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COLLIN GALLANT
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Medicine Hat had two hometown heroes
playing at the Baseball Canada Cup.
Now they’ve got two all-stars.
Gas City natives Joel Lutz and Mitch Frey
earned invitations to Baseball Canada’s fall junior national
selection camp in Orlando, Fla following Sunday’s gold medal
final of the Baseball Canada Cup.
The Medicine Hat High, Moose Monarchs and
Team Alberta teammates have ran across the grass at Athletic Park
countless times, but striding to the mound as part of the de facto
all-star team at the national under-17 championships was one to
remember.
“It’s one of the best
memories,” said Lutz, who turns 17 in October.
“Being picked for Team Canada, here,
is the best thing ever.
Lutz was 9-for-23 at the plate during the
tournament, including a home run, and drove in five runs over seven
games at the Cup — which doubles as a scouting ground for
Major League Baseball and the selectors for Baseball Canada’s
national junior team program.
Frey displayed the same gritty play at
shortstop that’s made him a local star with the Medicine Hat
Moose Monarchs of the Montana State American Legion circuit, and
eventually won over selectors
“Great tournament and it’s
good that we went out with a win,” said Frey, who earlier in
the day helped Alberta beat Saskatchewan 7-3 in the fifth-place
game.
“And it’s great to go out and
represent Team Canada now.”
Lutz, Frey and Calgary’s Jordan Wong
— an all-star and the tournament’s top pitcher —
will join 27 other of the top players this week at Baseball
Canada’s junior national team selection camp in Orlando,
Fla.
“The kids that we picked are ready
to play right now,” said head selector Dave Robb, who also
manages the Okotoks Dawgs of the Western Major Baseball League.
“They can swing the bat, play
defence and chase down balls. That was the key thing we we’re
looking at. They can flat out play and they all have that
ability.”
Overall the tournament showed strong
pitching early on, though offence picked up in the late stages of
the five-day competition.
“The hitting didn’t pick up
until the pitchers got tired,” said Dave Olsen, a member of
Baseball Canada’s high performance committee. |
