THUNDER BAY – The post-game fireworks kept 2,175 fans glued to their seats.
The action on the field?
No so much.
The Thunder Bay Border Cats, suffering through a post-pennant race hangover, a night after being eliminated in the chase for the Great Plains East Division first-half crown and a spot in the Northwoods League playoffs, kept the Waterloo Bucks off the scoreboard in the first inning on Monday night.
The Bucks then scored at least one run in each of the next seven innings before going scoreless once again in the ninth, nearly four hours after play began.
When the final pitch was thrown to Greg LaChance, who went down on strikes, Waterloo evened their four-game set with the Border Cats at a game apiece, humbling the hometown favourites by a 14-0 count.
It was the first time Thunder Bay had been shutout since July 4, 2023, a span four days shy of two years.
It happens, said first baseman Jeremy Sheffield, who will return for the second half of the season.
“Sometimes, that’s baseball. Some things don’t go your way. It’s a really hard sport and it’s all about how you bounce back. The first half is over, officially now, so it’s going to be about how we can clear our minds and reset and go attack tomorrow and the rest of the second half,” said Sheffield, who drew a walk in four plate appearances, on a night when the Cats as a whole managed just two hits off a quartet of Waterloo pitchers.
The Bucks weren’t exactly piling up hits in the early going, notching just three off of starter Cameron Johnson and his replacement, Ethan Froud, over 4.2 innings.
Johnson, a Burlington, Ont. native, retired the side in order in the first, but Larry Edwards greeted him with a bomb to lead off the first, blasting his second home run of the season over the opposite-field wall in left.
A Jake Bechtel two-run single in the third made it 2-0, then an error by shortstop Manny Alberto allowed Bechtel to score the third run of the inning.
Froud threw a pair of run-scoring wild pitches after taking over one batter into the fourth. Bechtel and Marcus Heusohn hit back-to-back RBI doubles in the sixth and then in the eighth, up 11-0 at the time, Luca Perriello hammered a 2-1 Jackson Irwin offering over the wall in centre.
It just wasn’t the Border Cats night, said departing outfielder Lucas Johnson, Cameron’s brother, who was playing his last game this season in a Thunder Bay uniform.
Johnson, who finished with a .363 batting average, 10 doubles, a homer and 26 RBIs in 28 appearances, said it was too bad the team couldn’t catch the first-place La Crosse Loggers, who finished 22-11, a game-and-a-half better than Thunder Bay’s 21-13 record, that left them half a game behind the Duluth Huskies and tied with Waterloo for third place.
Jordan Bach, another player in his final game, and catcher Trey Fikes, had the only two hits for Thunder Bay.
Bach, the league’s leading hitter had a one-out single in the first that put runners on first and second, but the Cats were unable to advance them any further. Fikes led off the fourth, with Brandon Rice taking over for starter Parker Sweeney, with a single up the middle, but he was quickly erased when Sheffield lined a shot down the first-base line – into the glove of Heusohn, who stepped on the bag for the unassisted double play.
Rice earned the win, improving to 2-0. Johnson took the loss, allowing five runs, four of them earned, on two hits and three walks over three innings.
Five Border Cats pitchers walked 11 and hit four more Waterloo batters.
"We wanted to win 22 coming into today. We feel we're a very strong ballclub and we feel like we could have gotten hotter at certain times and maybe have won this first half. We just didn't really get the bats going today," Lucas Johnson said.
The two teams open the second-half with a 1:35 p.m. matinee on Canada Day at Port Arthur Stadium.
Cat tracks: Players leaving after the first half include pitchers Parker Burgess, Jimmy Cerha, Makaio Cisneros, Cameron Johnson, Matt Sargeant and William Spang; catcher Braxton Templin, second baseman Greg LaChance and outfielders Kael Babin, Jordan Bach, Ty Hamilton and Lucas Johnson.
