Jordan Stevenson, Nick MacPhail and their Charlottetown Islanders teammates were glad they made the 31-hour trip to Regina for Baseball Canada’s men’s championship.

After the craziest road trip imaginable, some sleep and four days of non-stop baseball, they won.

“We were debating if we could come or not,” said Stevenson, the winning pitcher, who allowed only three hits and didn’t let Quebec score until there were two outs in the seventh and final inning of an 8-1 championship victory Sunday night at Currie Field.

“We were lucky to even find those flights.”

Because an Air Canada flight attendants strike cancelled their original travel plans, the Islanders’ reworked itinerary started Tuesday evening with an overnight bus ride from Charlottetown to Boston, where the players scattered onto various flights to New York or Cincinnati or St. Paul before meeting again in Minneapolis for a flight to Saskatoon and another late-night bus ride to Regina.

“We got here about one or something in the morning on Thursday,” said Islanders first baseman MacPhail.

“We didn’t play til three in the afternoon, so we got a little sleep. There were thunderstorms, a tornado warning, too, so we were stuck at the airport for a little bit. Forever we’ll remember this.”

Bolstered by five pickups from the New Brunswick Senior Baseball League and representing New Brunswick, the Islanders went 3-1 through their round-robin schedule before eliminating Manitoba with an 11-1 quarterfinal victory on Saturday. They beat the host Regina Trappers 4-0 in a semifinal on Sunday.

“What a squad!” said Stevenson. “If you see us together you know we’re a tight-knit group. The offence we got here was unbelievable.

“This was the best game ever!”

New Brunswick scored three times in the first inning because Quebec starter Conor Angel threw only two strikes while walking three batters and hitting another. He was replaced by Felix Cote, who surrendered two run-scoring singles. Quebec outfielder Moises Perez-Infante, who wore a protective mask on his batting helmet, was playing after getting hit in the face by a pitch and breaking his nose one night earlier.

Stevenson didn’t allow a runner past first base until Quebec centre fielder Raphael Gladu led off the seventh with a bloop double.

“We put (Stevenson) in that position for a reason,” said MacPhail, who drew a bases-loaded walk to score his team’s first run, led off the fourth inning with a solo home run and singled in the sixth before scoring on a two-run blast by DH Josh Myers.

“He’s rode with this team for so many years. He wanted that, we trust him with the ball and he did not disappoint us.

“These guys won the last two championships. We’re a club team. I don’t know how many cities in Quebec have more than our whole population. It was definitely an upset, but it wasn’t an upset for us because we knew we were the best team together.”

There were 10 teams from across Canada divided into five-team pools for the event, including the host Regina Trappers and a Saskatchewan representative. Quebec advanced into the playoffs with a 2-2 round-robin record before an 11-2 quarterfinal victory over Alberta and a 6-2 win against Saskatchewan in a semifinal.

Quebec had beaten Saskatchewan in each of the last two national championships.

Saskatchewan won Sunday’s third-place game 13-3 over the Trappers.

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