Dale Schweyer Threw Every Pitch. The Erie All-Stars Upset the Tide
Dale Schweyer on the mound, Mikey Walker behind the plate, and an Erie Fastball League All-Star squad that nobody picked. Welcome to the Fisherville Classic semifinal.
By Hometown Sports Network // Fisherville, Ontario
There's a certain kind of game that fastball gives you that other sports don't.
It's low-scoring. It's quick. The innings move. The crowd is close to the action. And every single at-bat feels like it might decide the game, because in fastball, it usually does.
The semifinal of the Fisherville Classic between the host Townsend Tide and the Erie Fastball League All-Stars was that kind of game from the very first pitch.
Final score: 2-1, Erie.
Two runs, one run. Three runs total. And every single one of them mattered.
But the story you couldn't see on the scoreboard was this: the Erie squad nobody in the tournament had picked to win was riding a battery that wins national championships.
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The Fisherville Classic isn't a tournament you drive five hours to get to. It's right here. Haldimand County. The diamond your kid grew up on, or the diamond you grew up on yourself. There's a Team Canada player on the mound. There's a national champion catcher behind the plate. And the crowd that's watching them is the same crowd that watched them grow up.
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Erie went into this tournament as the underdogs.
Townsend Tide was the host. The other squads brought serious lineups. The chatter around Fisherville all weekend was about who would meet in the final, and the Erie Fastball League All-Stars weren't really part of the conversation.
What the rest of the tournament had underestimated was the battery.
Behind the plate, all weekend long, was Mikey Walker. Game after game, inning after inning, no breaks. On the mound, all weekend long, was Dale Schweyer. Every pitch of every game.
The same battery, by the way, that catches and pitches for the Toronto Jr Batmen, the reigning Canadian junior men's national champions. The same Dale Schweyer who got back a couple of months ago from representing Team Canada at the WBSC U23 World Championships in Colombia.
Two national champions running an entire weekend for an underdog squad in a Haldimand County tournament.
It worked.
The Tide drew first blood.
Top of the third inning. Tom Baker stepped into the box and ripped a ball into the gap in left-center field that rolled all the way to the fence. A stand-up triple. The kind of swing that wakes a dugout up.
A couple of batters later, Blair Bender came up and hit a ball so hard at the shortstop that the Erie infield never had a chance to make a play. Tom Baker scored from third. 1-0 Townsend.
A run on a triple and a hard-hit ball. That's fastball.
But Erie wasn't going anywhere. Not with Schweyer on the bump.
In the bottom of the fourth, Mikey Walker stepped into the batter's box and crushed a towering home run that brought everyone in the bleachers to their feet. Tie game. 1-1.
The catcher had been getting it done behind the plate all weekend. Now he was doing it with the bat too.
Then came the inning that decided the game.
Bottom of the fifth. Cole Haviland led off by ripping a ball that split the gap in center field for a double. A leadoff double in a 1-1 game is a problem for any pitcher to navigate.
A couple of batters later, Ben Kachinko reached on a fielding error by the Townsend defense. Havlin came around to score from second. 2-1 Erie.
It's the kind of run that doesn't show up in a box score the way it should. A double, a defensive miscue, a heads-up baserunner. Three small things that added up to the only run that mattered the rest of the way.
And from there, it was Schweyer's game to close.
In the top of the sixth, Erie's defense delivered a shutdown inning. Three up, three down. The kind of inning a winning team needs to throw down when the score is tight. The seventh wasn't enough for the Tide either. The Erie Fastball League All-Stars had their ticket punched to the championship final of the Fisherville Classic.
The team nobody picked. The battery from Toronto. The catcher who homered. The pitcher who closed it out.
DALE SCHWEYER, ERIE FASTBALL LEAGUE ALL-STARS Pitcher for the Toronto Batmen and member of the WBSC U23 Team Canada squad
"Down there [in Colombia] they love the sport so much. It's louder than anything you'll ever experience here. It was really cool. It's awesome to have this tournament. Haldimand County loves fastball and it's great to see good fastball back in Haldimand County consistently."
Talking to Dale Schweyer after the game was a reminder of something easy to forget when you're standing at a small-town diamond on a long weekend.
The fastball being played here, at this tournament, in this county, is at an extraordinary level.
Dale just got back from Colombia, where he represented Canada at the WBSC U23 World Championships. He pitches for the Toronto Jr Batmen, the reigning national champions, with another title in their sights this season. And he's standing on a Fisherville diamond, in his hometown, telling us how loud the crowds in South America get and how good it feels to be back playing in his own backyard.
That's the level of player Haldimand County draws to its diamonds.
When we asked him about the Jr Batmen and their outlook this season, his answer was short and confident.
"The aim is to get another national championship. We won it last year and we hope to repeat. They hit. They hit in bunches and you're never worried about not getting any runs."
The "they" he's talking about, by the way, includes the catcher who just homered behind him and caught every pitch he threw all weekend.
That's the kind of chemistry you can't fake. National championship battery, hometown tournament, underdog squad, 2-1 win.
The other voice we caught up with after the game was Kent Wardell of the Townsend Tide.
The Tide hadn't gotten the results they came into the weekend hoping for. A 2-1 semifinal loss in your own tournament, after a season that's still searching for its rhythm, isn't easy to walk away from. But Wardell didn't sugarcoat it, and he didn't make excuses either.
KENT WARDELL, TOWNSEND TIDE
"We have a lot of new faces this year, six or seven new guys we brought in. The atmosphere around the dugout has increased dramatically. Everyone's getting along. We're new all together, so we're finding our way, working our way through some hiccups."
He kept going.
"Not the results we wanted, obviously. But as for the tournament, we have great competition here. Every game's been a two, three run game. It's just been real competitive ball. Our pitchers threw well. Our bats didn't really come around the way we wanted to. But it's stuff to build on for the future."
That's a coach you want in your dugout. Not making excuses. Not blaming pitching. Not blaming hitting. Just calling it what it is, a young group of guys figuring it out together in the middle of a long season.
The Tide are back in action soon. According to Wardell, next up is Jarvis on Thursday night against the Saskatoon Jacks, then the Chiefs Challenge in Simcoe on Father's Day weekend.
Two pieces of Townsend Tide fastball coming up that every fan in Haldimand and Norfolk should get out to. Saskatoon coming to Jarvis. Then the Chiefs Challenge in your own backyard.
Here's the takeaway from a 2-1 game in Fisherville on a Sunday afternoon.
The team nobody picked won.
The host team lost at home.
The Toronto Jr Batmen battery caught every pitch and threw every inning of every game all weekend, and walked out of Fisherville with a championship final to play.
And a tournament that draws this level of competition? In Haldimand County? In 2026?
That's something to build on.
We'll be at Jarvis on Thursday. We'll be at the Chiefs Challenge on Father's Day. Mic in hand.
Got a game we should be covering? A player we should be talking to? Reach out at hometownsportsnetwork.ca. Let's keep telling these stories.
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