Measuring the Twins

It seems like the perfect world scenario I laid out last night worked out – I got to a Twins’ practice, met the principal players (metaphorically, inre: the whole shebang, not just the important players on the field), did the three stories I thought I might be able to do if everything came together, and get the impression I’ll be able to be on top of the beat for a good part of the season. Sounds positive.

For the pieces (which you should be able to read on MississaugaTwins.ca very soon) I spoke to the manager and two players, and what they had to say can found in the articles. All 3 were very chatty and talked about the game fluently, and they all seemed happy to be talking to the media, which I hope will be the case for the rest of the team all summer. Interestingly, one of them – star catcher Henry Duke – played for the same elite team I played for, two or three years earlier. Another guy – that I didn’t talk to today – Mickey Campeanu, played on my high school team with me when I was in grade nine. Maybe if there’s a good angle at some point in the season I’ll do a feature on him for the website or this blog.

I’m still not ready to draw firm conclusions on the team, and I won’t be for a while because I only know two or three players, but it seems that they’re mostly guys playing in good American schools, a good majority of whom have developed in the top levels of Mississauga’s minor baseball system as kids/teenagers, and I think I’m okay with the argument that that could be good enough to compete in the ICBL. In the entire scope of Ontario, Mississauga is very good – from what I remember, many, many province-wide tournaments and provincial championships were won by the Mississauga teams, and Adam Zorzit, the other of the two players I talked to, noted that when he played it was mostly Mississauga teams who dominated and were feared at tournaments, which is basically what I remember from when I played.

I’m not too sure how the other teams in the league draw their talent (if there’s a strong geographical bias towards that area), and it would be an interesting thing to someday compare (an exclusive for the blog, I think), but I have to think I wouldn’t be too uncomfortable if my life depended on the Mississauga all stars beating the other regions of the province’s stars. But really, we’ll have to see. The Brantford Red Sox are in town on Saturday, and if I see their director of player development, Rick Johnston, whose baseball facility I went to for quite a few years and I know will be very friendly and helpful, I’ll try to get his thoughts on the team the Twins have (among other things, but I’ll talk about that more later).

The home opener is on Saturday at 2pm against those Red Sox, and I encourage everyone to come. It’s a season opening game; someone (possibly) interesting will be throwing out the first pitch (I heard people from politicians to hockey players being mentioned as possibilities); there’s no reason to believe (according to my calculations based on very limited exposure to the team) the Twins won’t be competitive, and it’d be cool to get a little Mississauga baseball thing going.

It turns out that they’re at Christie Pitts on Sunday to play the Maple Leafs (of the non hockey tree – get it?), which is one of the parks I have always really wanted to go to, so now that I’m on a visiting team’s beat I think I will be there. I’m hoping they’ll have a cute little throwback pressroom that also happens to have wireless access, but I’m not holding my breath. I had sort of fantasized about running my own media room at the Meadowvale diamond and inviting Roger Lajoie up when the Leafs are in town and wowing him into hooking me up with a really cool sports gig at a major media outlet (inasfar as he has that influence, which he may well not) but it turns out that there isn’t an actual building at the park, so that isn’t happening.

After that, they’re at home against Barrie on Wednesday, which I will likely be at as well. That means coverage – and blogging – of three straight games for ya’ll, and I’m not sure that that pace will continue all summer, but it’ll be a nice way to start the season regardless.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m hoping to run into Rick Johnston at the Saturday home opener. He is a very good baseball guy, he’ll certainly be willing to talk, and there are some timely things to talk to him about. Plus, it’ll make a great feature for the blog – since it makes no sense to run an article about a Red Sox executive on the Twins’ site, right? Anyways, Rick has coached for Team Canada and has been a guest coach with the Blue Jays at spring training before, so I’d really like to do a one on one with him about the Canadian debacle at the World Baseball Classic (“Rick, do you think Ernie Whitt is in any way at fault for his gross mismanagement of the game against Italy?”) and the surging Blue Jays – even though I don’t think Rick’s been around the Jays lately, I think he may have been there during the first Gaston era, so he could have some insight on what could be going on over there with Gaston, Tenace and Murphy coaching their offense. Plus, I’d love to hear his thoughts on the new franchise here in Mississauga and anything else baseball-ish that pops into our heads!

I’m starting to get a firmer sense of how this thing is going to work. The stuff I write for the website will be focused, hard news stories (even if some of them wander into being a bit feature-y), and this will be miscellaneous, often commentary-like and will have some feature stuff that can’t or shouldn’t go on the website mixed in.

I should note, to be very fair to everyone involved, that nothing I write here is affiliated with the Twins in any way (unlike the material on the website) and this blog and its contents are completely autonomous from the team and its owners.

There’s some time between now and the home opener (a couple of days, anyways) so I might write something about the Blue Jays – because I haven’t written anything about them yet anywhere – to keep things fresh. Check back for that and see if you can be at the game Saturday!