Don’t they?

Oh, the irony.

Councillors Maria McRae and Bob Monette had earlier stated their support for a revitalization of Frank Clair Stadium, but Ms. Leadman isn’t sure. While she watched the stands fall with a “touch of sadness,” she’s not in any rush to build them again.

Ms. Leadman said, “the many attempts have been unsuccessful. There has to be interest from the community.”

The original Ottawa Rough Riders franchise folded in 1996. The team returned in 2002 as the Renegades and the ownership changed hands in 2005, and in 2006. Then CFL commissioner Tom Wright announced the club had ceased operations.

“I would step cautiously,” Ms. Leadman said. “That’s a big investment and once you build a stadium, it’s there.”

Aside from the multiple CFL franchises, she noted that the city also had trouble supporting its AAA baseball team, the Ottawa Lynx, which has since relocated to Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Emphasis added (not that I expect you needed it).  So the City (with a capital C) wipes out the southside stands shortly after discovering that they’re no longer structurally sound - readers will note that “shortly” is a relative term, particularly when the City is involved.  Ms. Leadman’s comments though are pretty much gospel from the City’s perspective: the city had trouble supporting it’s AAA baseball team.  In fact it was the City of Ottawa that had the most difficulty supporting it’s AAA team.  As a politician, it’s prudent to look at the facts - and the fact of the matter is the CFL franchise has failed in this city twice, and has had several owners, some of whom were unmitigated disasters.  It may be unwise to invest a significant amount of taxpayers money into a new stadium (although I have no doubt that they will study the matter to death through the investment of a significant amount of taxpayers money into consultants).  But bringing Lynx Stadium into the discussion does nothing to strengthen Ms. Leadman’s argument.  First, the stadium is paid for and has been for several years.  Second, unlike Lansdowne Park, it hasn’t suffered from the City’s neglect: Lynx Stadium isn’t falling down and shouldn’t for the foreseeable future.  And finally, due to the hard work of Miles Wolff, Bruce Murdock, councillors Bob Monnette and Rob Jellett, and the unselfish nature of Lynx owner Ray Pecor, even though the Lynx left there’s still baseball being played at the stadium. 

It’s an interesting study in contrasts, Lansdowne Park and Lynx Stadium.  For one, they used dynamite to begin to destroy it.  For the other…, well, you already know.

And we’re back - quick HOF report and photos in the next couple of days.  A few weeks back I promised an update on 2006 FLP Val Majewski.  Val was in Ottawa during the days of the Baltimore affiliation, the season after surgery for a torn left labrum - unfortunately, Val’s a southpaw. 

After coming back in 2006, Majewski had a lackluster season with the new triple-A affiliate in Norfolk. He was moved to left field and first base to alleviate some stress on his throwing arm and his bat speed, never a strong suit, did not fully return. Majewski got a surprise assignment to double-A Bowie to start 2007, but earned a promotion after hitting .295/.358/.410 in 332 at bats.

He told ITW “Last year, my shoulder was affecting my swing. I was looking at videotape and saw that I was favoring it a bit. I didn’t realize it up there at the plate, but the video showed tentativeness. Once I realized I could trust my shoulder strength, I tried to mimic what I had done successfully in the past.”

Offense

Two full years after his labrum surgery, Majewski’s bat speed has still not fully recovered. He was off to a slow start in Bowie, but hit .310 in June and .353 in July to earn a promotion. Unfortunately, he flopped again down the stretch for the Norfolk Tides.

Tired of waiting for the arm/shoulder to come around, Baltimore cut him loose and Val found himself playing in the independent Atlantic League with the Newark Bears (and fellow FLP, Keith Reed).  But just a few months into the short indy season, Val was signed by the Houston Astros organization and is playing for their AA affiliate, the Corpus Christi Hooks.  Check that, he’s now with the Round Rock Express, Houston’s AAA team and it’s not hard to see why:

In his first three games with the Express, he’s hitting .273 with a homerun.  This of course, is the stuff that does our heart good at the UOLB - guys going out, working hard and proving the naysayers wrong.

The resident blogger’s currently on a long overdue vacation.  Unfortunately for my girls, the week will still be dominated by baseball - hopefully mixed in with some shopping and a little time by the pool.

