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Take Me Out to The Ballgame- Alaska Traveler
Written by Sherry Simpson

November 2008

It was the bottom of the first inning by the time we found the entrance to Mulcahy Baseball Stadium in Anchorage.

We’re late,” I told my husband.

“That just means we missed everyone mumbling their way through the Star-Spangled Banner,” Scott said.

“But that’s what I came for,” I said. Little things count when you’re auditioning a sports team. Can your fellow fans carry a tune? Do the players have fire in their bellies? Is it from a passion to win or from the hot dogs? Speaking of which, what kind of snacks do they sell?

I’m not much of a sports fan, but the older I get, the more I need a team. I never had a team growing up in Juneau. Not only did Alaska lack teams, but television arrived on tape and two weeks late. My childhood was one long news embargo designed to keep my father from accidentally learning the outcome of any game before he could see it on TV.

Our families have long since outsourced their loyalties to Seattle’s Mariners and Seahawks. Scott and I aren’t much for sports, but we do have one team: The Canterbury Crusaders of Christchurch, New Zealand. The Crusaders won the only professional sports event I’ve ever attended, a rugby game during which the action on the field competed with the action in the stands. This is not surprising when fans arrive with 12-packs of beer tucked under each arm. I don’t understand the first thing about rugby, but it’s a fantastically entertaining sport, despite the fact that my team plays 6,800 miles away and I’ve yet to attend a second game.

This year I thought I’d hold auditions for a new team, an Alaska team. Other people have teams so they’ll have some place specific to channel overwhelming feelings of futility, hostility or despair by hating incompetent coaches, flawed heroes and corrupt owners, interrupted briefly by moments of transcendent joy that bear absolutely no relationship to their worthiness as fans, but for which they’ll happily take all credit.

We decided to audition the Anchorage Bucs, one of six teams in the Alaska Baseball League, which fields top collegiate players from across the United States. Alaskans have been playing organized baseball for more than a hundred years in mining camps, villages and towns, possibly because there’s nothing more cool than playing at midnight on the solstice. Since the 1960s, almost 400 ABL players have entered the majors, including Randy Johnson, Mark McGwire, Dave Winfield and Tom Seaver. (I looked that up.)

I also looked up footage from a 2003 Bucs vs. Fairbanks Goldpanners game during which a Cessna Skywagon crashed into the left-field fence. Amazingly, only two of the four passengers received minor-ish injuries. Not so the Bucs—the game resumed 47 minutes later (Goldpanners 10, Bucs 2).

The day we chose to attend a game was Fan Appreciation Day at Mulcahy Stadium, and admission was free. About three hundred people were there being appreciated. True fans brought comfy bucket seats from which they tracked stats and cheered players by name. I gave it a try.

“C’mon … dude,” I yelled. “Batter, batter, batter.”

Scott looked at me curiously. “Do you even know how read the scoreboard?”

“Yes,” I lied.

People from United Way wandered through distributing key chains, plastic water bottles, yo-yos, and T-shirts. Wondering why I didn’t get a water bottle occupied me for the third and fourth innings. The cheerful hijinks of Beekmin the mascot might have vanquished my disappointment, but no giant parrot appeared.

“Where’s Beekmin?” I asked.

“Parrots don’t like to work in the cold,” Scott said. It had yet to break 60, making me one of the few people in America wearing fleece to a baseball game that day.

Watching baseball was a lot like watching television—I needed someone to pay attention to the game while I did other things. Bucs fans were interesting people—little old ladies in matching hats, families that had biked to the game, a man who helped me interpret the game by yelling things like, “That’s trouble, that’s trouble.”

My neighbor’s nachos had attracted my interest when the stadium made a collective “Oooh” sound. I looked up to see a batter limping around.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The batter fouled the ball off his own foot,” Scott said. “Walk it off. That’s what it’s all about. Sometimes you got to man up and walk it off.” His voice dropped. “Unless your wife is there, in which case she’ll yell at you.”

I was noting down this inspirational speech when Scott asked, “Is this going to be another one of those ‘make-fun-of-my-husband’ columns?”

“Let’s see how it goes,” I said.

Suddenly it was top of the fourth, 1-0 Miners.

“When nothing happens, baseball goes pretty fast,” I mentioned.

“It’s good to get those runs out of the way early,” Scott agreed.

Nothing much continued happening for a few innings.

“Was that a sacrifice bunt?” I’d ask.

“Yes.”

“Was that a ball?”

“No, when the umpire points it’s a strike.”

“Did they have onion rings at the food stand?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“What happened?”

“There was a kerfuffle.”

“What happened that time?”

“He tried to steal third and got thrown out.”

“Don’t they have cheerleaders?”

“No.”

“What time does the plane crash happen?” I asked.

By the sixth inning, we’d scored but still lagged 1-3. Also, the girl selling 50-50 tickets hadn’t returned, and I still hadn’t won any drawings for gift certificates. We ate nachos with an alarmingly colored, cheese-like sauce. Three boys raced the bases between innings, but it wasn’t clear whether they were being rewarded or punished. Two Mat-Su players clocking their pitcher’s ball speed let a kid play with the radar gun. The announcer announced that it was someone’s birthday, and those nice United Way people delivered a cake to a true fan, who shared it with everyone around her. It was fun being a fan.

