Brandon Minor Baseball cancels season

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2020 (2053 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s to always expect the unexpected.

On Thursday, the Brandon Minor Baseball Association got a taste of the unexpected.

In the morning, its league playoff format was being advertised on social media. By the afternoon, the association had cancelled the rest of its season.

League vice-president Glen Simard and his team decided the risk wasn’t worth the reward.

“With playoffs, kids aren’t going to be able to just miss games,” he said.

“If your team is in a semifinal and your parents are uneasy about you going, but then they let you go because your team will be short bodies, but they still feel unsettled? We felt that’s not really fair to kids or families.”

The cancellation comes in the midst of an announcement from the province on Thursday, stating that Brandon — and the rest of the Prairie Mountain Health region — is now in “code orange”, meaning that community transmission of COVID-19 is occurring and stricter guidelines need to be put in place.

One of those guidelines is restricting outdoor gatherings to 10 people or less. Simplot Millennium Park — where Brandon’s minor baseball plays — falls outside of those restrictions, because it’s an outdoor recreational facility where physical distancing can occur naturally, while operating normally.

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” Simard said.

The code orange announcement caught Simard and the association off guard — he found out the news, like many others, on Twitter after Manitoba’s chief public health officer’s Brent Roussin 1 p.m. press conference on Thursday.

But, with just over two months of play under the belts of minor teams this season, Simard felt at peace making the call to cancel playoffs.

The 18U teams finished up their seasons mid-August, while the 7U and 9U teams will be wrapping up their regular seasons this week. If a code orange was called in June, Simard said it may have been a different story — the league would’ve done everything in its power to get creative and make sure teams could have fun, while being safe.

However, with only one week of playoff baseball scheduled for the 7U and 9U teams, Simard would rather play it safe and be grateful for the playing time kids have had this season.

“It’s just been so great that we’ve been able to have something. That was a big thing we saw in June, early July is that finally the kids are out, they’re seeing their friends, people outside of their homes. They got to go out there and feel normal again, and I think that was a big thing,” he said.

Simard hopes that enrolment in minor baseball doesn’t lose steam, because of this peculiar season.

It wasn’t that long ago that minor baseball was only a budding sport in Brandon. The vice-president said 2020’s enrolment was nearly 600 kids this year, almost double the amount of players the league had in 2015.

Even though the 7U AND 9U teams ended on Thursday, there are two Brandon minor ball teams who were able to slip away unscathed. The AAA 13U and AAA 15U Marlins are able to attend playoffs this year, since they’re part of the Winnipeg AAA Baseball Association.

All playoff games will be played in Winnipeg and surrounding areas next weekend — outside of the orange zone.

“We’re feeling very fortunate, first off that we had a baseball season because it started off pretty unknown,” said 15U coach Dwayne Stone.

Stone’s Marlins had a fantastic year, going an undefeated 12-0 in the regular season.

Next Friday, the team will travel to Balmoral — just outside of Stonewall — to play Interlake at noon, in their first playoff match.

The rest of the game times and locations are yet to be determined.

This year, the playoff format runs a bit like a tournament feel. Teams will play two games on Friday, two on Saturday and then Sunday will be the final between the highest-ranked teams.

“It’s really going to be about player management, to use your pitchers well and everything, if you make it to Sunday, to see what you’re going to have left,” Stone said.

“Pitch count is important, we’ll be very selective on who we’re throwing and how many they’re gonna throw in an effort to try and save as many pitchers as possible for the potential Sunday game.”

Nest weekend will be a new experience for the Marlins. This will be the first time they’ve joined the other WABA teams in playoffs. Traditionally, the Marlins have finished the regular season and then moved into provincials, if they were deserving enough.

But with provincials cancelled this year because of COVID-19, WABA’s playoff weekend will be the top prize.

“We’re fortunate that out of 12 players, we have 12 players that can pitch. We’ve noticed with some teams this year, they get through two or three guys and they have not many arms left. Some of that is definitely a struggle, especially in the doubleheaders,” Stone said.

“We’ll just have to play our best game and see what happens this weekend.”

» dshewchuk@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @devonshewchuk