Hall of Fame photos will follow…

Tough news out of Syracuse: FLP Kane Davis was released.  Kane was having an up-down kind of season, with a record of 6-7 and an ERA over four.  The final start came on June 24 against the Mudhens and it wasn’t pretty: two innings pitched, allowing nine hits and nine earned runs.

Hopefully Kane can find his stuff again, soon, and hook up with another team.  Which is a nice segue to FLP Zack Segovia.  As you may recall, the blog recently noted that Zack was picked up by the Washington Nationals and he appears to have regained some of the promise that the Phillies drafted him for.

Around this time a year ago, Zack Segovia was pitching in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, specifi-cally Tripe-A Ottawa. Just three months earlier Segovia was on the Phillies’ Opening Day roster and would make his major league debut not long after.
A second-round pick in 2002, Segovia now finds himself with the Potomac Nationals, trying to work his way back into the graces of the baseball gods after a precipitous spiral down through Philadelphia’s system.
However, in the Nationals’ organization Segovia seems to have reversed his movement, pitching first in the Gulf Coast League before heading to Low-A Hagerstown.
Now with his fourth team of the season, Segovia led the P-Nats to a 1-0 win in his Carolina League debut, the first of two seven-inning affairs against Salem Monday.
An hour, five-minute rain delay held up the start of the second game, a 5-1 Potomac loss in Jhonny Nunez’s 17th start of the year. Nunez fell to 2-8 on the year with the defeat.
But the story yesterday was Segovia seemingly finding the corner and turning it with Potomac.

Here’s hoping that the elbow and his control are all the way back, and back for good.

Potomac splits doubleheader

The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that FLP, J.A. Happ will make his first start for Philly in ‘08 tonight against the New York Mets and (gulp) one Johan Santana. There’d been a great deal of speculation about who would fill the open roster spot in Philadelphia after Brett Myers was optioned to the Triple-A city that shall remain nameless.

The Phillies won’t really need a fifth starter until Saturday when they face the Mets. The problem with that though is that Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer were set to pitch the first two games against New York and the Phillies might want to keep it that way. The option would be to find someone to make a start against the Braves Thursday night in Atlanta.

J.A. Happ ( 5-6, 3.54 ) has been pitching well at Lehigh Valley (ed: Triple A city that shall remain nameless) and it’s long been whispered that he might be the next one to get the call. One issue with bringing Happ into the rotation is that he would add another left-hander, giving them three left-handers in the rotation. Happ was 3-1, 2.51 in five starts in June and last pitched on Saturday, putting him on a schedule that would have him pitch next on Thursday.

It’s not likely that Happ’s new teammate, Kris Benson, who made a rehab start with the IronPigs on Monday is ready to pitch in the big leagues just yet. Benson needs to keep picking up some velocity, which will come as he adds arm strength, but for now, he’s not likely to be a candidate. The only other Triple-A pitcher who would really warrant any consideration would be lefty Brian Mazone ( 8-6, 3.28 ) who has been steady all season, even through the early season struggles that the IronPigs (ed: team formerly known as the Ottawa Lynx) faced when they lost 23 of their first 25 games.

The pitching staff is pretty well loaded at Double-A Reading if the Phillies want to dig deeper into the minor league system. With Antonio Bastardo on the DL, Carlos Carrasco ( 5-7, 4.18 ) would seemingly be the best pick out of the Double-A ranks. The bad news is that Carrasco is coming off his worst month of the season and has seen his ERA jump over a full run in the past month. Carrasco last pitched on Friday night, putting him on schedule to pitch again Wednesday night, but pushing him to Thursday would be no problem at all.

The Phillies could put together a “bullpen game” and just run a bunch of relievers out to the mound for a game either against Atlanta or New York, but that’s not exactly a great situation. If they do, Steve Green ( 4-0, 3.08 ) could be a nice addition to the bullpen and he did make one spot start for Lehigh Valley and gave them four very strong innings.

Finally, the Phillies could go outside the organization. A phone call to Shawn Chacon? Not likely, although it’s not out of the question. Maybe the Phillies will finally pull the trigger to get one of the starters out there - Randy Wolf, Dan Haren, Ian Snell, Ben Sheets or a list of others - who have been floated on the trade market early on.

You will recall of course, that initially the thinking was that guys like J.A., Zack Segovia and Joe Bisenius (among others) had poor seasons in Ottawa because of the weather.  Turns out all three were playing with fairly significant injuries.