In the seventh our pitcher threw two consecutive strikeouts. Apparently we’d scored another run some time. Things were looking up, until they weren’t. Top of the eighth, the score was 4-2. Then 5-2. In the ninth, the Miners scored. I looked away, and bam, another run.

“We’re going to lose, aren’t we?” I asked Scott.

“Of course we are. We’re here. We are death to sports.”

I remembered then why I don’t have a team. It’s because they always lose, except for the Crusaders, who never once failed me during the one game I’d seen.

The Bucs lost. But I discovered that having a team isn’t about winning, especially when you lose. Probably it’s about getting an autograph from a future big leaguer. Keeping your eyes peeled for plane crashes. Playing under the midnight sun. Winning free loot.

Or maybe it’s about mascots. If I could make one teensy suggestion to my future team, the Bucs, it would be to ditch the parrot. I’m going to need a mascot who’s committed to giving 110 percent to the game. The way I am.

-Sherry Simpson teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and is the author of The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska, and The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Stories, both published by Sasquatch Books.

Price of life? For Dennis Mattingly, $127,000

BETH BRAGG

The topic of conversation was Dennis Mattingly’s terminal disease and the life-extending transplant he may or may not be able to afford, but you never would have guessed the subject was so grim.

Mattingly — the founder and general manager of the Anchorage Bucs baseball team — could have been talking about the stubborn patch of yellow grass in the Mulcahy Stadium outfield, or the merits of barbecue sunflowers seeds, or the star infielder whose work habits didn’t match his hype.

This was no pity party. Just straight, plain talk, delivered in the rough-around-the-edges style favored by blue-collar guys like Mattingly, who call ballparks and bowling alleys their homes away from home.

“So far I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “I broke a rib; that ain’t no big deal. I broke my jaw; that ain’t no big deal.”

But the reason behind those broken bones is a very big deal: multiple myeloma, an insidious cancer that makes bones brittle and renders the body’s immune system all but useless.

The expected life span for multiple myeloma patients is five years. Mattingly was diagnosed in 2000, after he broke a rib when sneezing and re-broke it three months later while bowling.

In 2005, a stem-cell transplant extended his expiration date by three years. Now the cancer’s back, and without another transplant, Mattingly might not see another baseball season.

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“I don’t really like to broadcast it,” said Mattingly, who for years has politely rejected timid requests to tell his story. “I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m looking for a cure, and trying to find a way to pay for it all.”

A retired driver for the Teamsters, Mattingly depends on wife Sandy’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance. The policy has a $250,000 cap for transplants, and about $95,000 remains from the 2005 procedure.

Three years later, the price of a transplant is higher. Before Mattingly can even check into a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center facility in Seattle, the Mattinglys must deposit $127,000 to cover the surgery. That’s on top of the $95,000 insurance money.

Sandy, who works at a law firm, is ready to say goodbye to her retirement plans, cash in her mutual funds and buy her husband three more years. Only that nest egg isn’t worth what it was before the economy took a nosedive. And besides, Dennis doesn’t like the idea of leaving his wife destitute, just so he can live a little longer.

So he has agreed to let his family and friends put on some fundraisers in the hope they can raise the necessary $127,000.

“That’s a lot of money to spend to get three more years,” Mattingly said. “We blew $200,000 doing it the first time and now we’ve gotta turn around and blow another $200,000 for another three years?

“I told Sandy, you may live to be a hundred. We can’t spend everything we’ve got trying to save me.

“Of course, she won’t listen to that.”

The clock is ticking, not just on Mattingly’s life, but on the transplant. The hospital needs the deposit by Dec. 3. That’s less than four weeks from now, and fund-raising efforts only started a week ago and are very much in the early stages.

Though there is no guarantee a transplant would be successful, the first one worked — for three years, just as advertised.

The cancer is back. It’s eating away at Mattingly’s jaw, and doctors are constantly vigilant to see where it might show up next. They bombarded Mattingly’s jaw with 15 radiation treatments, and now Mattingly is getting twice-weekly chemotherapy treatments.

Mattingly, 59, says he feels fine, but is often fatigued.

“I used to bowl 40, 60 games a week,” he said. “Now I bowl three games and I’m bushed. If I bowl four, put a fork in me. I’m done.”

Yet he still shows up to work at the Anchorage Bucs office almost every weekday.

Mattingly started the team in 1980, when it was called the Cook Inlet Bucs. He’s the only general manager in team history.

Sometimes it seems like he’s the entire franchise. He mows the outfield lawn, drives the team bus to games in Fairbanks, figures out flight schedules for the players who arrive each summer from all over the country to play in the Alaska Baseball League. Before the cancer returned, he pitched batting practice. Before the Bucs had a clubhouse, he did the team laundry.

“He’s down there at 4 in the morning watering the lawn. It’s amazing what the man has done,” Bucs board president AnnaBell Stevens said. “I really don’t know if the club could exist without him.”

With any luck at all, a transplant would mean we won’t find out anytime soon.

Which brings us back to all that money Mattingly needs to get another shot at another three years.

