{"id":17254,"date":"2026-08-08T14:50:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/?p=17254"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:50:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:50:04","slug":"big-crowd-for-cats-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/2026\/08\/08\/big-crowd-for-cats-finale\/","title":{"rendered":"BIG CROWD FOR CATS FINALE"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>A sold out crowd of 3,031 took in the Thunder Bay Border Cats final home of the regular season on Thursday night at Port Arthur Stadium, which included a spectacular post-game fireworks show.\u00a0 On the scoreboard, the Rochester Honkers rallied to upend the Border Cats 7-6 to earn a split of the two-game series.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Cats took an early lead in the bottom of the first inning when Alex Kean (UNC at Asheville) homered over the left field wall, a two-run shot, for his third round tripper of the season. Bennett Crafton (Bradley University) singled to lead off the third inning to extend his hitting streak to 17 games, and his on-base streak to 21 games. The Cats scored one run in the inning on bases loaded walk, and upped their lead to 6-0 thanks to a three-run fourth.\u00a0 Stevie Waters (University of British Columbia) cracked a two-run double and scored on a Kean infield single. Kean finished the night with three hits and three runs batted in, while Waters, Jesus Vasquez (University of Hawaii), and Ayden Hadley (Northwest Missouri St. University) all had a pair of hits.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Braden Gluth (North Dakota State University) turned in a solid performance on the mound in the final start of his Northwoods League career.\u00a0 The senior righthander from Santa Teresa, NM., pitched six innings, allowing just three hits and one run, with five strikeouts.\u00a0 However, a depleted Border Cats bullpen couldn&#8217;t hold the lead as the Honkers scored six times in the top of the ninth, including a game tying grand slam off the bat of Seth Thompson (Creighton University).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Despite having seven games wiped off their home schedule, six due to poor air quality and one by a rainout, the Border Cats drew 34,301 fans during the 75th anniversary season of Port Arthur Stadium, an average of 1,183 per game. That placed Thunder Bay 13th overall out of 25 Northwoods League teams in attendance<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sold out crowd of 3,031 took in the Thunder Bay Border Cats final home of the regular season on  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":17255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,41,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-permanentslider","category-team-news","category-update-ticker"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.5 (Yoast SEO v26.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>BIG CROWD FOR CATS FINALE - Thunder Bay Border Cats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/2026\/08\/08\/big-crowd-for-cats-finale\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BIG CROWD FOR CATS FINALE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A sold out crowd of 3,031 took in the Thunder Bay Border Cats final home of the regular season on [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/2026\/08\/08\/big-crowd-for-cats-finale\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thunder Bay Border Cats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-08T18:50:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/assets.northwoodsleague.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/08\/Aug-8-website.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2121\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dylanw\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"dylanw\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/2026\/08\/08\/big-crowd-for-cats-finale\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/northwoodsleague.com\/thunder-bay-border-cats\/2026\/08\/08\/big-crowd-for-cats-finale\/\",\"name\":\"BIG CROWD FOR CATS FINALE - 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