Olympic Berth for Team Canada
will revive grass roots baseball in '04

(press release from Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame)

St. Marys, ON - From its grass roots foundation to the peak of Canadian baseball's organizational pyramid, the news of Team Canada winning a 2004 Olympic baseball berth is being embraced from coast to coast like a Chinook in Calgary. If you don't already find yourself somewhere between inspiration and validation on the bandwagon meter, it won't take very long to understand why everybody from Sandlot Lucy to Rob Ducey is circling the bases with excitement during this, the hockey season.

Baseball lives a peaks-and-valleys existence in Canada, with rare and difficult ascensions to the top, and a luge-like slope going the other way. After Woodstock's James "Tip" O'Neill set the single-season batting average record near the turn of the last century, it took another hundred years before a second Canuck (Larry Walker) bagged a batting title. Fergie Jenkins had a run of six consecutive 20-win seasons and brought home Canada's first Cy Young Award in 1971. It took 32 years, but Eric Gagné just chucked his way through 2003 to become Canada's second Cy guy.

Truly, the last legitimate wave of excitement in Canadian baseball history came in the early nineties, coinciding with the Blue Jays back-to-back World Series titles in '92-'93, the Expos strong showings (their apex was unquestionably when they had the majors' best record prior to the strike in '94), the IOC recognizing baseball as an official medal sport beginning in '92 (it was a demonstration sport in '84 and '88), our first and only Gold Medal at the World Youth Baseball Championship when it was hosted by Brandon in '91, the Blue Jays hosting the '91 All-Star game, and the world renowned hockey-like brawl that Team Canada had with Mexico during the '91 Pan Am Games in Cuba. The Mexicans matched our bare fists with their bats, but we gained a measure of respect by demonstrating to the world that it was going to take more than just a crafty left-hander to take us down.

The ultimate yardstick for measure is the registrations in youth baseball, as well as turnouts at coaching, umpiring and scorekeeping clinics across the land. Registrations have never been higher than in 1994, and while the decline has plateaued somewhat in recent years, the overall numbers are still down from a decade ago.

Most kids who quit baseball do so between the ages of ten and twelve years old. Canadians Adam Loewen and Jeff Francis were that age in the early nineties, but having been inspired by these positive events, wound up being the fourth and ninth picks, respectively, overall in last year's major league draft.

A strong argument can be made that the rush in the early nineties also helped boost the passion of the group of Canadian twenty-somethings who emerged out of Panama City having secured one of the two Olympic spots allocated to the Americas (Cuba won the other berth). Three of our players, Todd Betts, Jason Dickson and the loveable Stubby Clapp, were vets from the '91 World Champs. Minnesota Twins' emerging slugger Justin Morneau, who led Canada with five homeruns, said that qualifying for the Olympics was the most exciting baseball moment of his life. His sentiments were echoed by Chris Mears and Pierre-Luc Laforest, who also made their Major League debuts in '03. Manager Ernie Whitt is more fired up for Athens than anything he experienced in the major leagues.

Mike Johnson, the winning pitcher in the Olympic berth-clinching game, has played five seasons in the big leagues. Yet, playing for Canada meant so much to him that he joined the team one day after witnessing the birth of his first child, Alyssa.

Then there's Ducey who, having retired from pro baseball at 38, was so honoured to have the opportunity of wearing Canada's flag on his chest for the first time, that he had both knees operated on this past summer.

With this kind of drive and national pride, is it any wonder that these manly men busted out no less than four versions of our "Oh Canada" on the bus between the stadium and their hotel after qualifying?

Late last Fall, Quebec City hosted the first-ever Baseball Canada Summit, where more than four hundred baseball administrators from Victoria to St. John's tackled tough issues such as how to make the game more fun for children, reducing the length of games, and the recruitment and retention of players, coaches and umpires. Several initiatives have gone back to the provinces for implementation.

The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum already has more boys and girls pre-registered for their KIDS ON DECK summer week-long baseball camp program than all of last year.

On the heels of winning an Olympic berth for the first time since baseball became an official medal sport, and in addition to Gagne's surge to the top as well as solid years in '03 by the Blue Jays and Expos, all paired with the charged-up summit results, look for an upswing in grass roots numbers across the board in '04. Baseball is back!

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