NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks second baseman Brady Bean celebrates his home run in the Mavs' 14-7 win in Game 3 of their East finals series against the Moose Jaw Miller Express.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Mavericks captured the hearts of the city this summer as they turned the tides and were innings away from their fourth WCBL championship.
The Mavs’ run to Game 3 of the WCBL finals has been chosen by the Medicine Hat News as the top sports story of 2023.
They started the summer hovering around the .500 mark, picking up two wins here before dropping another two there. Things could have turned bleak in late June when then head coach Mark Goodman left the Mavs for a professional opportunity, leaving assistant and pitching coach Kevin Mitchell to step into the role, and the Mavs took a tumble for a four game losing streak and went winless at home for almost a month.
Then the all-star break hit and with Mitchell at the helm, sharing the mindset of being their best every day while having fun, the boys of summer caught fire.
The Mavs pulled off a 14-4 run to put themselves in second place of their division before sweeping the Regina Red Sox in two games, upsetting the Moose Jaw Miller Express for the East Division title before ultimately falling in Game 3 of the WCBL finals to the Okotoks Dawgs.
That playoff run included the 21 runs, 24 hits and a 3:40 Game 3 for the Mavs to overcome their demons from the year prior and win the East finals. An Okotoks 8-0 Game 1 win set up a win-or-die Game 2 for the Mavs who did not disappoint their 2,196 fans in attendance, jumping out to a big lead and ultimately winning 12-9. Game 3 of the finals provided all the entertainment needed for the season, with the Mavs’ completing a five-run comeback to tie the game before the Dawgs rattled off six unanswered runs to secure their second straight and league-leading seventh championship overall.
For Mitchell, that run to the playoffs and their sprint through the postseason was something he says he’ll never forget.
“From the start of that Regina series to the last game of the season on August 17, it was beautiful to watch,” Mitchell said. “It was incredible to be part of and I want to do it again. That’s the biggest thing, I want to get back to that spot. I want those guys to have that experience, play in situations like that.
“It’s good for them obviously as baseball players, and just as people, to be able to handle that kind of environment, and to be successful in it speaks volumes to someone’s character and the way that they handle themselves.”
It was Greg Morrison’s 15th season of owning the Mavs and he was able to make a return to the bench, taking over as assistant coach when Mitchell stepped up into the head coach position. Getting to watch every day from on the field, continue his role of throwing batting practice while further getting to know the players repressing his team, their run to the finals rekindled the competitive spirit in Morrison that was never lost but was ready to be torqued.
“Playoff baseball is just different, it’s almost like 10 times the experience you get when you play playoff baseball than a regular season game,” Morrison said. “There’s the business side of it, playoff baseball is good and it helps pay for the bus and everything else, but these players getting to experience that and then go back to their college and then come back here, that’s the stuff that excites me for those guys. It adds years to your life when you have playoff baseball and so I’m stoked to have those guys back.”
Both Morrison and Mitchell were tasked with summing up the season using one word, with the owner/general manager choosing ‘resiliency’ and Mitchell, tabbed the WCBL’s coach of the year and Mavs 2024 manager, going with ‘serendipitous.’
Mitchell says he had thought about a one-word summary since the season ending, choosing the word that means, “occurring or discovered by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
He says what may have looked like luck or happy chance to some was the Mavs working their way into their own breaks.
“In baseball there is luck involved, guys hit missiles right at somebody where if it’s three feet in another direction that means a bases-clearing double, or you get a call that goes your way or whatever,” Mitchell said. “So we definitely had our breaks and we earned those as well. If you were to quantify it all across the season, I’m sure for everybody it breaks out about even. Sometimes they feel bigger than others but serendipitous, it feels magical enough.
“I didn’t want magical to be the word because that’s cliche, (serendipitous) encapsulates the inevitable luck that comes along with baseball and also the joy I experienced throughout the summer.”
As they prepare for the summer of 2024 and running it back with some of the same players, both Mitchell and Morrison hope whatever word describes that season, has a ring to it. A championship ring that is.
