Well last week I was on vacation and didn’t get much of a chance to provide my input on the site or to write this blog and boy oh boy was it an eventful week to miss out on!  It seems the topics dujour have been umpires, perfect games, 9th inning meltdowns and so we begin with with the Perfecto’s, namely Doc.

This Blog and our site as well does not surround Major League Baseball however it does focus on the game itself and with regard to the game itself; Roy Halladay’s perfect game was magic and was one of those moments where what’s great about the game of baseball was showcased! My copngratulations go out to Doc, there is no one that deserves the accolades that go along with it more than he and it was only a matter of time before it happened.

But as we move on to some of the other topics, part of what is great about the game as well is some of its unpredictability and it’s human factor. Last night, and unfortunately the night before the Jays had meltdowns in the 9th inning and the fan base exploded. Cito commented that ‘someday they will get 3 outs in the ninth inning’. I have a real problem with that kind of attitude but I understand that it comes out of frustration. However it’s all part of baseball, it happens all the time from Rookie Ball to the Major Leagues and as a team, especially a perrenial winner you have to move on and stay positive. The same thing goes for bad umpiring calls. You can’t go changing game traditions and reversing calls because now with Twitter, Blogs and Facebook you can hear the complaints louder and clearer. It again is all part of this great game.

As a baseball fan I love the passion I see, but staying positive is key to success in this game! I encourage everyone to get out to a few games this summer and appreciate how great this game is. Good luck to all teams in tournaments this weekend!

Bakes

You know it has been a great learning experience launching Canaball.com. I have met a lot of people with the same goal of helping Amateur Baseball thrive once again in Canada and I continue to meet new people with the same goal on a daily basis. But the group of people I have met with the most passion for for helping youth enjoy baseball on top of helping them stay fit and active is Jays Care Foundation!

I have not been asked to write this blog, or influenced in any way other than astounded personally at how hard Jays Care works at helping Toronto Baseball youth enjoy the game and underpriviledged youth with the means to play the game they love! Three cheers for Jays Care!

You may have seen their logo on our page and our Jays Care fundraising page. We need more programs like this to help Canadian youth get into the game of baseball. Jays Care is just one step in that process. In Canada we have hundreds of programs that make youth Hockey possible but when it comes to baseball, the playing field for organizations who help is sparse at best.  The foundation of restoring baseball in Canada begins with the ability of kids to play the game.  It’s hard to love a game you can’t afford to play.

For anyone reading this blog who has played this game, you know what the feeling is like to step out on that field from the bench, it is like moving from one world to another. Even in house league once you step on that field only baseball matters. It’s a unique feeling that kids to deserve to have and enjoy. Baseball is a fabulous game that takes intelligence, skill and athletic ability. A huge combination when referring to what we want most out of our kids. Jays Care is dedicated to making this game happen for so many kids who otherwise wouldn’t have that chance. Canaball.com urges you to support Jays Care and other foundations who support the development of Youth baseball in Canada. Together we can bring this game back to the forefront of Canadian Summer sport and help youth all at the same time!

Bakes

Well it is time to embark on the 2010 season in Canadian amateur baseball! Some teams have been working out since February, other associations just had their first meetings and equipment pick up this week.  In Ontario, many of the MLB pitch, hit, run and evaluation programs were washed out or shortened last weekend and there is no truer sign of summer than the baseball wash out! But the teams will prevail and the season will begin!

We have been operating for a couple of weeks now at CanaBall.com and we have received some really positive feedback both on the site and on what we are all about!  The site will be an evolution as far as programming goes. For those who have visited more than a few times you’ll have noticed a difference almost each time you visited. This will continue for a while as we find our sweet spot, but for now we are cooking with gas!  We have tournaments listed, support from Associations nation wide and growing interest from the industry. We are very excited about the opportunities available to help Canadian Baseball and look forward to serving you! Send us anything Canadian baseball and we will support you!

Well May 1st is coming and going without our site fully operational and that is mainly due to the fact that today was Baseball evaluation day for my son and well that takes priority. So now the launch will be delayed to Monday.  It has been an interesting first month of establishment for Canaball.com and a great learning experience.  We started out by announcing what the site was all about on a the BlueJays.com fan forum and giving the address with the site not up yet, only to be turn around and be called spammers and essentially scoffed at. Learning experience for sure! We continued on to developing our blog, twitter page and Facebook page (to which I must admit will see it’s shortcomings for a while). We are proud to have 21 followers on Twitter and counting! Thanks for following!

Also this month as we get closer to official launch we contacted our first leagues and featured our first association of the week on the site, They are home to the worlds largest baseball by the way…check it out on the site!  We found some great articles recently posted about London’s Eager Beaver Baseball and their struggles to get a new field on the go for the players.  A lot has happened and the EBBA situation is a nice seguay to the topic of the day…being greeted by a storm.

Yes a thunderstorm threw a giant wrench in this mornings evaluation day! I couldn’t help but dream up this blog at that point. As we embark on month two of our existence we really must task ourselves with being baseball weather people and monitor the storm patters of Canadian baseball to figure out how our site can truly help establish Canadian Baseball and bring it to the forefront again.  The storms are heavy that we have come accross already. From dramatically lower attendance at Jays games, to associations losing their home diamonds we can see that aleviating the storm will not be an easy task and will not happen in 2010.

