In late August and the early part of this month, the St. John’s area was enjoying a fine stretch of weather, but there were no senior softball games for a nine-day stretch at Lions Park as 15 of the league’s players were competing for the Galway Hitmen at the national senior men’s fastpitch championship in Saskatoon.
Those players are back from a silver-medal performance at the nationals, but Lions Park is once again devoid of action, in this case because of all the rain we’ve been having.
Blame it on Murph. What could go wrong, has gone wrong.
The 2017 provincial senior men’s champion was supposed to have been determined by today, but all the precipitation means only two of nine schedule games have been played, with cancellations on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, which was supposed to have been a make-up date.
And word is there is a chance the provincial tourney might not resume its schedule for more than a week and a half. One issue is that couple of key players on the 3Cheers Pub Bud Light Dodgers — team top batter Kyle Ezekiel and ace pitcher Jason Hill — are set to play for Canada at the 2017 Pan American men’s championship Sept. 15-24 in the Dominican Republic.
There’s also the matter of the Molson St. John’s senior league playoffs. The hope is that the best-of-five semifinals can begin tonight — with the NTV Hitmen taking on the defending champion Kelly’s Pub Bulldogs at 6 pm and the Dodgers and The Bigs squaring off at 8 p.m. — but whether a rain-soaked Lions Park will have recovered in time for those games remains to be seen, especially with wet conditions expected to have stretched into this morning.
Those aren’t the only post-season games set for this week at the facility. The Molson St. John’s intermediate league playoffs are tentatively set to begin Wednesday. That will be a busy process that will require lots of field time, what with eight teams involved in best-of-three quarter-finals.
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