Two events — a spaghetti feed and a bowling benefit — are scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 22-23, but the prospects of those events raising $127,000 seem daunting.

Maybe some former Bucs who went on to draw a Major League paycheck — Jeff Kent, Geoff Jenkins, Wally Joyner, Jeff Francis and many others — will get wind of Mattingly’s plight and help out their old GM. Maybe Nolan Ryan — who sent two sons to play for the Bucs — can work something out through his foundation.

In lieu of that kind of miracle, though, maybe help will come from baseball fans — from anyone who has watched their kid scramble under the Mulcahy bleachers for a foul ball, or taken in a Fourth of July fireworks display after a Bucs doubleheader, or enjoyed a cold beer and a crisply turned double play on a long June night.

If everyone who’s ever gone to a Bucs game pitched in the price of a general admission ticket, we could put down a deposit on Dennis Mattingly’s life.

“I want to live. I want to be around,” Mattingly said. “But at some point you have to say whoa. I don’t want to put my wife in the poorhouse in the process. Dad-gummit, I’m trying to be a realist here.”

——————————————————————————–

How to help the Mattinglys

A spaghetti feed to benefit Anchorage Bucs general manager Dennis Mattingly is planned for Saturday, Nov. 22, at Lake Otis Elementary School. A bowling benefit is the next day at Center Bowl. For more details, call the Bucs office at 561-2827.

Donations can be made at Alaska USA Federal Credit Union, account number 1425535 (MA).

Take Me Out to The Ballgame- Alaska Traveler
Written by Sherry Simpson
November 2008

It was the bottom of the first inning by the time we found the entrance to Mulcahy Baseball Stadium in Anchorage.

We’re late,” I told my husband.

“That just means we missed everyone mumbling their way through the Star-Spangled Banner,” Scott said.

“But that’s what I came for,” I said. Little things count when you’re auditioning a sports team. Can your fellow fans carry a tune? Do the players have fire in their bellies? Is it from a passion to win or from the hot dogs? Speaking of which, what kind of snacks do they sell?

I’m not much of a sports fan, but the older I get, the more I need a team. I never had a team growing up in Juneau. Not only did Alaska lack teams, but television arrived on tape and two weeks late. My childhood was one long news embargo designed to keep my father from accidentally learning the outcome of any game before he could see it on TV.

Our families have long since outsourced their loyalties to Seattle’s Mariners and Seahawks. Scott and I aren’t much for sports, but we do have one team: The Canterbury Crusaders of Christchurch, New Zealand. The Crusaders won the only professional sports event I’ve ever attended, a rugby game during which the action on the field competed with the action in the stands. This is not surprising when fans arrive with 12-packs of beer tucked under each arm. I don’t understand the first thing about rugby, but it’s a fantastically entertaining sport, despite the fact that my team plays 6,800 miles away and I’ve yet to attend a second game.

This year I thought I’d hold auditions for a new team, an Alaska team. Other people have teams so they’ll have some place specific to channel overwhelming feelings of futility, hostility or despair by hating incompetent coaches, flawed heroes and corrupt owners, interrupted briefly by moments of transcendent joy that bear absolutely no relationship to their worthiness as fans, but for which they’ll happily take all credit.

We decided to audition the Anchorage Bucs, one of six teams in the Alaska Baseball League, which fields top collegiate players from across the United States. Alaskans have been playing organized baseball for more than a hundred years in mining camps, villages and towns, possibly because there’s nothing more cool than playing at midnight on the solstice. Since the 1960s, almost 400 ABL players have entered the majors, including Randy Johnson, Mark McGwire, Dave Winfield and Tom Seaver. (I looked that up.)

I also looked up footage from a 2003 Bucs vs. Fairbanks Goldpanners game during which a Cessna Skywagon crashed into the left-field fence. Amazingly, only two of the four passengers received minor-ish injuries. Not so the Bucs—the game resumed 47 minutes later (Goldpanners 10, Bucs 2).

The day we chose to attend a game was Fan Appreciation Day at Mulcahy Stadium, and admission was free. About three hundred people were there being appreciated. True fans brought comfy bucket seats from which they tracked stats and cheered players by name. I gave it a try.

“C’mon … dude,” I yelled. “Batter, batter, batter.”

Scott looked at me curiously. “Do you even know how read the scoreboard?”

“Yes,” I lied.

People from United Way wandered through distributing key chains, plastic water bottles, yo-yos, and T-shirts. Wondering why I didn’t get a water bottle occupied me for the third and fourth innings. The cheerful hijinks of Beekmin the mascot might have vanquished my disappointment, but no giant parrot appeared.

“Where’s Beekmin?” I asked.

“Parrots don’t like to work in the cold,” Scott said. It had yet to break 60, making me one of the few people in America wearing fleece to a baseball game that day.

Watching baseball was a lot like watching television—I needed someone to pay attention to the game while I did other things. Bucs fans were interesting people—little old ladies in matching hats, families that had biked to the game, a man who helped me interpret the game by yelling things like, “That’s trouble, that’s trouble.”

