The Sask-Alta Baseball League will celebrate its 75th season Sunday with its semifinals and championship game taking place in Swift Current.
The top-seeded Swift Current Yard Goats will face the fourth-seeded Richmound Rockets in one semifinal, while the second-seeded Cabri River Rats meet the third-seeded Gull Lake Greyhounds in the other. The winners will advance to the league championship later that evening.
The championship game will be broadcast on Country 94.1’s Local Sports Live, with the pregame show beginning at 5:45 p.m. and first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m.
Yard Goats begin title defence
Swift Current enters the playoffs as the defending league champion after defeating Cabri 12-11 in extra innings in last year’s final to capture its first Sask-Alta title since 2017.
League president Eddie Gergely said while the Yard Goats and River Rats have been the league’s strongest teams this season, every club remaining has a chance to reach the final.
“There’s getting to be a bit of a rivalry between those teams; they’re probably the two teams to beat, but you just never know,” he said.
Swift Current finished well above .500 during the regular season, while Cabri posted a 6-6 record and both Gull Lake and Richmound finished 5-7.
“We’re down to five now; I would say the teams that are in it right now are quite strong,” Gergely said.
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League marks 75 seasons
Founded in 1951, the Sask-Alta Baseball League has featured at least 44 different teams over its history.
Richmound is the only franchise to have fielded a team in every season.
“It was just in the area around Fox Valley, Richmound, like Schuler, and Hilda, a couple small Alberta towns,” Gergely said. “We’ve really expanded; we’ve been northwest up to Oyen, Kindersley, Eston, all the way down to Climax now.”