It’s been a season to remember for the Victoria Eagles of the B.C. Premier Baseball League, despite going out on a losing note, 9-3 to their rivals the Victoria Mariners on a clear, but blustery night at Henderson Park on Tuesday.
With neither team moving anywhere in the standings, the Mariners closed out their disappointing year with a solid win as veteran Nick Dawson earned the victory in his final game for Mike Chewpoy’s club, which misses the playoffs.
The Eagles finish at 31-13, close behind the regular season-champion North Shore Twins at 34-10. The Mariners — who faced key injuries to veterans all season long — ended it at 15-29, ahead of just the 10-34 Parksville Royals in the 12-team league.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Eagles manager Anthony Pluta of hitting the highly respected 30-win mark. “We came in and had no expectations at the beginning of the year.
“We wanted to play hard and we had an opportunity early to see if we might have a chance to win 30. We put it out to the boys, ‘Hey, let’s try and do it. We’ve never done it as an organization.’ Let’s shoot for 30 and we got there.”
Which he and the organization took great pride in as they head to playoffs starting Saturday at Lambrick Park.
“When you see the better teams in the league that have done it in the past, winning 30, 32 or 33 games, we kind of equate that to winning 100 games in a big-league season — that’s a good year. The Mariners won 100 games in three years a couple years back. That’s a nice thing to say, that you’ve won 30.”
The Mariners actually turned that trick four straight years, the last one in 2014.
This season has been a struggle as Chewpoy was without veterans Mike Varley, Chris Blaskovich and Chris Lata for most of the year. It’s been younger players like Tyler Schindel and Sam Glowicki who have led the way along with Jason Willow and Nick Seginowich.
“We’ve been plagued with injuries all year, but no excuses,” said Chewpoy, who misses the post-season for the first time in his 12 years with the club. “It’s given us an opportunity to play some guys where they might not normally play. We’ve had a junior guy up every weekend, it seems like.
“We put ourselves in a situation, with 44 games this year and not 48, that every game after that 30-game mark started to become more and more important. It was difficult. We didn’t have three of our players on the field together since April 8. They still haven’t been.”
The Mariners ended on a positive note, evening their seasonal series with the Eagles at 2-2.
Dawson went a solid 51Ú3 innings, allowing three runs on six hits, before Cole Russell mopped up. Willow went 3-for-4 at the plate with two RBIs as the Mariners broke open a 1-1 game with three runs in the second and added two in the fourth after the Eagles cut it to 4-3. Three more runs in the sixth capped it.
EXTRA INNINGS: Seginowich and Willow of the Mariners were named to Team B.C., while Duncan and Kobe Morris of the Eagles also made the club. Team B.C. will compete at the Canada Cup in Saskatoon next month.
