The Yorkton Yankees got their quest for the 2015 Southeast Senior Baseball League (SESBL) playoff championship off to a successful start Monday evening.
The Yankees, who had to wait over two weeks to begin the playoffs thanks to a first round bye after a top of the league finish and regular season title, defeated the visiting Canora Supers by a score of 4-1 at Jubilee Park in yet another hotly contested Yankees/Supers playoff matchup. “We’ve played these guys a few times in the playoffs and it’s always been a good series with some good baseball, so every time we play these guys it’s a good, close game,” offered Yankees player-coach/assistant manager Mark Jacobs immediately following the Game One victory. “Tonight was no different. They played a good game and their pitching was strong.
“They also have some good hitters on that team so we knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”
And it wasn’t, as the Yorkton offence struggled for much of the game but managed to come up big when it needed to, scoring a pair of runs in the third and fourth innings respectively despite the entire lineup striking out a collective 12 times in the game. “We probably set a Yankee record tonight for strikeouts but when we needed to get some hits there with two outs we did,” said Jacobs, continuing, “Our strikeouts were just one after another after another but when we got guys on we found a way to put the ball in to play and we found gaps so that was definitely nice to see.”
Yorkton’s Logan Calanchie won the all-Logan pitching duel, out-battling Canora’s Logan Parachoniak for the win striking out five Canora batters over six innings of work while allowing just one run on three hits and two walks before handing the ball over to Darren Wandy, who picked up the save striking out one Super batter and getting two others to fly out to Yankees’ left fielder Jeremy Johnson. “It was a classic pitcher’s duel tonight. Both Logan’s (Canora’s Parachoniak and Yorkton’s Calanchie) were throwing really well,” mentioned Jacobs, adding that Calanchie rarely ran into trouble on the night, but when he did he was able to escape. “When he gets in those jams you can see him dig deeper within himself and get out of it and we saw that tonight again in the sixth inning.
“He threw very well and he kept them off balance.”
Next action
Game Two of the 2015 SESBL semi-final series goes tonight (Wednesday) in Canora at Al Sapieha Field. First pitch is scheduled for 6:15pm.
Other SESBL action saw the Russell Bulls defeat the West Parkland Stars two-games-to-one to move on to the other semi-final, while the first round series between the Langenburg Indians and the 2014 SESBL champion Willowbrook Royals is even at one game apiece, however that series is currently on hold due to the need for an SESBL committee ruling.
