Taking a look back at the 2009 Yorkton Cardinals.
With the help of Kevin Kvame, the league schedule supervisor, and all other WMBL teams in Saskatchewan, a plan was in place to have a few more in province Doubleheaders to help alleviate the monstrous travel costs. So right at the onset of the 2009 campaign the Cardinals and the Beavers played a DH at Yorkton on May 31st to kick off the season. The Beavers won the first game by scoring two runs in the 10th inning and defeating the Cardinals 3-1 before 361 fans. In the 2nd game Jordan Herbison pitched 5 innings of 2-hit baseball, and J.J. Leaper came on in the 6th allowing 1 hit over 2 innings to gain the save. Cardinals 1-0 winners over the Beavers.
It was primarily decided that the TwinBill experiment really was not a huge success and would probably not be adopted again unless a future rainout dictated such.
For the 2nd year in a row the Cardinals became involved in marathon baseball. In 2008 the Sherwood Park Dukes beat the Cardinals in a 20 inning game and in2009 the Moose Jaw Miller Express handed the Cardinals a 19 inning loss.
The Cardinals continued playing very good baseball, showing more and more their excellent defence and pitching. The first dent in the armour arrived on the 14th of June when Blair Walters was called back to complete some summer school classes in order to be eligible for his brand new scholarship at the University of Hawaii Manoa Rainbows. Congratulations to Blair, however, a huge loss to the Cardinal roster.
One player does not make a whole team. In spite of Blair’s departure, the Cardinals continued to play at least 50/50 baseball with one good 6 game winning streak coming from June 14th to June 20th.
July 10th brought more devastating news. Jake Sylvester and Josh Simms, both players for Ed Sprague at the University of the Pacific were called home to address eligibility issues through summer school. Injuries started taking their toll as Levi Rhoades, J.J. Leaper, Brandon Dhue, Jarrod Ivan and Garret Brown suffered with near season ending problems. Even the indestructible Will Thorp was suffering from bumps and bruises.
From July 20th to July 28th the Cardinals saw 3 more player departures for family health reasons; Mark Magdaleno, Andrew Haacke and Dillon Wilson.
Local LHP Tyson Nesbitt, along with all the other remaining Cardinal players put on a great battle to catch a playoff spot.
The Cardinals entered the playoffs vs. The Swift Current Indians in Swift Current splitting the first two games. The series reverted back to Yorkton, and the Cardinals lack of depth resulted in two fairly lopsided losses, sending Swift Current to the next round.
Even with all the player injuries and departures, the Cardinals remained respectable in their on-field competitiveness throughout the season. The Yorkton fans continued to come out and enjoy excellent Collegiate Baseball. Although all the fans and the Cardinal organization as a whole, expected a much better end result to the 2009 season, there were many baseball positives for our team, organization and City. The goals of future ballpark development are in place.