However in these instances there are a lot of positive examples of improving attitutde. The Blue Jays for example have a lot to cheer for this year! They may not won the division but these guys have as their early promotions insisted “Hustle and Heart” and they should be proud of ending April 12-12 on the season so far considering the predictions had them sitting where Baltimore sits right now. On the local association level Eager Beaver in London has formed it’s first ever Parent’s association to raise funds for it’s new fields! This league has been around forever! Now they have a parents association. Progress is out there! We can do this! But it will take work and our own version of “Hustle and Heart” to weather this storm.

Bakes 

While a lot of the competitive teams and leagues are already out utilizing the nice warm weather to get there practice in and in fact some of which were indoors as early as February getting their work in, the rest of the leagues, including house league are about to hit the base paths for the first time this season beginning this weekend with the remaining teams and leagues out on the May 1st weekend.

This is a great time in Canada! The leaves are almost out, the fields are groomed and the players are ready! So where are the scouts, the bloggers getting excited about Canadian prospects, the rumours of tournaments galore about to begin in earnest accross the country? Well they are out there, but not the way they should be.

Let’s look at some of Canada’s brightest talent to hit the big leagues recently… Jason Bay, Morneau…and many others. These guys started building their baseball careers when baseball in Canada was hugely popular and people jammed in their living rooms to the Coca Cola song that was all about the Jays…you remember don’t you? “do-do-do-do-da-do-do-do” In the Sky Dome (now Rogers Centre) 50,000 fans danced to “Ok Blue Jays” and even current manager/ then manager Cito Gaston urged us to order the Jays pager that kept us up to date on the Jays scores.  Nowadays the pigeons in Rogers Centre do a better job of dancing the Ok Blue Jays song then the few remaining in attendance do.

So what happened? Well the hundreds of thousands of articles on this subject will speculate on that, the Blogs still touch on it. What I am concerned with is how we fix it, how we bring it back. I agree with the Jays perspective that if they scout and draft like crazy they can bring a winning team back out to Rogers Centre, but will the lack of Canadian presence hurt the team? This is what I struggle with.  Not that Canadian presence was high in the golden days either, Rob Butler and Paul Quantrill come to mind for the Jays with Larry Walker out there somewhere. But times they are a changing, this time it needs to be done differently. Let me ask you this…why are so many Canadian youths interested in Hockey? Is it because of tradition? Maybe. Is it because they like freezing their butts off out there? Doubt it….is it because if they play it themselves they have a hope in hell of making an NHL team, or at the very least the minors? You bet!

The remaining baseball fans need to impress upon the Jays as well as our youth that they can make it in baseball because someone will grant them at least the time of day. Now we all realize you have to be pretty damn good to be granted the time of day. I am not trying to create false hope here. But if we can feature the teams, the leagues, the players, the highlights, the lowlights and struggles of Canadian baseball maybe we can drum up enough noise that people will take notice.

Enter Canaball.com, we intend to create that noise! Will we fall and scrape our knees along the way? Of course we will (see the announcement of the site on the BlueJays.com message boards, when the site was not even up yet and some saw the announcement as spam, trust us when we say we chalked that one up as the first oops).  But if it’s out of the box we intend to do it and we intend on making Canadian Baseball recognizable. We know that Baseball Canada does a great job, so do the Jays various community outreach programs but in many ways that is limited to the GTA. I bet there are some pretty good ball players in North Bay that haven’t been discovered yet! Tell us about them! If it’s a video we’ll post it, a picture, we’ll post it, get it to us and let’s get it visible!

Various portions of the site are or will become active this week so please check in. Parents if your child made a dazzling play or is having a great start to the year these are the stories we want to hear! Get them in any way you can, together we’ll find away to get attention! Welcome to CanaBall.com!

Bakes 

What better time to write the first CanaBall.Com blog than on the very day Canada’s team comes home to roost for another fantastic summer of baseball?

That team of course is your Toronto Blue Jays and they come in looking good so far and judging by the first pictures of the new turf surface so to is the field! So here comes the Blog then on this sunny day for a Home Opener…

How do we get Canadian ball players back out to the field?  Think about your city for a moment, how many diamonds are disappearing? Does it get harder and harder to find enough players for the teams?  Are your cities removing funding in favour of soccer and football fields? Is your local league struggling to afford equipment?  This among many other issues in Canadian Baseball is becoming a common problem.  Enter us…CanaBall.com.

We are not coming on-line May 1st to toot our own horn or find ways to make ourselves millions of dollars. Nope, we are coming on-line to do our part in obliterating the deterioration of Canadian Baseball. The slate is wide open on what we can do! While we launch May 1st we will be researching ways that sit both in and outside the box to showcase Canadian Baseball, both it’s teams and players. We will focus on first rate facilities like Labatt Park in London, On. that go virtually unnoticed in the baseball world and yet are clear web gems in themselves, but highly underused. Your ideas on showcasing Canadian Baseball are always welcome!  How do you think we can re-open Canada to baseball?

Stay tuned for the official site launch and until then keep your eye out for us, we’re going to make some noise.

Until May 1st…