My neighbor’s nachos had attracted my interest when the stadium made a collective “Oooh” sound. I looked up to see a batter limping around.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The batter fouled the ball off his own foot,” Scott said. “Walk it off. That’s what it’s all about. Sometimes you got to man up and walk it off.” His voice dropped. “Unless your wife is there, in which case she’ll yell at you.”

I was noting down this inspirational speech when Scott asked, “Is this going to be another one of those ‘make-fun-of-my-husband’ columns?”

“Let’s see how it goes,” I said.

Suddenly it was top of the fourth, 1-0 Miners.

“When nothing happens, baseball goes pretty fast,” I mentioned.

“It’s good to get those runs out of the way early,” Scott agreed.

Nothing much continued happening for a few innings.

“Was that a sacrifice bunt?” I’d ask.

“Yes.”

“Was that a ball?”

“No, when the umpire points it’s a strike.”

“Did they have onion rings at the food stand?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“What happened?”

“There was a kerfuffle.”

“What happened that time?”

“He tried to steal third and got thrown out.”

“Don’t they have cheerleaders?”

“No.”

“What time does the plane crash happen?” I asked.

By the sixth inning, we’d scored but still lagged 1-3. Also, the girl selling 50-50 tickets hadn’t returned, and I still hadn’t won any drawings for gift certificates. We ate nachos with an alarmingly colored, cheese-like sauce. Three boys raced the bases between innings, but it wasn’t clear whether they were being rewarded or punished. Two Mat-Su players clocking their pitcher’s ball speed let a kid play with the radar gun. The announcer announced that it was someone’s birthday, and those nice United Way people delivered a cake to a true fan, who shared it with everyone around her. It was fun being a fan.

In the seventh our pitcher threw two consecutive strikeouts. Apparently we’d scored another run some time. Things were looking up, until they weren’t. Top of the eighth, the score was 4-2. Then 5-2. In the ninth, the Miners scored. I looked away, and bam, another run.

“We’re going to lose, aren’t we?” I asked Scott.

“Of course we are. We’re here. We are death to sports.”

I remembered then why I don’t have a team. It’s because they always lose, except for the Crusaders, who never once failed me during the one game I’d seen.

The Bucs lost. But I discovered that having a team isn’t about winning, especially when you lose. Probably it’s about getting an autograph from a future big leaguer. Keeping your eyes peeled for plane crashes. Playing under the midnight sun. Winning free loot.

Or maybe it’s about mascots. If I could make one teensy suggestion to my future team, the Bucs, it would be to ditch the parrot. I’m going to need a mascot who’s committed to giving 110 percent to the game. The way I am.

——————————————————————————–
-Sherry Simpson teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and is the author of The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska, and The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Stories, both published by Sasquatch Books.

——————————————————————————–

GO:
Among the most popular games in the Alaska Baseball League are the traditional Midnight Sun and Fourth of July games. The Alaska Baseball League site includes information about all of the league’s teams and season schedules, as well as historical photos, statistics, archived news articles, streaming audio, and more. See www.alaskabaseballleague.org. For updates on a documentary in progress about Alaska baseball, see http://touchingthegame.com. For more about the Anchorage Bucs, including footage of the 2003 plane crash, see www.anchoragebucs.com.

Parque picks college over pro ball (for now)
Pacifica Tribune Staff
Article Launched: 09/18/2008 02:38:27 PM PDT

Jimmy Parque, one of the best collegiate baseball players in Northern California, has chosen education for now over an offer to play professional baseball.

Parque, who grew up in Pacifica playing Little League baseball, and ultimately was a star player on two Serra High School championship teams, was selected in the 40th round of this year’s Major League Baseball draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“This was a dream come true for Jimmy,” said his dad, Jim Parque, himself a former athlete at Terra Nova. “However, he decided to take a full scholarship to St. John’s University in New York. It’s an excellent baseball school in the Big East Conference.”

Parque, who completed two years at Skyline College playing baseball, will most likely

be drafted again next year. At Skyline College, Parque became a two-time junior college All-American, and the first baseball player to carry that honor from Skyline.
This summer the 19-year-old Parque played baseball for the Anchorage Bucs in Alaska. The team plays in one of the top college summer leagues in the country.

Parque follows in the footsteps of another Pacifican in playing baseball at St. John’s. Terra Nova graduate Will Vogl attended the college and later played pro ball in the New York Mets farm system.

Other prominent professionals attending St. John’s were New York Mets pitcher John Franco, San Francisco Warriors’ Chris Mullins and Rich Aurilla of the San Francisco Giants.

Parque graduated from Serra in 2006. He played baseball and football four years. The 2004 and 2006 baseball teams won the WCAL championship. In football, he played on the varsity team three years, making All-League and All-San Mateo County.

His junior year at Serra he was selected to the North-South baseball team which played against a Southern California team. He was named the most valuable player for the North team. In his senior year he was Serra’s MVP. He made All-Central Coast Section, All-Metro and second team All-State.

As the

baseball team’s MVP, his named was placed on an athletic blanket which dons the wall of the Serra gym. He joins Serra graduates Barry Bonds and Greg Jefferies as top athletes for this award.
Following his senior year he was chosen to represent California at the Senior Sun Belt Classic at the University of Oklahoma. He still found time to play for his hometown Joe DiMaggio team.

