By going above and beyond in their commitment to baseball, two Duncan ballplayers and one from Chemainus have given themselves a very good chance at winning a provincial championship.
Caleb Battye and Cullen Plester played their house ball this spring in Duncan, but when Duncan Junior Baseball didn’t have a peewee A team for summer baseball, they headed north to Ladysmith to join the 49ers. Dru Wright from Chemainus did the same thing so he could keep playing in the summer.
For Battye, it helped that he knew the Ladysmith coach, Shawn Freer, who helped his dad, Bryn Battye, guide the Duncan mosquito AAA team — which included Caleb — to the 2014 provincial title.
An outfielder and pitcher, Battye is in his eighth year of baseball, and says that playing for Ladysmith instead of Duncan is “not really” all that different.
Plester returned to baseball this year after taking four years off to play lacrosse.
“I missed it a little bit,” the second baseman and left fielder admitted.
Although he wasn’t playing baseball during that time, he was always around the diamond because his older brother, Hayden, still played.
Asked what he likes about baseball, Caleb responds, “Everything.”
Chided a bit by his mom to provide a better response, he can’t.
“It’s the only answer,” he says.
The 49ers easily won their zone tournament in Victoria last weekend, mercying their opponents in all three games. The team wins because it is solid from top to bottom, the Duncan players say.
“Everybody is good at their positions,” Plester said. “They know how to play them. And everybody can hit. There’s no easy out on our team.”
The 49ers will head to Surrey this weekend for the provincial championships, where they will be the only Island representatives. They are confident they can bring back the gold, having mercied Abbotsford at a tournament in Victoria two weeks ago, and held their own in an exhibition game against Nanaimo’s AAA team.
“I think the boys will show very well,” Cullen’s mom, Sue Plester, said. “It’s a strong team. They have a lot of depth, a lot of pitching.”
