Notes From The Nat

I never got around to a game report for yesterday’s nooner, but here’s the crib notes version: Errors killed a strong pitching outing.That about sums it up.

The C’s managed nine hits and four runs, and the pitching staff held Salem-Keizer close, with Andrew Bailey giving up only three hits and two earned runs over 6.1 innings, but the D let the game slide at crucial moments, and everything went to Surrey towards the finish.

Today’s effort was much simpler to summarize: Over 6000 people showed up, one of the biggest NWL crowds this year, and the C’s once again crumbled under the pressure to send them all home yawning.

Here’s the game report: Mike Affronti hit a triple. The end.

Okay, that wasn’t strictly it: Prowling Greg Dowling drew a walk. The end.

Just as happened with the last Fireworks Night, and the one before that, the stands filled and the home team got killed. In fact, perhaps it’s time to start cancelling the fireworks events, because there’s no point bringing in huge crowds of people who’ve never been to a ballgame before only for the home team to play the worst game of the season for them.

I’m going to suggest that, in 2007, Fireworks Night be replaced with ‘Captain and Tennille Tribute Night’, or perhaps ‘The Vancouver Canadians Salute to Fabio… On Ice’. Maybe we could have a Meet Ben Mulroney day, or a Win a Trip to Tehran contest. (more…)

This was in today’s paper, written by one of the two local beats who are sometimes able to get space for local sports other than hockey. It’s about, as the Hawkers know him, "Glen the Clubby".

Or, as the Hawkers call him, "that guy".

Anyway, he’s a pretty good cat, and does a hard job for minimal pay. So he deserves his space. Here it is, from the Vancouver Province.

So you think it’s tough being a minor league ballplayer?

Long bus rides. Leaving home for the first time and billeting with strangers. Daily meal-money allowances that add up to a lot of face-stuffing at fast-food establishments.

Well, that’s nothing compared to what 42-year-old Newfoundland native Glenn Hall, the Vancouver Canadians rookie clubhouse attendant, puts up with in order to chase his baseball dream. (more…)

On a day when it was announced that one of the Vancouver Canadians representatives in the NWL All-Star side would be Matt Sulentic - a guy who doesn’t play for us anymore - the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes turned out against a C’s team that was playing for precious little more than pride, and successfully beat that pride out of them with a 19-3 demolition job that will still hurt next season.

Sure, the Volcs are running away with the NWL West just as the C’s are slumping their way to 3rd, but if anyone expected a shellacking like this, in our own house, I’m damned if I heard their predictions. (more…)

The general population newspapers have cottoned on to the Ottawa Statesman story of how the Ottawa Lynx will be sold, and as more details come in, it’s clear that something was/is rotten in O-Town.

The Globe and Mail:

When the Lynx began in Ottawa in 1993, they broke league attendance records. The public flocked to the beautiful new downtown stadium still regarded as one of the best minor-league venues in North America, with a natural grass and clay field. They won the league championship in 1995. But the honeymoon was short-lived, and now the Lynx have the smallest attendance record in the league, with an average of about 1,800 in a stadium that holds more than 10,000, even though the maximum ticket price is only $11.

Wow. 1,800 a night to Triple-A ball, while the short-season Low-A Vancouver Canadians are drawing 3,700 a night. I haven’t seen disparity like that since the independent Northern League St Paul Saints outdrew the Major League Minnesota Twins, playing just a few miles away, by several thousand a night - or the time the C’s drew 7400 people to The Nat on a night when the Montreal Expos could only manage 5000.

So what causes that kind of attendance drop-off? (more…)

It was a long time coming. We all knew it. We could see the writing on the wall, but the owner of the team, Ray Pecor, kept on denying it would happen - and now it has: The last Canadian Triple-A team, and one of only two remaining Canadian minor league teams, the Ottawa Lynx, has been sold to American businessmen who will move it to Pennsylvania.

The Lynx have been hurting in recent years - attendance was falling, and the local city officials have been selling off their parking spots for years, and with Minor League officials approving a move (in theory) to Allentown, Pennsylvania last year, there was little doubt that the future of the team in Canada would be short.

Today, that future ended, leaving the Vancouver Canadians as Canada’s last minor league ballteam - one of only two Canadian teams still affiliated with the MLB.

It’s a sad day, but only one of many of the last few years, as the Canadian federal and provincial governments have sat back and watched valuable parts of the northern sporting fabric be ripped asunder, with nary an effort to stop the rot. (more…)

I tried again, this year, to watch the Little League World Series, but I’m sorry, I just couldn’t make it happen.

This isn’t something new - I try every year, and every year I last about eighteen minutes before switching over to something less icky and repulsive.

Why?

This most excellent book review sums it all up beautifully.

Put simply, I can only stomach about 18 minutes of tanning booth-seared soccer moms, preening in the bleachers, living vicariously through little Johnny’s early trip to pubescence and ability to hit weakly thrown fastballs over the fence.

I love baseball. To paraphrase Pete Rose, I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to see a ballgame, and the LLWS *should* be the purest form of a game so often not pure at all anymore.

But it isn’t.

It’s disgusting.

It’s parents yelling at their children. It’s coaches strutting like they’re Mike Scioscia. It’s kids getting old before their time, then getting emotionally wrecked because they lost. It’s an endless cavalcade of childhood-free rugrats who have been shipped from training camp to training camp before they’re 10 years old, and will get the added indignity of their loss being broadcast nationwide on TV by the worldwide leader in pre-pubescent sports.

