INSIDE THE PARK: Well-travelled Beever has had busy year of baseball

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This article was published 24/08/2016 (3510 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If collecting baseball experiences interests you, it’s hard to beat the year that pitcher Scott Beever of Rivers has enjoyed.

The 23-year-old pitcher is heading to the senior men’s AAA baseball nationals in Fredericton, N.B., today with the Oak River Dodgers after getting home from playing in a tournament last week in Prince George, B.C.

“I’m going to go coast to coast in two weeks,” Beever chuckled. “It’s pretty neat.”

He also finished his college eligibility with the University of Jamestown Jimmies in the spring and pitched once again for the Weyburn Beavers of the Western Major Baseball League in the summer.

His latest adventure came via one of his coaches in Weyburn.

The coach knew Geoff Freeborn, who owns Sidearm Nation, a company that hosts baseball events while extolling the benefits of non-traditional submarine and three-quarter deliveries for pitchers.

Freeborn invited Beever and his Weyburn teammate Ryan Johnson of Winnipeg out to the fourth running of the World Baseball Challenge.

Each team — Sidearm Nation, the Kamloops Sun Devils, Roswell Invaders from New Mexico, Thurston County Senators of Olympia, Wash., and eventual gold medal winners Japan — played a six-game preliminary round at the unsanctioned tournament, with medal games on Saturday.

Beever, a six-foot, 175-pound pitcher, threw for Sidearm Nation, winning a bronze medal with a 10-6 victory over the Senators.

He threw a total of 10 innings in two games that included his start in the bronze medal game.

Beever said it was a high level of baseball.

And no, he didn’t have to channel his inner Dennis Eckersley and drop his delivery.

“When I first got there, I asked some of the guys if all the pitchers had to drop down,” Beever laughed. “They let me throw overhand.”

A couple of pitchers did throw three-quarters or lower.

It was a big season for Beever long before his surprise trip west. He finished up a four-year college baseball career with the University of Jamestown Jimmies as the team posted its best record in history, 52-11.

The team started the season on an amazing 25-game winning streak. He admitted that eventually his teammates began to think about the feat, which ended with a 1-0 loss on to Nebraska Wesleyan University on March 20. But the loss hardly stopped them, with the Jimmies winning 12 of their next 13 games.

“We were able to pick each other up,” Beever said. “If the pitching staff was having a rough day, then the bats would come alive and we’d win a game by scoring a ton of runs. Sometimes the bats wouldn’t be there so the guys would go out and pitch and we’d shut them out. Everyone was playing for each other.”

Beever, who was joined on the roster by Marshal Burgess of Brandon and Aaron Pugh of Boissevain, appeared in 13 games, compiling a record of 5-1 in 56.2 innings with a 5.08 earned run average.

“I’m pretty critical of myself,” Beever said. “I probably could have pitched a lot better at times but I feel like I did what I could to help the team win. There were definitely times where I felt like I wanted to pitch better.”

The Jimmies hosted the NAIA national regionals for the first time, losing 15-8 to Missouri Baptist to end their season on May 19.

Beever started the final game, surrendering seven hits and four runs in 2 1/3 innings.

“It was tough to walk away from the field, especially it being our home field and think that it was the last time that I was ever going to play with this jersey on for this team,” he said. “… It’s definitely something that I’m going to miss but never forget, that’s for sure.”

When the season ended, Beever returned to Weyburn. After finishing first in their conference a year ago, the Beavers entered play with high expectations.

After a slow start, the team began to hit its stride and made the playoffs. But with their low seed, they drew the first-place Swift Current Indians, who have Binscarth’s Brody Burnett on the roster and went on to win the league championship after ending the Beavers’ season on Aug. 2.

But Beever’s year hasn’t ended just yet, with the Dodgers opening play against Alberta on Thursday.

When he returns, he’ll move to Saskatoon to get his masters degree in environmental sciences with his focus on the classroom.

Until next summer, that is.

“I’m going to take a step back and start looking at some other stuff,” Beever said. “In the spring, I’ll probably be itching to get back on the field.”