In six years of playing Joe DiMaggio baseball he is the only two-time DiMaggio World Series MVP. He earned the award playing for the 2004 and 2006 Pacifica title teams. He also won a third championship in 2007 playing with San Bruno.

A feat he accomplished twice is hitting two grand slam home runs in one game. The first came in 2007 for the DiMaggio team and again in 2008 with Skyline College.

Championship bloods runs in the Parque family. Parque’s dad, Jim, played on the last Terra Nova Central Coast Section baseball championship team (1980) and was named the team’s MVP. His name is also etched on a MVP blanket which hangs in the Terra Nova gym.

Tribe ink Taiwanese hurler Lee
Right-hander projected as third- or fourth-round Draft pick
By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com

CLEVELAND — Things have been going so well with one pitcher named Lee that the Indians have brought another into the fold.
And they had to go all the way to Taiwan to get him.

The Tribe once again dipped into the international waters and signed Taiwanese right-hander Chen-Chang Lee to a Minor League deal Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not announced.

A candidate for next spring’s World Baseball Classic, Lee will report to the Tribe’s fall instructional league in Goodyear, Ariz., this week, and he’ll likely begin his professional career at Class A Kinston next season.

Lee, 21, recently finished his junior year at Taipei Physical Education College and was a member of Taiwan’s national team that participated in the Beijing Olympic Games, going 0-1 with 2.00 ERA and 11 strikeouts in nine innings.

“We’ve known him since he was 16,” Indians assistant general manager of scouting operations John Mirabelli said. “We tried to sign him when he was 16, and he decided to go to college. It paid off big time for him. He made his mark internationally.”

The 5-foot-7, 176-pound Lee made a name for himself in his native land when he held Cuba to a run on two hits over eight innings in a victory at the 2006 World University Baseball Championships. He also pitched in the Alaska Baseball League, which includes college players from around the world, in 2007.

With his sidearm delivery, Lee throws a sinker, slider and split-finger. His fastball reportedly reaches up to 94 mph.

Because of his delivery style, Lee probably profiles best as a reliever, Mirabelli said.

“With him using that arm slot, it’s hard to project a lot of upside as a starter,” Mirabelli said. “I think his future is clearly in the bullpen.”

Mirabelli projected that Lee, if eligible for the Draft, would have been a third- or fourth-round pick, based on his college experience and raw stuff. The Indians feel he can rise quickly through their Minor League system, especially considering he’ll likely work in relief.

Lee, who was given a tour of Progressive Field on Tuesday, was sought after by several teams, including clubs in Japan. Mirabelli said Lee could have made twice as much money signing with a Japanese team, but he wanted to come here.

“It’s a better opportunity to play in the States,” Lee said through an interpreter. “That’s why I wanted to come to America.”

Mirabelli confirmed three other international signings by the Tribe: third baseman Giovanny Urshella from Columbia, shortstop Jose Ozoria from the Dominican Republic and catcher Alex Monsalve from Venezuela. All three players are 16 years old, Mirabelli said.

Anthony Castrovince is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

AK Governor represents the ABL by wearing a Miners shirt during her Middle East trip

http://www.ak-prepared.com/dmva/images/2007_Gallery/07_Photo_Gallery_July/5_Gov_ChowLine_Page.htm

Pilots and Oilers eliminated from NBC tourney

Daily News staff
sports@adn.com

Published: August 13th, 2008 01:06 AM

The Alaska Baseball League’s Anchorage Glacier Pilots and Peninsula Oilers, who have combined for eight championships at the National Baseball Congress World Series, on Tuesday were both eliminated from the 74th edition of the tournament.

Both the Pilots and Oiler tied for ninth place in the 42-team tournament in Wichita, Kan. The NBC World Series draws some of the best college-age talent and teams from summer leagues throughout the nation.

The five-time champion Pilots fell 10-2 to the four-time champion Liberal (Kan.) BeeJays. Anchorage finished 2-2 in the tournament.

The three-time champion Oilers lost 4-3 to the Maxim (Calif.) Yankees. The Oilers finished 3-2.

Pilots right fielder D.J. Gentile went 1 for 5 with two RBIs to lead the Pilots in tournament hitting average (.375) and RBIs (6).

Oilers catcher Francis Larson went 3 for 4 and finished the tournament hitting .381 with team highs in RBIs (6) and runs scored (6).

By Staff Report | Peninsula Clarion
The Peninsula Oilers opened up play in the National Baseball Congress World Series with an 11-1 victory over the Southern California Bombers on Sunday at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium in Wichita, Kan.

The Oilers backed starter and winner Joe Gardner with 14 hits in winning due to the run rule after seven innings. Every hitter in the Oilers starting lineup had at least one hit.

Gardner pitched six innings and gave up just four hits. One of those hits was a home run by Frank Corpus in the first inning.

Meanwhile, the Oilers offense was rolling. In the top of the first inning, Brian Mconkey came up with the bases loaded and two outs for his first at-bat with the team. Mconkey had a single to plate two runs.

Francis Larson then singled deep to the hole at shortstop to bring in another run.

