For close to seven innings, they had played their best baseball of the entire season, as short as the season was, it was by far their best effort and it couldn't have come against a better team.
Then it all came crashing down like Fisher-Price building blocks, or maybe a tower of Jenga sticks."You know it's never over until the last out," suggests Gary Lamb, co-coach of the league's top team, the Alexander Menswear Yorkton Junior Cardinals.
"I thought it was a really good game. It's fun to play (in) games like that," Lamb continued.
The Yorkton E&S Yankees had their cross-town rivals, the Yorkton Jr. Cardinals by the neck for all of six innings.
Thanks mostly to some solid Yankee pitching; possibly the strongest pitching seen at Jubilee Park in quite some time, and he was able to get a little run support, too.
Then in a time span of about 3-4 minutes, it all went away.
Darren Wandy was pretty dejected after this one; at stake was a shot at a deciding third game in the South East Senior Baseball League (SESBL) playoff action at Jubilee Park.
"We were thinking that," admitted Yankees manager/coach Wade Karcha on the possibility of forcing the powerhouse Cardinal squad into a win-or-go-home scenario. Sunday night's game two went nearly three hours.
The two Yorkton teams were put up against each other following an announcement that the Swan River Reds would bow out of this year's tournament.
The Yankees would have had the Reds in the opening round, a best-of-three series.
The first game of the Yorkton vs. Yorkton series went Saturday night under the lights and amidst a bunch of angry mosquitos. It wasn't a pretty sight, said Wandy following Sunday night's clash.
Three Yankees errors resulted in three Cardinals' runs.
Karcha kept cool following the game, one which he said several times was the best his club has gone through in its inaugural season, something he said was made possible because he had enough healthy bodies at his disposal to put up against the SESBL's top squad.
"This team played, without question, the best game we've played all year."
With a thousand reasons not to be playing some awesome baseball, ranging from bad weather to not having nine players show up on game day, it was the best possible time to have some extras show.During their final game of the 2009-10 season, the E&S Yankees recorded five hits, including a triple by Mackenzie Unyi, four runs and only one error, through the first six innings of play.
"They played well and we played well," insisted Lamb of the way things went that night.
It's not very often a baseball club at any level of play can make it through on the power of only one guy's arm, but the E&S Yankees managed to do that Sunday night when Wandy took the mound.And it almost worked.
Karcha was asked if he thought Wandy could handle pitching seven innings against the only team in the league this year with less than three losses, go through through the biggest game of the season singlehandedly.
"Yeah, I did...," insisted Karcha. "We had awesome pitching here tonight. He's clearly one of the best pitchers in the league."
What happened however in that seventh inning might sit with him for awhile as the unthinkable began to quickly unfold.
Four Junior Cardinals, Mark Jacobs, Scott Sharp, Dane Kobylko and Ross Stilborn, made their way around the bases in their final at-bat to come back from a 3-2 deficit to win it 6-4."Mark led off the seventh inning with a single," recalls Lamb. "(Justin) Stupak pitched well but struggled at times."
For the first time in the game, their Yankee opponents found themselves on the back end of the scoreboard.
They had built up a 3-1 lead by the fifth inning and all looked good.
Lamb said it was very important to not lose focus on the game. After naming half the players on the Yankees roster, Lamb said you never want to give them that little spark of fire, especially in the post season.
"You never want to give a team like that life," says Lamb the day following their series-clinching victory. "It's time to put the nail in the coffin."
He added that his Cardinals played this one a little differently, especially at the plate.
"It was quite funny because we are a bunting team and we only did it three times last night."
He also added that the Yankees had been missing at least three players.
It came a night after game one of the series, a game which Karcha said nothing at all went right.
"We outplayed ourselves here yesterday," he said of an 8-2 Junior Cardinals win in Saturday's opener.
The pinstripes were guilty of committing five errors, three of which came in the game's opening inning and resulted in two Cardinals' runs scored. The Yankees got two on the board in their half of the seventh but it came after the redbirds had opened up an 8-0 lead.
Both Wandy and Karcha said it was another case of some some horrible errors, particularly in the game's opening inning.
"Tonight," says Karcha, talking about Sunday night's game two, "we had the lead up until the seventh inning."
"That sums it up pretty good."
The Yorkton E&S Yankees were made up of the following players: Ryan Neal, Mackenzie Unyi, Kurt Karcha, Bryce Pasloski, Roby Sharpe, Dwayne Wandy, Garrett Karcha, Dallas Lechman, Eric Tutossi, Darren Wandy, Scott Hanson, Kurtis Chupa, Mitch Datema, Jason Trost, Austin Hovrisko, Trent Wonitowy. The Yankees coaching duties were shared by Evan Wasylyniuk and Wade Karcha.
They completed their first-ever season with three wins and seven losses through 12 games, and settled for a draw twice.
They finished ahead of Parkland, Canora and Swan River in the final league standings.
The Junior Cardinals are hosting the AAA Junior provincials on the weekend, starting with a pair of games on Friday, starting at 3:30 p.m. Lamb said that they will be awaiting the winner of the Melville/Willowbrook series in the senior league playoffs to determine their next opponent.
As of the newspaper's press time, Willowbrook had a 1-0 lead in the series after a 5-4 victory Monday evening.
