VANCOUVER, BC – We’ll start this one the way most commencement speeches begin: with a cliché quote from a long-dead luminary. It was Thomas Edison who once said, “Four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, the neglected opportunity.” The opportunities were plentiful Thursday night at The Nat, but all of them in the later innings were neglected in a 7-6, 12-inning loss for the Vancouver Canadians at the hands of the Tri-City Dust Devils (Angels).

The nitty gritty: Vancouver left 11 men on base in the final four innings – including two separate occasions where the winning run was at third with no outs – and went six-for-22 with runners in scoring position all told while watching Tri-City score the eventual winning run without a base hit in the top of the twelfth. What’s worse, the Dust Devils didn’t record a hit from the beginning of the seventh until the final out yet still managed to steal a win from the C’s.

19 Blue Jays prospect Yosver Zulueta made his much-anticipated High-A debut and was terrific. The Cuban-born right hander allowed two unearned runs on three hits with one walk and eight strikeouts over five innings of work. He left the game with the Canadians leading 4-2 heading into the sixth before the Dust Devils broke through for four runs off reliever Alex Nolan.

Vancouver tied it with two runs in the home half of that inning then the teams traded zeroes from the seventh through the eleventh. Garrett Farmer logged two innings of scoreless relief and Jol Concepcion turned in his best relief outing of the year with two zeroes in the ninth and tenth before Vancouver was forced to bring in Mack Mueller (the starting right fielder) to pitch the eleventh. Mueller – who was an all-state pitcher in high school – struck out two batters in a perfect inning to strand the placed runner at second then saw Tri-City manufacture the eventual winning score with a sac bunt and a sacrifice fly to lead 7-6.

The Canadians got an infield single from Mueller to start the bottom of the eleventh to move the tying run to third and put the winning run on base, but they proceeded to strike out in the next three at-bats to spoil yet another perfect run-scoring chance and lose 7-6.

Steward Berrora and Harry Ray each homered for the first time this year, Trevor Schwecke doubled twice as part of a three-hit showing and 8 of 9 Canadians contributed to a season-high 14 hits, but the one that counted most never came. With the loss, Vancouver falls to two games below .500 for the first time this year.

Top Blue Jays pitching prospect Ricky Tiedemann will try and help the C’s right the ship tomorrow afternoon for a Fortis BC ‘Nooner at The Nat. He’ll be opposed by Tri-City’s Robinson Pina. First pitch is set for 1:05 p.m. with coverage on MiLB.TV, CanadiansBaseball.com and Sportsnet 650_._