The Sawridge Heat Jr. ‘AAA’ baseball team was just starting a semi-final game at the provincial championships as this paper went to print. Playing in Ft. Saskatchewan, the Heat had made it to Monday morning’s semis in a somewhat unusual fashion, but was there nevertheless, against a talented Edmonton team.
“Our guys will really be in tough,” said Heat Manager Hugh McEvoy early Monday just prior to game time.
McEvoy says the Heat hadn’t played as well in the tournament as they did the previous weekend at the league championships. In fact they only had one victory on the field going into Monday’s game. Their other win came on a disqualification of the Terrae Pines Rustlers for using an overage player.
The Heat started the tournament with a 9 – 8 win over those same Rustlers. Newcomer Tyler Matier of Grande Prairie started on the mound for Slave Lake. He pitched a pretty good game, but had one bad inning, which cost the team five runs. Brent Blachford came on in relief and struck out the last batter, preserving the win.
In their second game, the Heat played sloppy defence and lost 9 – 7 to Ft. Saskatchewan. “It was another one of those bad, bad games,” says McEvoy.
Jeff Lindmark hit a seventh-inning home run to make the score close, but the Heat were not in the game.
“We made a terrible amount of errors,” says McEvoy.
Blair Sinclair started the game and Josh Gryschuk and Brad Sinclair also took turns pitching. On Sunday the Heat were to play Terrae Pines again in a quarter-final contest. McEvoy says he’d heard that the Rustlers had an illegal player and protested the game. He says the team had received a warning about it the night before, but the coaching staff decided to play the overage player anyway. McEvoy’s protest resulted in an investigation and ruling against the Terrae Pines team.
“It was quite a heated situation,” he says.
With only three teams in their division, the default win was enough for the Heat to claim first place in the division and put them into Monday morning’s semi against SEEBA, the powerful team from southeast Edmonton. SEEBA did not play in the Alberta Jr. ‘AAA’ League this season, choosing instead to play a schedule of exhibition games in the U.S. and Canada. They got into the semi-final by beating last year’s champ the St. Albert Tigers 5 – 2 on Sunday.
“They’re all college players,” says McEvoy. “They’ve got a pitcher from a Texas university that throws in the 90s. We’re going to have to have a great game just to come close.”

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