Miramichi Sports: No Medal, But Ironmen Could Host Again in 2 Years

MIRAMICHI - If you enjoyed the 2011 Baseball Canada Senior Men Championships this past weekend and can't wait for it come back again, well how does 2013, 2014 and 2015 sound to you?

Nothing is official, and there are no guarantees, and the discussions are in the very early stages, but the Chatham O'Donaghues Ironmen have expressed an interest in hosting the tournament for several years in a row.

“We have a letter of intent in to Baseball Canada for that but we have to follow that up with our actual package,” Chatham General Manager Daryl Matthew said Monday.

“Baseball Canada sometimes have trouble with moving these tournaments around. You get to a particular place and you have to do the scouting of the field and they have to see what the committees are like and the fan support is really big in it,” Matthews said. “They looked for somebody that might take that task on, it's a nice task, for a couple of years running, because it saves them a lot of grief."

While the Ironmen work on hosting future nationals, the 2011 edition of the tournament continued Monday after being delayed a day due to Tropical Storm Irene. The host team, who went 3-1 in the preliminary rounds, played their provincial rivals, the Fredericton Royals for bronze, losing 11-3.

In front of another crowd of more than 2,000 fans at Ironmen Field, the Royals scored four unearned runs and five runs total to jump out to the early lead in the bottom of the first. The Ironmen would cut the lead in the second when Alan Hilchie singled to score Jon Saunders. Ryan Barry would later smack a double in the third to score Nick Hardy and Tom Burns to run the score to 5-3.

But in the fourth Dave Barr would hit a solo home run off Chatham starter Derek Wilson and then in the sixth Barr would go yard again with a three run shot to make it 9-3, ending Wilson's night.

Barr would be named the player of the game.

Lefty Kevin Bowes would take over with no outs, but he wouldn't stop the bleeding completely and the Royals would score two runs before Chatham coach Greg Morris would go to his bullpen once again, bringing in Perry Deveaux to get them out of the inning with the score 11-3.

Earlier in the day the Windsor Stars beat the defending champion Burnaby Bulldogs 8-2 to capture the Canadian title.

Despite the home team ending up without a medal, the tournament was considered a tremendous success, with crowds of two to three thousands at Ironmen Field for host team games and crowds in the hundreds for other preliminary round games. Well more than a thousand fans turned out on the first night for the home run derby while stands at Waldo Henderson Memorial Field in Chatham Head, the other site for games, were packed as well.

Matthews said he has received universal praise for the event. In particular, players and fans from away were impressed with the crowds that packed the parks. He said that kind of support is not always found in other locations that have hosted the event.

"I've been to quite a number of these tournaments away from Ironmen Field and they don't get the fan support. Sometimes maybe the city's too big and there's no community connection to the particular team. I've been in Kamloops, beautiful stadium, we played them in a Saturday evening crossover and there may have been 400 people in the stands,” Matthews said.

“Who wants to play in front of an empty stadium or ball park? So these guys find it really special,” he added.

The Ironmen now return to their regularly schedule league playoff series. Game one is set for Thursday as they host the Charlottetown Islanders at 7:30 p.m. at Ironmen Field.

As for Matthews, he is just thankful for the support the team received during the tournament. Fans from all over the Miramichi area came out to cheer on the Ironmen, who, for a few days at least, became Miramichi's team.

“It's a whole community beyond the City of Miramichi and you can tell. I don't know if this community needed baseball, but it brought us together and it was really something,” he said.