It’s not often that you give up six runs in the bottom of the first inning and come back to win.
It’s even less frequent when it’s a playoff game, but that’s exactly what the Victoria Eagles accomplished on opening-weekend play of the B.C. Premier Baseball League post-season.
The sixth-seeded Eagles scored in every inning except the seventh, but at that point they were already up 9-7 and kept the No. 3-ranked North Shore Twins to a single run in the bottom half for a comeback 9-8 win in the series-clinching Game 3 on Sunday in North Vancouver.
Manager Gautam Srivistava’s crew now advances to the BCPBL Final Four tournament in Abbotsford this weekend, opening up against the Nanaimo Pirates at 4:30 p.m. on Friday at Delair Park.
The No. 7 Pirates toppled the No. 2 Victoria Eagles in two straight on Saturday and, on a weekend of upsets, the No. 8 Vancouver Cannons tossed aside the top-ranked Langley Blaze, all in three games.
“A really gutsy performance by Riley Edmonds to give up six in the first, then throw four shutout innings after that. He kept his composure and he gave us a chance to come back and win,” said Srivistava, who then watched Brandon Feldman earn the save, tossing the last two innings.
Offensively, the Eagles scored one in the first inning, two in the second, one each in the third and fourth before coming up with three key runs in the fifth and adding the winning run in the sixth.
Zane Takhar was three-for-three with four RBIs and Will Wild’s bat came alive, going 3-for-5.
“This was very satisfying,” Srivistava said of achieving his team’s goal of reaching the Final Four. “The boys worked real hard this weekend. We’ve worked real hard these last two weeks.
“Everyone clutched up and played through whatever tweaks they had and put together a real good last game.”
The Eagles won Game 1 against North Shore 12-7 on Saturday, before losing Game 2 by an 8-2 count.
In the Final Four, teams will play a full round-robin tournament Friday and Saturday with the last-place team eliminated. Second place will face third place in the semifinal, with the top team advancing straight to Sunday’s final.
