Posts in Sandlots
Elliott: Tucker Zdunich returns to Dawgs, ball departs
Elliott: Tucker Zdunich returns to Dawgs, ball departs

“There is not a better feeling in the game than winning the final game of the season.

And conversely, there is probably not a worse feeling than losing when you are a victory away from playing in the championship final.

Tucker Zdunich felt the latter after his Reinhardt Eagles dropped the final two games of the AVISTA NAIA World Series in Lewiston, Id. The Eagles won three straight before losing back-to-back games to the Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs. A win in either would have put them in the title game.

No matter now. What was then was then. The page in his diamond book had been turned and he returned home to where he has played the previous 10 years going all the way back to bantam -- the Okotoks Dawgs.”

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Bob Elliott, SandlotsBob Elliott
Kennedy: Historic Kendal ballpark a timeless, field of dreams
Kennedy: Historic Kendal ballpark a timeless, field of dreams

“When this grey-haired baseball has been walked into Harvey Jackson Memorial Park in the sleepy hamlet of Kendal recently - to see my son’s Kingston Thunder U-18 team play in a tournament – it was, to quote Yogi Berra, “like deja-vu all over again.”

I was a member of the 1972 Kingston Lions junior squad when I first played at the quaint old ballyard. Yet once I stepped down the narrow cement steps of the dugout, 52 years washed away in a flood of memories.

The ballpark in Kendal, 170 km west of Kingston in the Municipality of Clarington, is a throwback to yesteryear. It’s steeped in character and pleasant reminders of a time when baseball was king of summer sports in cities such as Kingston and in rural areas everywhere.”

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SandlotsPatrick Kennedy
Elliott: Wrubleski goes deep as Dawgs win streak ends in Lethbridge
Elliott: Wrubleski goes deep as Dawgs win streak ends in Lethbridge

“The uniform colour black is in at the Okotoks Dawgs Academy.

There are different teams of different colors but the one all teenagers want to wear is the Vanderbilt Commodores-style black uniforms.

There is a Dawgs Red team, a Dawgs White team, but THE most desired team is Dawgs Black.

So, how to explain the Okotoks Dawgs starting catcher on Friday night against the Lethbridge Bulls at Spitz Stadium?

Jacob Wrubleski played eight years at the Dawgs Academy. Only in his final year did he wear black. He wore red normally or white the other seven years.”

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Bob Elliott, SandlotsBob Elliott
Verge: Asis has ambitious plans, including Filipino night at Rogers Centre
Verge: Asis has ambitious plans, including Filipino night at Rogers Centre

“The friends he surrounded himself with growing up didn’t play baseball, but Ryan Asis drew all the inspiration he needed from the Toronto Blue Jays.

Standing in front of the TV as an eight-year-old, he’d come set like the pitchers, and swing for the fences inside his childhood home.

“I fell in love with it that way,” said Asis (Mississauga, Ont.).

Back then, he was an eight-year-old with a baseball dream, fueled by the golden years of the Blue Jays winning the World Series in 1992 and 1993. If the Jays hadn’t been good, he probably would have retired as a kid in the 90’s, he said, but they were on fire, and became Asis’s motivation.

Thanks to that incredibly talented roster, including manager Cito Gaston, he now has a dream of helping grow the game for other members of his Filipino community. He’ll be taking 40 players with the Philippines Baseball Group to the Blue Jays game against the Baltimore Orioles Wednesday at Rogers Centre as the director of the Canadian chapter.”

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SandlotsMelissa Verge