Not many teams have been able to defeat the Victoria HarbourCats this season, but the Nanaimo Pirates found a way.
A Pirates all-star squad doubled up the West Coast League’s best team 10-5 in an exhibition game Sunday at Serauxmen Stadium.
“In baseball, anything can happen,” said Doug Rogers, Pirates manager. “We played really well, we had things go our way pretty much all game long and we rode it out.”
The HarbourCats came up to Nanaimo fresh off winning their league’s first-half pennant with a 20-4 record. The Pirates bolstered their roster with alumni all-stars and it made for a high-calibre matchup.
“The stands were full, the weather was great; obviously two good teams on the field,” Rogers said.
Brady Rogers led the Pirates with five RBIs including a three-run home run to right centre field. Shane Rogers added a pair of hits and Garrett Goodall tripled. Sam Baker was the winning pitcher after two innings in relief of starter Alex Rogers and Kenton Schroter threw three shutout innings.
For the HarbourCats, P.J. Floyd homered over the green monster in right, following up on his three-home run performance in last year’s exhibition.
A lot of current Pirates got into the game and Doug Rogers said the experience of playing against a college-level team will be beneficial.
“The gap between them isn’t that big. It’s more about dedication, sacrifice as far as giving up things to get as good as these guys on the HarbourCats are,” he said. “They got to see it first-hand … and hopefully it sticks and they can apply some of the things that they saw and learned.”
The manager hopes the exhibition can be a “launching pad” into the final stretch of the B.C. Premier Baseball League season.
“Hopefully this’ll do that as far as their mentality goes: yeah, we can compete.”
GAME ON … The Pirates host the Parksville Royals on Tuesday (July 12) at 6:30 p.m. at Serauxmen Stadium.
sports@nanaimobulletin.com
