COVID forces Dust Devils to cancel more Tri-Cities games

The Tri-City Dust Devils announced Thursday that the remaining home games this week are canceled due to Covid-19.

The team lost its final two games on its road trip last week in Spokane.

And because of the contact tracing and testing needed — the players spend a lot of time together — the first two games of this week’s home stand against Hillsboro also were postponed.

Now the rest of the home stand — games Sept. 9-12 — is finished as contact tracing and testing continues.

This was to be the final home games of the 2021 High-A West season for Tri-Cities. But the Dust Devils will play the Eugene Emeralds for six games starting next Tuesday at Gesa Stadium.

The University of Oregon had asked the Emeralds to be out of the campus ballpark for the final week, and the Dust Devils will host the series — although Eugene will be the home team.

Ernie Hockaday

Tri-Cities baseball lost another one of its own last week.

Ernie Hockaday was one of the numerous minor league ballplayers who came to play in the Tri-Cities, and then decided to settle down here. Hockaday, 94, died Sept. 2.

Hockaday was a member of the 1953 and 1954 Tri-City Braves team that played their Western International League games at Sanders Field in Kennewick.

Ernie was an outfielder for the Braves, playing in 96 games for the 1953 Braves team that struggled to a 59-77 record under manager Edo Vanni. But Hockaday had a respectable .261 batting average that season.

In 1954, he only played in 12 games before his career ended.

In five seasons in the minors, Hockaday played in the outfield for 329 games, with teams like the Willows Cardinals, Reno Silver Sox, Fresno Cardinals, Las Vegas Wranglers, and finally Tri-City.

He even pitched some for Las Vegas.

After baseball, Hockaday got married and raised a family in Pasco.

During summers in college in the early 1980s, I worked at Boise Cascade in Wallula, and Hockaday was a forklift driver who flew around the plant floor. Even then, I knew who he was: part of the early groups of teams that started a tradition in the Tri-Cities with professional minor league baseball.

His funeral service is at 11 a.m. Sept 10 at Mueller’s Desert Lawn Cemetery on Union Street in Kennewick.

Prep football

Here is a very quick look at the remaining Week 2 high school football games this Friday (all kickoffs at 7 p.m. unless noted otherwise):

▪ Columbia-Burbank (1-0) at Kiona-Benton (1-0): Coyotes head coach Trevor Curtis has found a new QB in junior Michael Linke, but can Burbank defense stop the host Bears huge offensive line and running back Camron Villarreal in this non-league contest?

▪ Connell (0-1) at Deer Park (0-1): Wayne Riner, visiting Eagles head coach, doesn’t mind opening the season with tough, non-league games. Son Carson Riner, at running back, intends to right the ship after Connell lost a tough road opener last week at Othello.

▪ Hermiston (0-1) at Sunnyside (1-0): Who has more weapons? Visiting Bulldogs boast quarterback Chase Elliott, who is hard to tackle. But host Grizzlies have a 1-2 punch in running back Myles Newhouse and quarterback Logan Rodriguez.

▪ Liberty Christian (0-1) at Tekoa-Rosalia (0-0): Although both teams play in the same District 9 8-man league, this contest is a non-district counter. Host T-R must find a way to slow visiting Patriots’ high-powered offense led by quarterback Keegan Bishop.

▪ North Central (0-0) at Grandview (1-0): Greater Spokane League team comes to the Yakima Valley to try to stop Greyhounds and running back Chaco Gomez, who scored two TDS last week in a win on the road at Wahluke.

▪ Othello (1-0) at Royal (1-0): Visiting Huskies coach Roger Hoell is also a proponent of loading up the non-league schedule to make a team better late in the season. Huskies pulled out a late win last week against Connell. But host Knights are also loaded again, with Avery Ellis and the Bergeson twins — Derek and Luke — picking up the slack from recent graduation losses for head coach Wiley Allred.

▪ Richland (1-0) at Hanford (0-1), Fran Rish Stadium: The battle for city of Richland bragging rights commences once again. Visiting Bombers coming off a shutout win over Pasco, and Elijah Rodriguez continues to look good on both sides of the ball for Richland.

▪ Southridge (1-0) at Kennewick (1-0), Lampson Stadium: Suns opened the Matt Johnson era with a win last week against Davis. But Johnson, Southridge’s first-year head coach, must prepare for something bigger than Davis: the host Lions are one of the top Class 3A teams in the state, led by Myles Mayovsky, Ayden Knapik and Bronson Childs.

▪ Touchet (0-0) at St. John-Endicott-LaCrosse (0-1): The visiting Indians finally get their season started with this road game against a District 9 opponent. Wont’s count in the standings though. The two teams meet later in the season for the district game.

▪ Walla Walla (0-1) at Pasco (0-1), Edgar Brown Stadium: Visiting Blue Devils, led by two-way standout Jake Humphrey, gave Kennewick a tussle last week. Host Bulldogs must bounce back after shutout loss at Richland last week.

▪ Warden (1-0) at College Place (1-0): Both teams won big blowout games last week; Class 2B Warden routed White Swan 52-8, while Class 1A College Place pound Mac-Hi of Milton-Freewater 54-7.

▪ Zillah (1-0) at Prosser (0-1), Fiker Stadium: Visiting Leopards — which beat Pullman 34-0 last week on the strength of Braydon Flood’s 195 yards rushing — step up a classification to take on the always tough Mustangs. Prosser lost last week to a tough Class 4A Sunnyside team, but Mustangs QB Kaiden Rivera continues to shine.