THUNDER BAY – It was worth the nearly four-year wait.
The Port Arthur Stadium stands were jam packed on Tuesday night and the Thunder Bay Border Cats delivered, jumping out to a 6-0 lead and snapped a three-game losing streak with a 6-3 win over the visiting Duluth Huskies in their first season opener since 2019.
Thank reliever Kannon Carr for shutting down a Huskies team bent on a comeback, a trait that plagued the Border Cats at the end of their season-opening road trip, the bullpen costing the team a pair of wins in Waterloo.
Carr barely gave the Duluth hitters a chance, striking out nine in 3.2 innings of work, entering the game in the sixth with one out and the bases loaded and escaping the jam with back-to-back strikeouts, setting down the Huskies Joe Vos and Michael Hallquist to end the threat.
“I’m there to get people out of jams. That’s why I come out of the pen and don’t start, I guess,” said Carr, a freshman at Jefferson College in his home state.
“My mindset going in was to get these next two guys out, don’t let anyone score and that’s what happened, I got my boys back in the dugout.”
Carr is young, but electric said Cats leftfielder Tyler Kehoe, who was 1-for-3 at the plate with a two-run single in the third.
“When that kid comes out there, he competes every inning and you can’t ask for much more from him. He did his job and we’re very thankful for that one,” said Kehoe, a redshirt junior at the University of South Alabama.
Thunder Bay’s Jack Pineau got the start, and was able to get out of jams in the first and second, including a bases-loaded diving stab by centrefielder Logan Johnston in inning No. 2 that appeared to swing the momentum the Border Cats way.
Dalton Mullins got the ball rolling in the bottom of the second, singling home Kehoe for the first run of the night against Duluth starter Colin Linder. Easton Culp followed with a slow infield roller that plated Peter Fusek from third and Johnstone hit into a fielders choice that allowed Mullins to cross the plate, Thunder Bay taking a 3-0 lead to the delight of the 2,381 in attendance.
Linder was tagged for all six runs, giving up four hits and four walks before departing with one out in the fourth, giving way to Chas Melvin IV, who settled things down, pitching 3.2 scoreless innings to keep the Huskies within reach. The Cats managed just one more hit after Linder left the game.
After Pineau shut the Huskies down in the third, the Border Cats added three more in their half of the inning, Kehoe’s two-run single the key blow.
Pineau, making his second start of the season, left with one out and two on in the fifth, both runners scoring after reliever Griffin Catto a pair of runs on a Hallquist single.
The right-handed starter allowed five hits and four walks striking out two before giving way to the bullpen.
The Cats pitchers stranded 16 runners on the night, which is a little concerning to manager J.M. Kelly, but nothing he plans to dwell upon.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to making pitches in big situations. Our guys did a really good job knowing they could go into any situation and attack somebody with whatever they wanted,” Kelly said, his team improving to 3-4, lifting them out of the Great Plains East basement and into a fourth-place tie with the Huskies.
Thunder Bay and Duluth match up again on Wednesday night for Game 2 of their four-game series.
