The baseball season may now be over, but a local senior team ended it on top.The Marysburg Royals are the Saskatoon Senior Baseball League champions for 2010.The Royals claimed the championship over the Saskatoon Stallions three games to one in a best-of-five series played last week. The teams split the first two games of the series, then faced each other in an evening doubleheader in Saskatoon on August 23 in Games 3 and 4. It was a nasty night, weather-wise, reported Curtis Strueby, a member of the Royals. "Cold and windy and actually probably the ugliest weather we played in all year," he said. The first game saw Marysburg jump out to a 10-0 lead after the first inning. "We came out flying, belting out seven hits in the first inning," Strueby said. The Stallions made a couple errors and the Royals made them pay a high price for them. However, as the game went on, things got a little interesting. Russ Nielson threw six innings for the Royals and battled through the ugly weather to give the Royals a chance to win. The Stallions scored a few runs here and there and actually got to within four runs, but Marysburg scored a few more, and with Royals Jesse Johb and Mathew Strueby finishing the game on the mound, the Royals hung onto the 14-9 victory. "It was an ugly win, but I guess it was good enough," Strueby noted. The Royals actually made four errors in the contest and struggled offensively after that first inning for the second game in a row. "Everyone in the lineup had at least one hit so we all contributed offensively, just not a lot after the first inning," Strueby said. "But our defense was ugly for the second game in a row."Still, the team put another check in the win column in the series, and got set to play Game 4.In what turned out to be the final game in the series, the Royals again jumped out to a big lead, scoring four runs on four hits in the first inning.Their offense was on in this game, pounding out eight more hits after that, and ending up with 12 in the game. "Our pitching was outstanding as Brett Yarskie continued his strong season on the mound for us, throwing a three-hitter and only giving up one run," Strueby said. Marysburg's defense was also really sharp in the final game, not making a single error. The Royals ended up winning the game by a huge 12-1 margin."I think we sensed we had them on the ropes and we wanted to end the series in four badly," Strueby said. "We played our best game of the series in game 4."In the end, Strueby said he believes his team just had a lot more pitching depth than the Stallions."When you get in a series that is played in a short period of time like that, pitching is vital," he said. "We actually had a couple pitchers ready to go for game 5, if necessary, and their pitching staff was really depleted. So hats off to our pitchers for pitching good solid games in that ugly weather."The SSBL awards will be handed out at the league wind-up event on Friday, September 10.This was the Marysburg Royals' 92nd consecutive season, and it was an extremely good one for the team. The Royals won the Father's Day Tournament in Saskatoon, finished in second place in league play during the regular season, won the SSBL title, and ended up third at the Senior AA Provincials in Regina. "We won a lot this year and it was really satisfying," Strueby said. "We still want to win that elusive provincial title, but we can be proud of the way we played there, too."Unusually, the Royals did not pick up any players for the provincial tournament this year. "We went with our own guys. All the other teams there, with the exception of Muenster, did have pickups," Strueby said, adding that "we can be extremely proud because we did it with our guys."Every single member of the team contributed to their success this past season, he said. "We have a great group of guys that take pride in representing Marysburg and we have a lot of fun playing the game we love for the Marysburg Royals."
