The Hastings Little League team is now two wins away from the pinnacle of Canadian baseball.
The club capped off round-robin play with a polished 14-4 win over Team Quebec Wednesday night, and is the lone entry in the seven-team tourney with an unblemished record through six outings.
The win now sets up a pivotal semifinal contest against the Team Alberta entry from Lethbridge on Friday afternoon. Hastings previously defeated Alberta 12-1 on Sunday.
“They’re a very well coached team and they play fundamental baseball,” Hasting manager Vito Bordignon told the Courier Thursday. “They don’t make a lot of mistakes, so we’re going to go out there and try to out-hit them and get some good pitching. Hopefully that’ll be a good recipe for a win.”
Wednesday’s victory was highlight by Nicola Barba’s six RBIs, a massive bounty that moves him into the tournament lead in that category with 21. He also leads all pitchers in strike outs with 21, and collected six of those on Wednesday through two innings’ worth of work.
Stefano Del Sassa was credited with the win on the mound, while Liam MacLean knocked one out of the park in the bottom of the second. Â
The Hastings crew found themselves behind 2-0 in the second inning, but exploded for seven runs in the bottom half of the inning, a comeback cued by MacLean’s third dinger of the tournament.
Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»went on to pour in four more runs in the third, two in the fourth and an insurance marker in the fifth.
“We know we that we’ve got the talent to come back any time,” Bordignon said. “It’s not like we feel defeated when we’re down by two runs. We’ve got the bats to manufacture runs pretty easily. Even though we were down, the kids had the confidence that the bats would come and that we’d eventually score some runs.”
Friday’s semifinal will be played at 3 p.m., though Bordignon wouldn’t name his starter ahead of the contest.
The other semifinal contest features Whalley taking on Team Quebec at 6 p.m.
The winner of those two games will play in the final, which slated for noon on Saturday.
All games are being played at Hastings Park.
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@JohnKurucz
