After beating Orillia, Aurora Jays take on Bolton in finals

September 4, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Jeff Doner

With a penchant for doing things the hard way lately, the Aurora Blue Jays senior men’s baseball team just barely came out on the winning end of their semi-final series against the Orillia Majors last week.

After being down 2 – 0 going into the sixth inning of a must-win game five, the Jays rallied for a 5 – 2 win, solidifying their spot in the finals beginning Saturday.

Veteran hurler Ian Milne pitched well for the Jays, keeping things close enough to give his team the opportunity to come back.

“It was a full-on team effort there the other night,” said the Jays’ dependable shortstop Chris Bloom. “We’ve had a few guys hurt in the last little while, so we’re playing short-staffed with [catcher Chris Fafalios] going back to school and [outfielder Stephen] Vallee out with injury and a couple of other guys are grinding it out through injuries.”

Bloom gave credit to the Majors for sticking in the series and pushing his team to the brink.

“They wouldn’t just go away. In games three and four, we would take the lead and they would just battle right back, there was really no quit in them,” he said.

“We were concerned when we were down by a couple runs, but we’ve got a few of the older guys like Ryan Lewis and Ian Milne that kind of light a fire under everyone and get us going. It was good to have those guys to rile everyone up so that we could put something together and score a couple runs late in the game and eventually put a few insurance runs up.”

The Jays will be facing a much different monster in the Bolton Brewers, who hold the league title from last season.
Bloom said the Jays are good enough to keep pace and know what they have to do to win.

“We’ve just got to do what we do best, which is play strong defensively. Bolton can hit really hard right up and down the lineup, there’s not very many holes there and they can pitch well, so we’ve got to play really sound defence and keep them off the board as much as possible. We’ve also had a really good stretch of starting pitching from Milne and Brent Owen. Our lineup can stick with them and our pitchers can throw with them.”
Jays catcher Rob Wilson agreed with Bloom and added that his team is capable of besting the league-leading Brewers.

“We know Bolton is going to be a very competitive series,” he said. “We have a great rivalry with them that extends over the last several seasons. While they are defending champions, I feel like if any team can knock them off, it’s us.”

To catch some of the action, the Championship schedule is as follows: Game 1 – Aurora on Sept. 7 at 2:00 p.m., Game 2 – Bolton on Sept 8. at 1:00 p.m., Game 3 – Bolton on Sept. 12 at 7:30 p.m., Game 4 – Aurora on Sept. 15 at 2:00 p.m., Game 5 – Bolton on Sept. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Game 6 – Aurora on Sept. 21 at 2:00 p.m., Game 7 – Bolton on Sept. 22 at 1:00 p.m.

For more information visit www.ndbl.ca