The Yorkton Cardinals and Swan River Reds met Thursday night in Yorkton to get the South East Senior Baseball League playoffs going.
It did not start out well for the Cardinals.
Trailing by four runs going into the fourth inning may have been enough to throw the team off the tracks completely.
Not this team though.
Led by a pitcher whose been through it before and backed up by a resilient group of players, they made a comeback.
Swan River pounded out four runs in the opening inning and led 5-1 heading into the fourth inning, points out head coach Cliff Leschyshyn.
"That's the first time we (had to) come back all season," he said following that comeback; which resulted in a 6-5 Yorkton Cardinal victory in the Survivor Series of the SESBL.
They now move on to battle with the Canora Supers in a best-of-3 playoff round.
The win over Swan River didn't come easy, says Leschyshyn.
"Matt (Leschyshyn) struggled on the mound a bit. We got off to a slow start."
Colby Parachoniak pitched a nearly flawless game for Yorkton and was throwing heat in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, admitted he would have liked to have seen the bats wake up a lot earlier than they did.
"I would have liked to have start hitting sooner," he said upon reflection of how the game went "but I thought we handled 'er just well".
He said once the Cardinals began the comeback, all he had to do was "concentrate on hitting the strike zone".
Coach Leschyshyn added that the team maintained aggressive play and cut down on the number of outs they took while running the base path.
Yorkton was credited with five stolen bases and "speedster" Arron Yeroschak provided some of the offensive highlights, notes Leschyshyn.
He said part of the reason that it took the offence nearly half of the game to wake up was that Reds' pitcher Ben Andres was playing well that night.
"He seemed uncomfortable when we had runners on base," offers Leschyshyn.
Offensive support that night came from Scott Sharp who scored the game's opening run. Jaden Hawryluk provided Yorkton's second and third runs coming in the third and fourth innings. Daryl Case and Lance Hawryluk also added runs in that crucial fourth inning and Yeroschak completed the comeback for Yorkton with the eventual winner in the sixth inning.
NEXT UP
Next up is a best of 3 series with the Canora Supers.
