Tag Archives: the Nat

Articles, Baseball

Bring on the boys of summer

Update: Thursday night’s Vancouver Canadians contest vs the Spokane Indians was suspended in the top of the 2nd inning due to rain; the teams hit Nat Bailey for a Friday afternoon double header to make up the game.

It’s a good time to be a baseball fan in Vancouver. If you’re all about Canadian content, look east — the Toronto Blue Jays are doing what they should have done last year. They’re ten games over .500, and sit 3.5 games up on the hated New York Yankees in the American League East. Want something closer to home? Just down the road in Seattle, the Mariners are riding Felix Hernandez’s pitching and Robinson Cano’s superstar play to a damned fine seasons themselves.

Ah, a nooner at the Nat. What better way to celebrate summer? Photo cribbed from the interweb.
Ah, a nooner at the Nat. What better way to celebrate summer? Photo cribbed from the interweb.

But who says you can’t have CanCon and a short drive to the ball park? Nat Bailey Stadium opens business on the Vancouver Canadians 2014 summer season this week, as the three-time defending Single A champion hosts the Spokane Indians. Opening night (Wednesday) is sold out, but $12.50 grandstand seats remain for both Thursday evening and the Friday nooner in this series.

Want box seats? You’ll have to wait another week, when the Tri-City Dust Devils come to town for three games, quickly followed by a five-game set against the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. Of special note is the July 2 appearance by Steve Garvey, who despite not making Cooperstown, has a gaudy list of Golden Gloves, Silver Slugger awards, National League and All-Star MVP nods, and impressive statistical achievements.

The Canadians started the season impressively, outscoring Salem-Keizer 20–4 in three straight road wins. The Volcanoes found their bats in the next two games, however, edging Vancouver 10–9 in 12 innings before taking the last game of the series 4–3. In the first loss, it was the bullpen that let the C’s down, but fielding errors were to blame for dropping the second.

Follow the Vancouver Canadians on Twitter here.

blackjersey14And if any of you have a few bucks to spare, feel free to get me one of these new Mounty the Mountie jerseys. They’re purty.

I’ll squeeze into a medium, or lounge in a large. Your choice.

Articles, Baseball

Get out to the Nat

Catching a Vancouver Canadians nooner has been a summertime treat for decades. (And hey, those evening games ain’t bad, either.) The weather we’ve had for the past couple of weeks has translated into numerous sellouts at Nat Bailey Stadium, and it doesn’t hurt that the team has been pretty damned good to boot. Okay, the parent Blue Jays club hasn’t lit it up the way they’d promised to, but the Cs are playing .600 ball right now, and have won five straight series — the latest with none other than Wayne Gretzky in the building to watch his son play for the Boise Hawks.

Still need convincing? As I’m writing of this post, the Cs are in the middle of shellacking the Everett Aquasox down in WA-state. In the top of the eighth inning, it’s 11-bagel for the good guys, with LB Danzler hitting a two-run shot and a whole lot of small ball scoring nine more times. On the mound, Eric Brown has tossed seven innings of near-perfect ball, allowing just three hits while counting nine strikeouts. (Note: the final score was 13-1.)

Vancouver Canadians first baseman LB Dantzler went 1-for-4 with a double against the Tri-City Dust Devils Photo by Miles Clark Photography courtesy of Vancouver Canadians Baseball.
Vancouver Canadians first baseman LB Dantzler went 1-for-4 with a double against the Tri-City Dust Devils Photo by Miles Clark Photography courtesy of Vancouver Canadians Baseball.

First baseman / designated hitter Jordan Leyland currently holds the Single A Northwest Division batting lead, going.342 at the dish with a slugging percentage of .465. On the other side of the ball, Jeremy Gabryszwski and the aforementioned Brown are 1-2 in league ERA, and have gone a combined 6-1 in 67 innings pitched. (For the uninitiated, the technical term for those numbers is pretty durned good.)

For crying out loud, they’ve got fireworks after every Saturday game! Like, dude, they send bombs full of fancy coloured powder up into the air and they go boom all over your eye sockets. Get your tailbones out there, people.

Hit up www.canadiansbaseball.com for scheduling and ticket information.