(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
  Kalian Sams homers for Québec in Play-Off opener
Nederlands
 POMONA, New York (USA) -
Kalian Sams contributed with a homerun in the 9-6 victory of Les Capitales de Québec on Wednesday-evening (September 5) in the opener of the best-of-five Play-Off against Rockland Boulders.
Game 2 will be played on Thursday.
In the other Play-Off of the CanAmLeague (short for Canadian American Association), Sussex County Miners won 5-1 against Les Aigles de Trois-Rivières, recording 16 basehits.
The first two games of the Rockland vs. Québec series are played at Palisades Credit Union Park in Pomona, a village which is located partly in the towns of Ramapo and Haverstraw in Rockland County, New York.
In the opener, Rockland opened with two runs in the second inning, but Québec answered with a 6-run rally in the top of the fourth inning to take a decisive lead.
Trailing 2-0, it was Kalian Sams who equaled the score.
In the fourth inning, Nick Van Stratten (who was 3-for-4 and batted in three runs) led off with a single and with one out, Sams homered to make it a 2-2 score.
Sams had struckout in his first at bat in the second inning.
...Kalian Sams...
...2-run homerun...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
With two outs, the Canadian squad added four more runs, which were all uearned.
First, TJ White singled, then Maxx Tissenbaum reached on an error.
Brad Antchak followed with a runscoring single to put Québec ahead, 3-2.
The bases then got loaded when Adam Ehrlich walked.
Moments later, a run was scored on a passed ball, then two more when Cuban Yordan Manduley reached on an error.
Québec scored another run in the sixth inning and two more in the eighth.
Trailing 6-2, Rockland got one run back in the bottom of the fourth.
In the sixth, Conor Bierfeldt homered for the home team, which scored two more runs in the bottom of the ninth, but ended up empty-handed.
In the remainder of the game, Sams flied out in the fifth and ninth inning.
In between, he lined out in the seventh inning.
In the regular season, Sussex County Miners finished in first place with a 63-38 record, followed by Les Capitales de Québec, which closed with a 48-44 record.
Rockland Boulders (54-48) ended up in third place and Les Aigles de Trois-Rivières (53-49) finished in fourth place of the 6-team league.
Last year, Québec swept Rockland in three games in the Championship Final.
In 2016, the two teams also faced each other in the Play-Offs.
Back then, Rockland won the series 3-2 to advance to the Final.
On Wednesday, Kalian Sams was one of the 24 players named to the roster of the Netherlands National Team for the upcoming first edition of the Super 6 Baseball Softball, which opens on September 18 in Hoofddorp (Netherlands).
Afterwards, the outfielder is eligible to play for L&D Amsterdam Pirates in the Holland Series against Curaçao Neptunus.
(September 5)
| 
