Border Cats come out swinging for start of 2024 Northwoods League season
CBC
Thunder Bay's baseball fans are in for a big weekend.
The Thunder Bay Border Cats are scheduled to play their home opener on Friday at Port Arthur Stadium, hosting the Minnesota Mud Puppies.
Not only will the game be the first chance for Thunder Bay fans to see this year's Cats roster in person, but it's also the start of a six-game homestand that will also see the Cats face the Eau Claire Express and Duluth Huskies.
Field manager J.M. Kelly is back for his second season with the Border Cats and has high hopes for this year's team.
"I know that we'll be more talented than last year," he said. "If we don't win this year, it's not going to be because we weren't talented.
"It's going to be hard to sit there and say, when you look at us on paper, that we're not going to be successful," Kelly said. "I think we've got the team put together to win a lot of games this year."
Kelly said he wanted to see more offense out of this year's team when compared to last year's.
"I think the arms were really, really good last year," Kelly said. "They gave us a chance to win every game we were in, almost. I mean, probably 95 per cent of the games, our arms kept us in it."
"We just didn't score enough, and so we really tried to go after some experience," Kelly said. "We had a lot of young guys last year. We had a lot of guys that didn't play a lot where they were at."
"The majority of these guys you're going to see this year played almost every day at the schools they were at. So we'll have a lot more experience offensively, and I think that's going to show when we start playing."
One of this year's returning players is Thunder Bay-born pitcher Jack Pineau, who plays college baseball at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
"We have a lot more Canadians this year, a lot more familiar faces," Pineau said. "I think the fans will like that."
"I know quite a few of these guys and we've got some players here this year," he said. "I think we're going to be really good again, and hopefully we can stay healthy so guys don't have to leave, and be good the entire season."
The Cats finished the first half of the 2023 season in second place in the league's Great Plains East division, but fell off in the second half, finishing in last place.
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