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Baseball Canada Cup on deck as local
season hits stretch run
COLLIN GALLANT
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There’s no time limit on a game of
baseball. So too, it seems, on the local baseball season.
High school ball began in May, followed by
recently concluded American Legion and Western Major Baseball
League seasons.
Four local little league teams won Prairie
championships with two heading on to national tournaments.
Last weekend’s Alberta Summer Games
baseball tournament is in the books, but teams arrive today to open
the Baseball Canada Cup on Wednesday.
The Rawlings Cup will keep the diamonds
busy until the fourth weekend in August.
"Those are all pretty big events," said
Lovell McDonnell, the president of Big League Baseball and the
grand poobah of scheduling and maintenance at the city’s ball
yards.
"Our summers are always busy, we always
have tournaments all the time, but those are larger events where
there are a lot of people, a lot of preparation. I’d have to
say it’s the busiest baseball season that we’ve
had."
Ten teams plus parents, dignitaries and a
slew of major league scouts arrive in town today for the five-day
under-17 national championship tournament at Athletic and Jeffries
Parks.
Two Moose Monarchs, Mitch Frey and Joel
Lutz, will play for Team Alberta as the Gas City hosts the Canada
Cup for the third time in four years.
The star of the 2006 tournament was
Quebec’s Phillippe Aumont, the eventual first round pick of
the Seattle Mariners who was selected to play in this year’s
minor league all-star game at Yankee Stadium.
Among the class of 2005, Kyle Orr starred
for B.C. in Medicine Hat and is with the L.A. Dodgers’
Pioneer League team. One-time Ontario slugger Jonathan Waltenbury
is batting over .300 for the Minnesota Twins’ single-A club
in Elizabethton, Tenn.
Similarly, the Rawlings Cup, held August
22 to 24 in town, will give Team Alberta’s selectors a peek
at players who will make up the province’s 2009 Canada Cup
entry.
Making up the host entry will be a number
of K of C Knights, along with junior AAA Little League standouts
Greg Adams and Chad Hodges.
Those two players helped the Moduline Mets
to a second-place finish at the Canadian Little League championship
at Coquitlam, B.C. last week.
Mavericks return
The Sports Connection Mavericks returned
Sunday from the majors AAA national tournament following a
semifinal loss.
"We never really got blown out ," Trevor
Rayner, coach of the Mavericks. "It was a very successful year. It
would have been nice to win. Emotionally and physically, all those
games we played here at the Prairie (championship tournament) cost
us a little bit."
The Mavericks played eight games in eight
days to take the regional title at McDonnell Field on July 27.
A few days later they flew to Sydney
Mines, N.S., to play at nationals. Even that tournament seemed to
drag on with rainouts as the tail of tropical storms battered the
Maritimes.
"Other than that it was a blast. The kids
made out very well... mentally, I think we were tuckered out at the
end."
The Mavericks finished in a four-way tie
for second place at the six-team tournament, then lost in the
semifinal to the Atlantic champion Glace Bay Miners.
The Mavericks earned the Joe Shea Award
for sportsmanship, which was determined by voting among the
participants. |
