Lac La Biche Dodgers win Pow Wow centennial baseball tournament

Down three runs with two outs in the seventh inning of a tournament final, the Lac La Biche Dodgers needed the oldest baseball cliche in the book: a miracle. A walk-off home run would also help.

They got both.

On a holiday Monday evening, the Lac La Biche Dodgers pushed past the Edmonton Athletics in the Pow Wow Days Invitational Tournament's Premier Division final 4-3 on the strength of an inside-the-park walk-off homer that gave them the first lead they'd had all game.

"I thanked them for not quitting and for working hard, because I know they were tired," said head coach Ray Brown of his post-game speech.. "They kept plugging along, and I thanked them for that, and I said to them, today we are champions.

The tournament was staged to honour 100 years since the first recorded game of baseball in Lac La Biche and the long history of the Pow Wow Days tournament, which had dipped in quality in recent years.

The Dodgers were a senior AA team managed by Brown and Orv Franchuk of the Edmonton Prospects, a collegiate summer league, and composed of players from the Prospects, from the AAA St. Albert Tigers, the AA North Central Alberta Baseball League and five local players from Lac La Biche.

"It's been a long time coming. I've played in this tournament since '98, and I think we played in the final once," said Lac La Biche's Jason Houle. "To win it this year was kind of unexpected for a lot of people, myself included. It's just fun. Lots of fun to play. It's more fun to win, that's for sure."

The Dodgers cleared their pool games 2-0, including a win over the NCABL-leading Edmonton Blackhawks. Its manager, Randy Gregg, had visited Dodgers Stadium in the 70s for the Edmonton Tigers before switching sports and embarking on an NHL career topped by a Stanley Cup win with the Edmonton Oilers.

In the semifinal Monday, they first met the Grande Prairie Brewers, from the AA Wheatbelt League. Grande Prairie scored three runs in quick succession at the top of the second, starting with a run off of a centre-right blast.

The score held tightly, but the Brewers looked like they were going to expand the lead at the top of the fifth with a fly ball that bounced, leaving runners on first and third.

Brown switched pitchers in an attempt to hold the score, bringing in Bryce Shea, a Prospects closer that plays during the school year for California State University, Dominguez Hills in NCAA Division II.

"I thought, we'll bring him in, (he throws) a different angle from down below," Brown said. "It makes the hitters look for the ball down instead of up, and he's pretty good at what he does. He came and did a good job for us."

The next Brewer hit a low shot to shortstop and was thrown out to retire the inning. Lac La Biche responded by scoring four runs in the bottom of the fifth, with Luc Riopel, Logan Wedgewood and Kyle Heese crossing the plate before Houle hit a stand-up double that got Jessy Beley in for the go-ahead run.

The teams would trade runs in the sixth, and Shea blanked the Brewers in the seventh to send them back to Grande Prairie.

The final against the NCABL's Edmonton Athletics was a much more guarded, cagey affair. The game was scoreless until the top of the fourth inning, with two outs but runners on second and third from the Athletics.

A hit by Edmonton's Cory Gilliam spilled past the second baseman, driving in the only run until the game's explosive final frame.

The Athletics got two hitters on with no outs at the top of the seventh and the Dodgers brought Shea on the mound to try and calm things down. But the Athletics got a run from Peter Shepert's hit into a wide-open patch of left field, grabbing another to hand Lac La Biche an imposing 3-0 deficit heading into the bottom of the inning.

With the Dodgers' Scott Boerson on first, Houle hit a ball the shortstop couldn't get a handle on, but while the slugger made it on base, Boerson was thrown out before he could reach second.

After the next hitter struck out, announcer and Lac La Biche County Mayor Omer Moghrabi, who organized the tournament, proclaimed it as do-or-die time for the Dodgers. The crowd groaned, believing the game already lost.

Houle said the mood in the dugout was frustration.

"We were hitting the ball, we just weren't putting it in play, right?" he said. "But with these guys, everybody's so resilient. I knew we had to put up a fight anyway."

There were signs of life. Lac La Biche's Adam Moghrabi hit a double over centre, and Brown acted fast to sub out the pitcher, Shea, for Jory Luetzmann, who was walked to load the bases.

Riopel hit a single into the infield for one run, but one run wasn't going to do it. Up came Wedgewood, who swung twice and came up with nothing.

"I just wanted to get a pitch I could handle, preferably up and in, and try to put the barrel on it," Wedgewood said.

With two strikes, two outs and a two-run deficit at the bottom of the final inning of the ball game, Wedgewood connected, with a drive to centre field that saw an outfielder collide with the fence.

"Honestly, I thought I got under it a little bit too much and it just kept carrying for me. I managed to find the hole," he said. "It always feels great to be the guy that gets lucky enough to come up in that situation."

The runners rounded the bases, and cautiously optimistic yelling turned to outpourings of joy once the crowd did the math and figured out that yes, the Dodgers had taken the lead, and yes, the game was over, and yes, they had won.

"I tried to find the ground," Houle said, "because I think I jumped about 10 feet."

Brown and his assistant, Orv Franchuk, a former Dodger who wona World Series ring as a coach with the Boston Red Sox, thanked Moghrabi and the organizers for the opportunity.

"I've been to Lac La Biche Pow Wow Days a few times... my wife's from Hylo and I met her here at this tournament, and I've known Omer since 1975," he said. "It's great. It's great to come here and give something back to Lac La Biche."

Lac La Biche Dodgers AA
Luc Riopel CF (St. Albert Tigers)
Logan Wedgewood C (Edmonton Prospects)
Scott Boerson 1B (St. Albert Tigers)
Jessy Beley P, 2B (St. Albert Tigers)
Kyle Heese SS (St. Albert Tigers)
Mike Desjarlais LF (Sherwood Park Athletics)
Curtis Berlet RF (Edmonton Warriors)
Josh Hardy 2B (St. Albert Cardinals)
Jason Houle 3B (Lac La Biche Dodgers)
Bryce Shea P (Edmonton Prospects)
Jory Luetzmann PH (Edmonton Warriors)
Adam Moghrabi LF (Lac La Biche Dodgers)
Gary LeBlanc P (Lac La Biche Dodgers)
Lee Tom (Lac La Biche Dodgers)
Ali Fyith (Lac La Biche Dodgers)