Tomasetta leads Redbirds

BY MICHAEL PIASETZKI



Ask observers of the recently held Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association championship tournament in Nepean, Ont, who contributed most to the McGill Redbirds’ historic victory and the answer would be simple.

Each and every player and coach did. Perhaps none were bigger though, than the one turned in by Kirkland resident Michael Tomasetta. The 21-year-old marketing sophomore, who learned his ball in the Lakeshore Baseball Association before playing for Les Ailes du Québec, a hand-picked club featuring the top provincial under-18 players, and then the Quebec Junior Elite LaSalle Cardinals and Longueuil Ducs, had a couple of days he will probably remember the rest of his life. As a pitcher, he won both starts at the two-day round-robin event, shortened from three days due to rain and cold. That included a six-inning snow/rain-shortened one-hit gem in the Oct. 22 final in which he struck out eight batters as the Redbirds blanked the Dalhousie Tigers 8-0. At the plate, he smacked two home runs in the tourney, including a key 350-foot two-run shot in the fourth inning of the final to give his team a 2-0 lead, one they never relinquished. For helping lead the Redbirds to its first-ever Canadian national title — the university’s first national championship since the men’s soccer team won in 1997 — he was named tournament Most Valuable Player as well as McGill and Quebec University Male Athlete of the Week.

“It was freezing on the day of the final,� said Tomasetta, a right-handed hurler, catcher and designated hitter who last month also helped the Ducs capture a league championship. “Every time you took off your sweatshirt your hands began to get numb. Once I started my bullpen work though, my arm started to fell better than it had in a while. My curve ball was working very well all game, but the guys came through in terrible conditions with some fine defence and that’s what counts.�

For a couple of days following the tournament, it was thought Tomasetta had actually tossed a no-hitter in the final. However, it was later learned through an update on the association Web site that it had been taken away from him. A ground ball in the third inning that got through shortstop Alex Day, originally called an error was switched to a hit.

“Alex would have certainly taken an error to give his pitcher a no-hitter,� said veteran Redbirds manager Ernie D’Alessandro, a Pointe Claire resident who became the first McGill head coach since Pat Raimondo to lead a varsity club to the ultimate achievement. “We had it marked as an error, but the scorer decided the field conditions were awful and couldn’t blame the shortstop.�

Besides Tomasetta and D’Alessandro, another West Islander left his mark on the tournament win — and title game in particular — this time though, through a keen eye. Jason Starr, a former Redbird player who served as defensive and first base coach under D’Alessandro, noticed that a Tigers player who had hit a ball into the centre field gap for what looked like a surefire double had failed to touch the bag at first. He quickly mentioned it to D’Alessandro, who yelled to his players on the field to relay the ball to first, and the player was called out.

“For some reason, I’ve always watched to see if runners touch the base,� said Starr, who led his bantam AA Lac St. Louis Cardinals to a Montreal Metropolitan Baseball league regular season championship this year and was part of head coach Dan Nathan’s provincial-winning Lac St. Louis bantam team this past summer as well. “This time it paid off. But you have no idea how great winning the title felt. I played for this team for four years, and we always came up short in the playoffs. Now, thanks to completely unselfish guys like Michael Tomasetta and his teammates, we finally did it. It was fantastic.