Seven at-bats. Seven hits. Three of them over the fence. Justin did everything but sell tickets at the gate Wednesday, and the Burketon Beavers beat the Courtice Cows 8-5 in a four-inning playoff game that the Cows will spend the winter describing as "close."

It wasn't close. It was 4-0 Beavers before Courtice remembered which end of the bat to hold. The Cows posted zeroes in the first and second, which is a bold strategy in a game scheduled for four, and then put up four in the third as though the league grades on effort. One more in the fourth. Eight-five.

"I just tried to put the ball in play," said Justin, who in fact put the ball in several neighbouring postal codes and whose seven-for-seven line makes the sentence a lie on arrival.

Here is the part that will enrage the Courtice faithful, all four of them: the Cows hit fine. Derek went 4-for-7. Lee went 4-for-7 with a homer. That's two-thirds of a lineup doing real work. John went 2-for-7 with a strikeout, which in this league counts as a slump and a scandal. The Cows had bats. They did not have innings one and two, and the playoffs are unsentimental about that.

"We were right there the whole way," said John, who was not, and whose own line reads like a man who arrived in the third inning with the rest of them.

Burketon got 4-for-7 with a homer from Beau and 3-for-7 from Chad, which on any other night is the story. Not this night. This night belonged to one guy and a bat that apparently has a tracking device in it.

The Beavers came in having lost two straight and having been strafed 17-6 by the Donkeys a week ago. Nobody in Burketon wants to talk about that. They'd rather talk about Justin, and honestly, fair enough.

The Cows beat these same Beavers 5-4 on the last day of September. Different month. Different game. Different planet.

Beavers are off to the finals, Cows will battle it out with the Turkeys for 3rd place.