The Canadians came into Saturday night with all of the momentum going their way. A must-win comeback in the series against Eugene and a win in their first game in the Championship series on the road versus the Dust Devils saw them in position to take the Northwest pennant.  And the crowd of 5,076 at The Nat were well aware and showed their spirit bringing a whole new level of energy to the ballpark in the heart of Vancouver.

Blake McFarland shone with 3 innings of shutout, two hit baseball before Chris Schaeffer opened the scoring for the C’s with a homerun over the left field wall. The Canadians would tack on one more run after a Shane Opitz double and a Jonathon Berti sac-fly provided some breathing room.

But it wouldn’t last. Tri-City would strike back in the top of the 4th with three runs, knocking McFarland from the game and bringing Bluefield callup Tyler Ybarra to the mound in relief. Unfortunate catching errors and a wild pitch from Ybarra rattled the battery and when the dust had settled on the sixth inning, Tri-City had extended their lead to 5-2.

Vancouver would battle back with a run in the 7th setting the stage for the best kind of baseball drama in the 9th when the C’s would load the bases with only one out. But, on this night, it just wasn’t meant to be as a Jon Berti ground ball that, to all eyes in the stadium thought he had beat out at first, was denied by umpire Travis Eggerts, completing a dubious 6-4 double play and snuffing out the C’s comeback bid.

With tomorrow’s game deciding who will own the top prize in this year’s Northwest League season, the C’s will send Jesse Hernandez to the mound with the full weight of the Canadians bullpen anchor the team.  Hernandez shutout the Dust Devils in their last meeting and, more recently, kept the Emeralds to one run and four hits over 4 innings on Tuesday in Eugene.  The Dust Devils will counter with 2009 15th round draft pick Tyler Gagnon.  Be sure to tune into Rob Fai who will have all the play-by-play action live from Scotiabank Field at Nat Bailey Stadium at 1:05 pm PST on canadiansbaseball.com and The Team 1410.