The biggest moments are reserved for the biggest stages, and on Saturday night that moment arrived for Saskatoon Berries slugger Carter Beck in a do-or-die contest against the Moose Jaw Miller Express.
Staring down a full-count in extra innings with the bases loaded, one swing of the bat etched Beck’s name in WCBL history.
He delivered a series-clinching grand slam past the four-hour mark of Game 3 of the WCBL East semi-finals — a walk-off hit that kept the Berries alive in their hunt for a league championship.
“That’s number one, no doubt,” Beck said of his career-defining moment. “That might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Bases loaded, Game 3, tied game, one out and you get to a full-count on top of it. You might not get that chance ever again and sure enough, I was able to get the right outcome out of it. So that was really cool.”
The Carnduff, Sask, product launched his offering over the wall in right field, giving the Berries a 16-12 victory to win the best-of-three series two games to one.
Beck later said he felt the power of the swing in his bones and knew he’d clear the outfield fence the moment his bat made contact with the ball.
“I knew that was one of the farthest home runs I’ve ever hit as soon as I hit it,” Beck said. “I got every single stitch of that ball. I didn’t get to watch it go because I was too busy celebrating, but I sure knew it was gone.”
Beck’s grand slam in the bottom of the 10th inning gave the Berries more than their most iconic moment since entering the WCBL as a franchise just over a year ago. It also put a ribbon on one of the most chaotic playoff games the league has ever seen —a game that included four lead changes and saw the Berries on the ropes of elimination after blowing a seven-run lead in the eighth inning.
“Not that crazy,” said Joe Carnahan when asked if he’d ever coached a game like Saturday’s. “You got to give [Moose Jaw] credit, they just kept playing and battling. We were throwing high-leverage guys in there at them the whole game. We just couldn’t turn the faucet off that one inning.”
Moose Jaw got out to an early 3-0 lead following a series of hits and Saskatoon throwing errors in the second inning, a lead which held until the fourth inning.
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Berries catcher Bailyn Sorensen followed up a sacrifice-fly by outfielder Ethan Murdoch to knot the score at 3-3.
Saskatoon’s first lead of the night came in the fifth inning following another home run, this time by Murdoch, to make it a 5-3 game. Then, the Berries broke the game open in the sixth inning with five more runs.
Entering the top of the eighth inning trailing 10-3, the Miller Express came back to life with one of the biggest single-season comebacks in WCBL history: nine runs, including an Eduardo Saenz three-run home run to re-take the lead over a shell-shocked Berries squad.
That lead held until the bottom of the ninth inning when Saskatoon, trailing 12-10, got season-saving RBIs from Ethan Menard and Mason Roell to force extra innings.
“That’s what it takes especially in the playoffs,” Murdoch said. “When one bad inning can end your season, you got to be able to bounce back. It takes good people in the dugout, just good leaders that are going to pick each other up.”
Speaking after the game, Miller Express head coach Eric Marriott said it’s a devastating loss for his group after mounting their eighth inning comeback and then seeing their season come to a close in extra innings.
But he added there’s a lot of pride in the way they fought all the way back to have a shot at staying alive.
“We had the youngest roster in the whole league this year in the WCBL,” Marriott said. “Last year, we had the oldest roster in the league, so there’s a lot of turnaround and they fought. Basically, I just told them they should be proud of themselves and their chins should be up.
“We took the best team in the league to the last out.”
The Berries will have little time to celebrate the Game 3 victory however. Their second round series against the Regina Red Sox begins at Cairns Field on Sunday night.
Regina has been idle since Thursday night after sweeping the Medicine Hat Mavericks with a 13-7 victory at Currie Field in Game 2 of their East semi-final series.
According to Red Sox head coach Rye Pothakos, it will be important for his team to weather the same ups and downs that the Berries experienced with a spot in the WCBL championship series on the line.
“Just keeping them level, it’s the way that I like to approach baseball in general,” Pothakos said on Thursday. “Emotions are good, but you got to keep it level. Not too many highs, not too many lows. You got to take each game at a time, respect your opponent and we’ve got to work hard.”
Not only will the Berries have to come down from the jubilation of Saturday night’s game in time for Game 1 against the Red Sox, they’ll have to manage their pitching staff after using eight different arms in the win over Moose Jaw.
Carnahan isn’t overly concerned, given the team’s depth in their bullpen all season long. “We did go through a lot of arms and it was just that situation of a do-or-die game… We have a lot of arms, we got 18 or 19 arms and all quality arms. We got a lot of guys ready to go for [Sunday].
An encore to Saturday’s heroics will be hard to come by for Beck, who mentioned wanting to ride the hot bat that allowed him to seal the first round series for Saskatoon.
“I don’t know if I’ll get much bigger of a moment than that,” Beck said. “Hopefully, it can be just a step on this crazy run we’re going on… We got four more games hopefully to make that happen.”
The Berries and Red Sox will clash for the first game of the WCBL East final on Sunday at 6 p.m. with the series shifting to Regina on Monday for Game 2.
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