I’ll pass.

My kid will play baseball if he wants to, and if he wants to go to a training camp once in a while and work on his groundball D, I’m all for it - but if I ever start to resemble those southern Calfornia automatons I saw at the LLWS, the ones who’ll elbow a 4-year-old in the face if it means they get a better view, I’ll shoot myself in the head and end it all with dignity.

To buy Little League, Big Dreams, and see for yourself what a cesspool the LLWS is, click here.

So I got back on late Thursday night after a three-week trip back to Australia to introduce my folks to their grandson, only to find (after a 14-hour flight to LA, and five hours battling bodysearches, paperwork, turbulence and Alaska Airlines’ utter lack of committment to customer service on my way up from there), that Lady Vancouver had decided to welcome me home by breaking into my car.

Cheers, Van City crackheads.

You got precisely nothing out of my vehicle, and I got a $250 window replacement bill that ICBC won’t pay. No place like home, eh?

Of course, while I was sitting on a beach (in winter), the C’s were stumbling, bumbling and lumbering to an awful slump, punctuated by the loss of everyone in good form to Kane County or injury, leading to a fall from near-1st to way-3rd.

We do get spoiled in Vancouver, by virtue of our affiliation with the great-drafting Oakland Athletics, so these third place finishes are hard to swallow (though the C’s could still, technically, streak to 2nd place if the planets aligned).

It’s been a season that threatened early to be yet another great one, but you simply can’t lost an entire team of prospects to promotion and injury and still expect to take the pennant.

Here’s who we’ve lost this year:Chad Boyd (promotion)Toddric Johnson (promotion)Matt Sulentic (promotion)Jermaine Mitchell (just returned from injury, thanks Spokane)Casey Myers (promotion)Don Sutton (injury rehab)Ben Jukich (promotion)Branden Dewing (promotion)TJ Franco (promotion)Pascual Manzueta (demotion)Fernando Acosta (demotion)Francisco Pena (demotion)Eric Sheridan (demotion)

Yikes.

Begins to get a little tough to win when your squad gets kicked around like that, and though, over the years, Oakland has been content to leave their starring players in Vancouver for the full year (like Jeff Baisley last season, or Javier Herrera the season before), this year’s A’s minors system is an entirely different beast.

How different?

See the full article and I’ll tell you. (more…)

Poor Matty.

It seems like every get-away game brings forth a new adventure. With the boys having lost (large) two games in Salem, it was hoped the early start to Sunday’s game would be the tonic they needed to salvage .500 for the trip and get out of the House of the Witch Kings and back up to Van-City.

Fate had other plans.

The Canadians let opportunities slip through their fingers yet again on Sunday, as missed chances to put Salem away cost them dearly as they lost 5-4 to the Volcanoes in 13 innings. (more…)

Of course, Rob, Dave and Ernie are not the only three beer hawkers. There are others equally vital to the organization - circling them, waiting for them to die. Like the lions of the Kalahari, when the rogue males feel the dominant are no longer up to the challenge, they will strike.

But rather than leave them for dead and take their women, young hawkers will crush them with kegs and steal their trays.Would you like to meet them?I knew that you would. (more…)

With Vancouver about to start 6 consecutive games against them, the time has come to ruminate on why no team can rein in the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes.

What is it about Salem that makes them that damn good that Vancouver can go 4-5 in Yakima and still drop a game back? As of August 25, Salem has won 13 consecutive games. In a division otherwise tinged with similar talent, are the Volcanoes so much better?Why does every Eastern Division team that plays S-K roll over like a turtle?

For Pete?s sake; Salem took ALL 10 versus Spokane, which must have driven their insane fan club insane. They broke Tri-City, who are in the middle of a pennant race, one they were let back into by Salem, who previously had rolled up Boise.

Is it because they are a more talented team?Is it because the Giants, unlike the A?s, are willing to let high draft picks sit a full-year in the NWL to fully season as a pro?Does the Volcanoes organization aggressively lobby to keep their talent, because otherwise there?s no other reason to stop between Portland and Eugene?

Or could Dr. Faustus have something to do with it?

Let?s examine. (more…)

Looks like Matt was able to hit up the computer at the Valley River Inn before he tucked in for the night. He provides his recap of tonight’s festivities, where the C’s started strong once again but faded quickly.

From my perspective, although the post-season prospects look bleak, at least the two teams avoided playing head-hunter tonight. They let the bats do the talking.Eugene, however, talked louder. (more…)

Have you ever, in your life, come across a person whose very demeanour both pulls you in yet makes you question having further children? Every worksite has that person, be they a Debbie Downer, Selma Bouvier or Dwight Schrute?

Meet Ernie: ?Mr. Nice?The first successful human to be spliced with lemon DNA, Ernie entered the world in 1969, just in time for Woodstock. Left behind when the festival ended, he made his way to Nova Scotia, where his formative years were spent attending ?David Rowan Secondary School? in the Annapolis Valley, named after the accidental Redcoat.

An average student, he was able to set himself apart in Grade 5 with the essay ?Why Disco Blows?. A seminal piece in the anti-disco movement, the amazement that it was penned by someone so young led Bill Veeck, then-owner of the Chicago White Sox, to slap his son Mike in the head, daring him to come up with something better.

Relocating to British Columbia in 1989 as the result of a plea bargain, Ernie decamped to Port Hardy, BC?s most famous halfway house, located on Northern Vancouver Island.

Working at the prison radio station both awakened a passion in Ernie and fulfilled his parole requirements. (more…)