 2018 final.
Cabri took the final by a score of 16-5 over Richmound. Olfert, who had already pitched a couple of innings, pitched a complete game with six strikeouts for the win, and he also hit a three-run home run in the sixth inning to put the game further out of reach for the team from Richmound.
Phillip Gossard, a player-manager for Cabri, said the team lost in the league semi-finals in 2016 and in the league final in 2015 and 2017, so the River Rats have been on the verge of winning a championship. He said it was nice to win at home.
“It probably couldn’t have been better,” he said, recognizing that the team had heartbreaking losses in recent years and this year’s celebration did not end for the team and community until about Tuesday. “To finish first was one thing, but once we got that far, we knew we couldn’t lose it at home. It was really nice to do in front of a big crowd.”
The River Rats joined the SABL in 2013, so the team has been on a steady rise to the top ever since. Gossard said the team has a great fan base, so it means a lot to the guys to win a championship on home turf.
He attributed the team’s more recent success to strong pitching with three or four main pitchers and other arms on top of it. He said the team is confident it could win with any of its pitchers on the mound. As a young team, he said there is still room for growth.
Gossard said it is common for senior teams to have an ace, but they often struggle with depth at the pitcher’s spot. The River Rats are fortunate to have a deep pool of pitchers, so it has helped the team to be successful since 2015.
The team has struggled to score in the past, but the guys worked hard to improve their offensive output and it worked out, the player-manager said. The River Rats are proving to be one of the league’s top teams, so it was awesome to beat another top team in Richmound after losing to the Rockets by one run back in 2015.
“Hosting the tournament was one thing,” Gossard said, adding that the Rockets have been a top team since Cabri joined the league. “Winning it was going to be another thing, but to beat Richmound in the final, for us, was really the icing on the cake.”
Al Fournier, the league’s president, said it was a good year for the SABL and he believes there is more parody in the league today than in the past decade or so. Fournier plays for the Maple Creek Greyhounds and the team missed the playoffs after a Climax Cardinals win in the final game of the regular season.
He noted that all eight teams finished with five to nine wins, so it says a lot about the competitive environment in the league. It is common for a team to finish with only one or two losses, but not in the 2018 season.
The league is a home team league because teams often have a hard time getting all of their bodies to road games, Fournier said. There is a lot of travel among players and teams, so it gets tough for away teams at times.
Fournier said it was unfortunate for the SABL to lose the Burstall Braves before the 2018 season because the team had a long history in the league. He said he hopes the league’s eight teams are all back for the 2019 season, but more will be known after the fall meeting. As for the 2018 season, it was nice to have a first-time champion.
“At the end of the day, it’s always nice that it’s a new team,” he added, referring to Richmound and Swift Current as powerhouses in the SABL. “We’re all competing, but you know what, Cabri in the big picture probably was one of the more consistent teams. They’re scrappy.”
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