Elliott: Your thoughts should be with Clyde Inouye, BC Premier League’s Sir John A

Parksville’s Clyde Inouye helped found the BC Premier League

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

My first trip to Vancouver was in 1993 when the Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, Detroit Tigers and Toronto Blue Jays played a pre-season high-school style tournament before Toronto opened the season in Seattle.

I remember sitting in Cito Gaston’s office at BC Place discussing newly acquired OF Darrin Jackson, when Sparky Anderson, smoking a pipe, knocked on the door. He had been watching the Brewers-Mariners game before the Tigers-Jays game.

“Cito, no stealing in our game, you OK with that? Edgar Martinez just had a serious injuring trying to steal second,” Anderson said. Gaston nodded yes.

It wasn’t until years later that I was invited to BC again by Mike Kelly, who was running a clinic at the Langley Events Centre. He had me booked for a Friday flight to Vancouver and an early flight home Sunday. That was too quick a turnaround for me. I asked him to add a day at the start or the end of the trip.

So, Kelly picked me up on a Thursday afternoon at the airport. “Where are we going?”

Kelly replied “You’re from Kingston, the home of Sir John A. Macdonald, I’m going to introduce you to the BC Premier League’s Sir John A and show you one of our best parks,” said Kelly, a former coach with the North Delta Blue Jays. Ari Mellios and Kelly coached future major leaguers 1B Justin Morneau (New Westminster, BC), LHP Jeff Francis (Surrey, BC) and LHP James Paxton (Ladner, BC) as high schoolers.

Off we drove north to Parksville and met Clyde Inouye, who Kelly introduced as “the Premier League’s Sir John A.” Over the years credit for the first and most successful best-against-best league in Canada expanded to include founders Walt Burrows, Lowell Hodges and the late Dave Wallace, as well as Inouye.

Former Parksville Royals coach Dave Wallace.

After viewing the Parksville park we headed for lunch with Wallace, a wonderful man, who the Canadian Baseball Network named its Coach of the Year award after last season. The park is now called Inouye-Wallace Field. We have met a lot of great amateur coaches over the years, but we chose to name the award after Wallace.

Then, it was south to Nanaimo’s Serauxmen Stadium and to Victoria.

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You might wonder where we are headed here.

Well, it’s back to the west coast.

The Premier League’s Sir John A should be in the thoughts of every baseball man from coast to coast right now.

Inouye was diagnosed with some artery issues during a routine annual physical last fall and is now recovering from a successful five-hour bypass surgery in Victoria last month. Now, he is recovering from a post-op stroke and is in Nanaimo General working through a rehab program.

After retiring, he was very active and enjoyed golfing almost every day since retirement. He will be in the Nanaimo rehab unit for some time as he works on his mobility.

“As we know, Clyde is a very determined person,” said former Premier League president Ted Hotzak. “We all hope that he will recover over the coming months and be able to hit the links this summer. I’m sure his friends in the baseball community would like to know of Clyde’s status.

“He would love to receive messages from you.”

Would elite league be as popular in Canada without BC’s Sir John A? We doubt it.