After the home run by Corpus put the Bombers on the board in the bottom of the first inning, the Oilers got Gardner some more insurance in the sixth inning, scoring three runs on four hits and leaving the bases loaded.

Peninsula tacked on five more runs on six hits in the seventh inning to take an 11-1 lead and put the run rule in play.

Brandon Berl then came on to pitch for Gardner. Berl got off to a tough start, giving up a single then walking a batter, but he quickly settled down to strike out the next three batters he faced and preserve the run-rule victory.

Nick Ciolli, who joined the Oilers from the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks, was 3-for-5 with two RBIs in his first game with the club. Ciolli was voted the top outfield prospect in the Alaska Baseball League this season.

Also for the Oilers, Belnome was 2-for-4 with two RBIs, Tre Dennis was 2-for-4 and Larson was 2-for-4 and got on base four times.

The Oilers next face the Clarinda A’s of Iowa on Tuesday at 1 p.m. The game can be heard on 920 AM.

Clarinda and Peninsula both have extensive histories at the NBC tournament, with Clarinda having knocked out the Oilers at last season’s tournament.

Clarinda won the NBC title in 1981, while the Oilers won in 1977, 1993 and 1994. The Oilers also had runner-up finishes in 1991 and 1999. The organization is tied for fifth in all-time appearances in the title game.

The Oilers were hit hard by injuries this season and the injury bug kept a couple of Oilers from making the trip to Wichita, although 20 of the 27 on the NBC roster did play with the Oilers this season.

Anthony Aliotti, the Oilers top hitter all season and also a skilled first baseman, had to go home due to an injury, as did Eric Riedel.

Young Bucs
By Brendan Joel Kelley

http://www.anchoragepress.com/site/basicarticle.asp?ID=755

It’s been a rough summer for the Anchorage Bucs.

In June, just before a stretch of 28 games in 26 days, the Alaska Baseball League club showed up to Mulcahy Stadium to find the team bus demolished by vandals. The windows, headlights, and taillights were smashed in; the engine and a battery compartment were set afire.

It was a total disaster. Money that the club had spent this spring and last year fixing it up went up in smoke. The loss was estimated at $25,000, and the team had to buy another bus. (Luckily, a former general manager of the ABL’s Peninsula Oilers owns a bus charter company, and had one to spare.)

Thus far, no one’s been nailed for the crime. “I don’t understand why someone would want to vandalize our bus like that,” says pitcher Gavin Logsdon, from University of Louisville, in Kentucky. “To put them in a pinch financially, and [the team’s] mood even, that’s unreal.”

And the same “summer” weather that’s been bringing everybody in Anchorage’s spirits down is even tougher on the Bucs. They’ve struggled to play on wet fields, suffered rain-outs, and endured poor attendance. Add to that a mid-season losing streak that’s kept the Bucs near the bottom of the ABL standings.

Still, the young men on the team—college players who didn’t want to spend any time away from the regimen—are good-spirited and happy to be in Alaska playing for the Bucs in what’s one of the premier summer wood-bat leagues in the nation. Despite the vandalism, despite the weather, despite the losses, the Bucs have soldiered on like the pros they hope to become soon, and individual players have racked up impressive stats.

The night of Friday, July 18—the first day of the annual Major League Baseball Scout Showcase—Drew Gagnier of Santa Cruz, California and local boy Chad Nading together pitched the sixth no-hitter in the club’s history. The last Bucs pitcher to rack one up was Jered Weaver, now a star pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

And Bucs pitcher Christian Bergman, who went to the College World Series last year with the UC Irvine Anteaters, was recently ranked tenth on a major scouting website’s rankings of summer league players (he’ll be eligible for the 2009 MLB draft, the site says).

“The real baseball fans won’t be able to see a more competitive sport than exists in the Alaska Baseball League, even in a major league park,” says Gary Lichtenstein, who holds the title of Director of Baseball Operations for the Bucs. Still, the sparse attendance—which affects the other five teams in the ABL as well—is worrisome. “At some point, the concern of the league is how do we maintain without a fan base to keep us going,” Lichtenstein says.

The Bucs have always been a scrappy team, out of necessity. Originally formed in 1980 as the Cook Inlet Bucs, led by coach Dennis Mattingly (who’s still with the Bucs as general manager), the team was part of the Anchorage Adult League. But Mattingly’s team was dominating the city league, so he strove to play games against Alaska Baseball League teams. It took some wrangling, especially with the preexisting Anchorage ABL team, the Glacier Pilots, but Mattingly fought the team’s way into the league by 1981.

Sportswriter Lew Freedman, formerly with the Daily News and now at the Chicago Tribune, chronicled the Bucs rise in his 2000 book Diamonds in the Rough, a history of baseball in Alaska. Since its publication, history continues to be made by the Bucs (and by players throughout the ABL, for that matter). In 2008’s MLB draft alone, 21 former Bucs were picked up. Besides the aforementioned Weaver, a number of Bucs have been making their mark in the major leagues, including Colorado Rockies pitcher Jeff Francis (“He wasn’t even spoken about before he played for us,” Lichtenstein says) and Baltimore Orioles pitcher Garrett Olson (“A scout came up to me in Wichita [where the National Baseball Congress holds its World Series] and said, ‘who is that guy?’” Lichtenstein says).

