Just a couple of quick notes this morning. I caught an update on FLP, Brian Burres’ season today from Baltimore’s press notes. Nice to see that he’s both stuck with the big club and is having a good season. It probably doesn’t hurt that former Lynx manager, Dave Trembley, who had Brian here in Ottawa last season, is now managing the Baltimore squad.

                                                                           BRIAN BURRES (4-2, 3.38)

And here’s a bit of a head scratcher:

“Ottawa Lynx manager John Russell missed last night’s International League game at Frontier Field to watch his son pitch in Philadelphia.”

I’m presuming it’s not the same son who has been seen running the basepaths in Ottawa after home games….

And finally, every once in a while, a Lynx story in the local media slips by me - better late than never, here it is:

The waiting room for the show

Monday, June 18, 2007
 

CREDIT: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen The home team dugout at Lynx Stadium is decidedly utilitarian. The fence on the right is new this year, to protect players from hard hit foul balls that would otherwise drill into it.

The Ottawa Lynx Dugout, 300 Coventry Road.

When the Ottawa Lynx players leave the dressing room at the start of a home game, after putting something simple in their stomachs and taking care of their various superstitions, they walk along a blank concrete tunnel, down a set of stairs and through some factory-grade doors.

A turn left and they are in the dugout, and they step past the set of pigeon-holes that stores the bats, helmets and gloves and take a seat. It’s a thing the revolving door of 25 players and the various coaches on the roster, plus the shiny-faced bat boys, have been doing for 15 years, since the first pitch was thrown out on April 17, 1993, with 10,332 souls braving the weather to see baseball arrive back in town. In the seasons since, some of the players have kept right on walking from the other end of this dugout all the way to a similar one in the major leagues, where the big cheques roam.

The Lynx dugout is a one-bench, frill-less waiting room with a wall cut off, about 30 paces long and a couple of steps wide. A good shout, of which there are a few during a game, sets up an echo. The roof is flat and, as with any level surface in the western world these days, there is an advertisement on it. With not a poster or picture in sight, the only dugout decoration is the players themselves and their uniforms.

Seated on the bench, players must reside on a strip of aluminum polished by the seat of the team’s pants that must be cold as a snowbank in the early season even with the space heaters going. The players are below ground level. If they stand up and mount four steps that run like a mini-bleacher along the length of the dugout, they can lean on a fat blue fence rail and watch their batters swing through, smack or ignore a pitch.

The fence, which is made of netting set in a steel frame, is new this year; before it went up, the occasional foul ball would zing into the dugout like a hand grenade, scattering the players. Rarely, but it does still happen, a ball will padink off the lens of a TV or press camera, herded as they are in a little unguarded pen attached to the end of the dugout.

As the game gets underway, there is much movement within. A couple of players will slip off south of the dugout to put a radar gun on the opposing pitchers and report back on the foibles and flaws of the enemy’s batsmen.

On the roof, the team mascot, a man voluntarily entombed in a life-size cartoon costume, dances and whoops up the crowd, regardless of how thin it is these days. By the end of the game, the floor is littered with sunflower seeds and nary an empty tin of chewing tobacco, which is a no-no in the minor leagues because it’s a bad, cancerous example to the aspiring young sluggers in the crowd.

The swirl of the game is reflected in the dugout as it fills and empties in a tidal fashion as the innings progress.

Baseball goes way back in this town, actually, way, way back. It became popular in Ontario in the late 19th century, exported north by Union soldiers after the U.S. Civil War. Bells Corners had a village nine early in the 20th century that played an Ottawa team and one from Bristol in a regional championship. The Bristol team had a player with a beard so long it had to be tied up, something you certainly don’t see any more. They played in the field behind a church and Bells Corners won. The reward was supper at Moodie’s Hotel (John Moodie was the pitcher).

Over the years at the Lynx Stadium, the denizens of the dugout have had their share of moments to witness. They charged home plate when the team won the league championship in the ninth inning in 1995. In 1998, they observed Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo and Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea throwing out the first pitch. That same year the very popular, hard-grinding player F. P. Santangelo’s number was retired, likewise Jamey Carroll’s number in 2001, the very day of the huge blackout that shut down most of Ontario. Both sluggers graduated to the show, and large wooden replicas of their shirts are pinned to the back wall. And just last year the Lynx retired Jackie Robinson’s No. 42, with 2006 being the 60th anniversary of his season playing Triple-A ball in Montreal.

The talk around the mound these days is that the Lynx have been sold to out-of-towners, and this is their twilight season. As of writing, the sale has had a couple of legal foul balls, and has yet to be hit out of the park. So, the lights at Coventry Road might stay on next year, but it’s unlikely.

More likely, the team will go south, and Ottawa’s innate indifference to sports or arts will have claimed another victim, and Ottawa’s sporting history will include the missing Lynx. What the heck do you do with a used dugout?

Phil Jenkins is a local author whose most recent book is The Library Book: An Overdue History of the Ottawa Public Library.