August 4, 2019

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

A wrinkle has come out of left field to delay Jordan Castaldo's quest to win the Triple Crown in Ontario's Intercounty Baseball League.

The obstacle came about Saturday night when the Kitchener Panthers beat the Guelph Royals to clinch a tie for first place in the eight-team league, thus forcing a tiebreaker game between Kitchener and Castaldo's Barrie Baycats Aug. 6 to declare the winner of the top seed going into the playoffs.

The tiebreaker is deemed a regular-season game so it means that Castaldo's teammate Kevin Atkinson could still win the RBI title, thus depriving Castaldo of the Triple Crown. The Baycats finished their regular-season slate of 36 games Thursday and Castaldo had accumulated 47 RBI, compared to 46 for Atkinson. Now that a 37th game is needed, it will be interesting to see how Castaldo and Atkinson make out.

In regulation play, Castaldo had compiled a runaway .459 average and 15 homers.

There have been few Triple Crown winners in the league. Sean Reilly, currently with Guelph, is a two-time champion, first in 2015 and then again in 2017, with both wins coming while he was with Kitchener. Gary Borg won it in 1982 with Cambridge, Phil Turner turned the trick with St. Thomas in 1981 and Wilmer Fields took home the prize with Oshawa way back in 1955.