For the college kids who play for the Bucs—and the rest of the Alaska Baseball League—the experience is primarily about exposure. A great deal of the league’s prestige comes from the amount of attention it receives from major league scouts.

Hank Buenrotro, a pitcher from Lewis & Clark State, was offered a spot on the Bucs midway through this summer’s two-month season. He’d played in the annual Midnight Sun game up in Fairbanks as a member of a visiting Southern California junior college team. After he was back home in Santa Ana, California for about a week, one of his coaches from Lewis & Clark called and mentioned going to Alaska. Buenrotro was interested, and about ten minutes later he got a call from Mattingly, the Bucs’ general manager. Buenrotro was asked how quickly he could get up to Alaska, and he told Mattingly to just set a date. Mattingly said he’d like Buenrotro there that night, and within a couple of hours Buenrotro was at the airport.

“I was stoked,” Buenrotro says on a rare sunny Saturday afternoon during the scout showcase. “This is a really prestigious league up here. A lot of good ball players played here, a lot of big names. It just gives us players a chance for more exposure.” Buenrotro thinks he’s got a shot, at least to play in the minors, if he continues to play consistently. “With the scouts being here, it gives me a chance to showcase what I’ve got.”

The Bucs’ third baseman last year, Tommy Mendonca, was the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series this summer with his Cinderella-story Fresno State Bulldogs (Mendoza hit a record-tying four home runs and drove in eleven runs in the series)—which, in a way, sucks for the Bucs. He was expected back here to play another summer season. “It’s one of those things where you root for the kid and their team to win, but there’s another part of you that says, ‘hey, don’t go too far because we have a season going on,’” Lichtenstein says. After his CWS victory, Team USA’s collegiate team picked up Mendonca, and he’s been playing games around the world this summer. “It was a major blow to our team that he wasn’t on third base, but that’s what happens a lot,” Lichtenstein says.

That’s the risk for Bucs management. If a college kid is too good, or his college’s team is too good, you have to estimate the chances of the team going to the College World Series, which cuts into the ABL’s season. But then again, they do manage to corral talent, like Bergman, who’s playing his third summer with the Bucs.

“It’s like coming back to my summer home,” 20-year-old Bergman says. Despite the team’s record this year, Bergman and other Bucs players say that the wins aren’t necessarily what they’re here for.

“To me, if I go out and have a good outing and don’t get a ‘W,’ it doesn’t matter as much as if I were to get it but not pitch well,” says Ben Rosen, who’s from Chugiak and headed for the College of Idaho this fall. “You just have to go out and play your game; some days it works out, some days it doesn’t.”

The Bucs’ coaches don’t mess with a player’s style too much—if they did, they’d have to answer to the player’s college coaches, who the ABL teams like to keep a good relationship with. Quite a few college coaches have been Bucs themselves, or coached for the team, so the ties remain strong.

During the scout showcase, as the Bucs prepare to play the Athletes in Action Fire, there are a couple dozen middle-to-older aged guys clustered in the stands behind home plate, with cushions, notebooks, and speed guns. When Bucs pitcher Paul Bargas takes the mound, the scouts raise their Stalker Sport radar guns in unison, clocking the speed of his pitches. One of the Fire’s coaches comes by the group of scouts and tosses them a bag of Werther’s caramel candies, saying he wants to sweeten them up.

Dave Dangler, the Pacific Northwest scout for the Balitmore Orioles, is here for the second summer in a row. He and the others take notes, return to their offices, file reports into computer systems, and hope to find some talent. “Scouting is kind of like fishing,” he says, “you put your line in the water and you never know what you’ll catch.”

Although this is only his second year scouting the ABL, Dangler’s relationship with the Bucs stretches backs a long way. When he was a coach at Yavapai College in Arizona, Bucs’ GM Mattingly would send players who were looking for a warm weather school down there, and Mattingly’s son played for Dangler there.

Over the scout’s showcase weekend, the scouts seem relaxed, almost on vacation, flitting in and out of the stands. Meanwhile, if the Bucs players are anxious about the scouts watching them, they’re trying not to show it. “There might be [extra pressure] for some guys,” Rosen says. “But I don’t really think it’s an issue for our team. We just go out and play the same game we always do.”

“A lot of people would say [there’s more pressure],” Buenrotro says, “but for me it’s just like any other ball game.”

By the final game of the showcase weekend Sunday night, there are only about a half-dozen scouts left in the grandstand. Some of them are likely squeezing some real fishing into their Alaska trip, too.

A Bronx native who grew up two blocks from Yankee Stadium, Gary Lichtenstein’s been involved with the team since 1985. He was president of the Bucs’ board of directors for years (like all of the ABL teams, the Bucs are a non-profit entity) until about seven years ago when he decided give up his local psychology practice to snowbird and spend half of the year in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.

“When I started with the Bucs there was no cable TV, no sitting at home using the remote to watch any game you wanna see,” Lichtenstein says. “When the Bucs were established there was no Aces, there was no Wild; there were very few choices for live sports in Anchorage, or Alaska. So we benefited from that in attendance.”

Attendance has fallen steadily over the years at ABL games, despite free tickets to Bucs games that you can print out off of their website (www.anchoragebucs.com). That’s caused the team to rely on other sources of income for its operating budget. Although their season is only two months long, running the club—which falls to GM Dennis Mattingly—is pretty close to a year-long job. There are sponsors to gather, ads to sell, radio spots to create, and then you have the scouting and recruitment of the players.

For money, Lichtenstein says, “we have the sponsorships, major sponsors like Pepsi and Budweiser and Blockbuster, and the pulltabs are very important to us.” The Bucs have a concession stand and a beer stand, as well as a pulltab stand at the Dimond Center, and Tudor Road Bingo utilizes some of the Bucs’ gaming permits, including one for its gerbil races—valuable, because new permits don’t allow gerbil racing.

Lichtenstein says that changing the trend in attendance is a continuing issue, but neither the Bucs nor the other five ABL teams are in danger of extinction yet. “The ABL still keeps its status as one of, if not the best competitive summer leagues in the nation. The scouts still come up en masse.”

As the season draws to a close—there are only a few games left before everyone goes home—the players have put the stresses of the bus vandalism, the bad weather and this summer’s losses out of their minds. “I think of it as a chance to come up here and improve your game,” Bergman says. “Who doesn’t like to win? But I think of it as a chance to come up and get better.”

bjk@anchoragepress.com

FAIRBANKS — Brint Hardy of Athletes In Action was named the Alaska Baseball League Player of the Year on Monday, while Anchorage Glacier Pilots manager Bob Miller won Coach of the Year and Pilots’ shortstop Joe Scott earned the Gold Glove award.

Prior to Monday afternoon’s 9-3 loss to the Glacier Pilots at Growden Memorial Park, Hardy, an outfielder from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, was leading AIA in most hitting categories, batting .392 with four home runs, 21 RBI and a slugging percentage of .545. He’s also exceptionally fast, with 22 steals in 23 attempts.

Hardy also received the Silver Slugger honor and joining him on the All-Star first team were Fire teammate Tobias Streich at catcher, and Alaska Goldpanners Raoul Torrez (third base), Matt Newman (utility player) and Nick Ciolli (top prospect).

Heading into Monday, Streich, from West Virginia, had the second-highest putouts for the Fire, with 134 and he was hitting .206 with 16 RBI, seven doubles and two home runs.

Torrez, Newman and Ciolli have to wait until today to improve on their statistics because Monday night’s scheduled game against the Glacier Pilots was rained out.

Ciolli is the Goldpanners’ second-leading hitter, playing in all 32 games while batting .352 with a team-high 44 hits. The left fielder from Indiana State also leads the squad with nine stolen bases and seven doubles, and has contributed 11 RBI.

Newman. from Arizona State, ranks third among Goldpanners batters at .328 with 14 RBI and a home run. He was also named to All-Star second team for starting pitching, and on the mound, the righthander is 2-2 with a 3.41 earned-run average and 19 strikeouts in 31 2/3 innings.

Torrez, an Arizona State teammate of Newman, has a .930 fielding percentage and is hitting .227 with 14 RBI and a homer.

Also named to the second team were AIA shortstop Jonathon Merritt and designated hitter and utility player Kevin Winn, and Goldpanners outfielder Thomas Myers and relief pitcher Kyle Brule.

Miller has engineered a worst-to-first turnaround for the Pilots. A year after finishing 17-27, the Pilots are flourishing under Miller, who was with them five years ago.

They were 28-11 heading into Monday’s action, and have Wichita in their sights. Wichita, Kan., is where the National Baseball Congress World Series is held, and Miller led the Pilots to the 2001 championship and a 2002 runner-up finish.

Miller, who heads the baseball program at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo, Calif., had a 100-67 career ABL record entering this season.

Pilots rout Fire

The sixth-place Fire (12-19 ABL and 15-21 overall) fell 9-3 to the Glacier Pilots after tying the game twice.

Athletes in Action committed seven errors, including a throwing miscue in the top of the fourth inning for the game-winning run by Todd Sebek, putting league-leading Anchorage ahead 4-3.

The Glacier Pilots (19-10, 29-11) tacked on five more runs over the last two innings.

AIA knotted the score 1-1 in the bottom of the first and 3-3 in the third.

It was the Fire’s third game in two days at Growden, following Sunday’s split with the Peninsula Oilers.

AIA won 8-7 in the resumption of a seven-inning game that was called Saturday night after the fourth inning because of darkness. Peninsula took an 8-4 decision in the regularly-scheduled nine-inning game.

The Fire play host to the Glacier Pilots at Growden on Wednesday with a doubleheader which begins at 5 p.m., and in a regular season-ending single game at 7 p.m. Thursday.

The Pilots and the Goldpanners meet twice today at Growden, starting at 5 p.m. with a seven-inning game to make up Monday’s rainout, and it will be followed by the regularly-scheduled nine-inning game.

Tonight’s second game is Host Family Appreciation Night. The Goldpanners’ 2008 host families will be honored in a pregame ceremony, which also features a tribute to former Goldpanners radio announcer Lowell Purcell, who is suffering from cancer.

Some information for this report was compiled from the Anchorage Daily News