Nice to see J.A. get his shot on the 4th of July.

“This could be your golden opportunity…”

Oh ye of little faith:

The Lynx diaspora: It’s quite likely the 2007 Lynx’s contribution to the IL squad for the Triple-A All-Star Game will go completely unnoticed — Ottawa’s erstwhile boys of summer will have four representatives (really; OK, not really) in the July 16 game in Louisville.

Joe Thurston, the second baseman and 2-hole hitter through most of last season’s Long Goodbye, has been spanking the ball for Pawtucket (.324 average, tops in the circuit) and will make an IL record-tying fourth all-star appearance. Catcher Jason Jaramillo, the Lynx rep in last season’s game, is headed back along with his Lehigh Valley IronPigs batterymate, left-hander Brian Mazone . Closer Brian Sanches is the Columbus Clippers representative. Crazy. Maybe they just needed to stay one more season?

That’s a “quick hit” for tonight (blogger: The house is being torn up err… reno’d starting tomorrow).  Coming soon: FLP update on Val Majewski.

You’d think I’d have a little more time for blogging, but as is often the case during a three (or four) day weekend, there’s actually a little less.

Quick FLP update - Danny Sandoval began his season with the Buffalo Bisons, but has played the last 28 games with the Syracuse Chiefs.  His fortunes in Syracuse have taken a most decided turn for the better - in 43 games with the Bisons, he hit .247.  In a Chiefs jersey?  He’s raised his average by 74 points to .321 and his OBP 63 points to .372.  His slugging percentage is a whopping 200 points better in Syracuse.

One of the last remaining FLPs still doing duty with the big club in Philadelphia is Clay “Air Miles” Condrey.  Funny, for all the time he spent here in Ottawa, I’m still going through my “less extensive than John Bradley’s” photo archive for a single photo of Clay.   I’ll keep looking, but meanwhile, it seems that Clay is about to log more time on a plane:

PHILADELPHIA — Entering a game with the bases loaded can be a nervous time for any reliever, and the Phillies’ Clay Condrey is no exception.

Making the right pitch in such a spot is nothing compared to what he’ll experience during Monday’s day off. Condrey headed home to Navasota, Texas — about 3 1/2 hours from Arlington, where the team finished a three-game series — to witness the birth of his first child.

It doesn’t matter that his wife will be doing all the work.

“Right now, I’m nervous more than anything,” he said. “She’s having a C-section. I’m sure they do those things all the time, just not with my wife.”

Condrey has received permission to spend two days with his wife, Elizabeth, and his son, and is expected to rejoin the team Thursday in Atlanta.

Best wishes to Clay and family and congratulations on the new arrival.

Finally, a quick Q+A from the Philadelphia Inquirer with Clay Condrey - figured we’d go with the “breaking news” story first.

Q: It’s Game 7 of the World Series and you recover So Taguchi’s walkoff home run in the bullpen. Are you giving the ball to Taguchi or Cooperstown, or are you Mientkiewicz-ing it?

- Kevin K., Mt. Laurel, N.J.
A: I give it to So. It’s not mine. It would mean something more for him to tell stories.

Q: How did you avoid suspension during triple-A Portland’s brawl with a Las Vegas 51’s fan in 2003 [every member of the Portland Beavers except Condrey was suspended after they chased a fan into the stands after he threw a soft squeezeball at Tagg Bozied]?

- John T., Montclair, N.J.
A: It was after the game and I was inside icing my shoulder. I was starting that year, so I was inside. They didn’t come into the clubhouse for about five or 10 minutes. I had the ice and I was sitting on the couch. I went to take it off and started going outside, but they were coming in whooping and hollering and I realized I was in my underwear so I wasn’t going outside. I didn’t really know what was going on until they came in.

Q: Being an avid outdoorsman, do you, like “Sack Master” in the movie Wedding Crashers, hunt quail? - Greg P., Hoboken, N.J.
A: I don’t hunt quail. I hunt deer, dove, duck. That’s it. Rabbits. Whatever I can eat.

Q: Squirrels?

A: Squirrels, too. It’s good stuff.

Q: Have you had a raccoon?

A: Yeah, I was forced to eat one once. It’s very greasy and very tough. I’ve had armadillo one time. It’s the same type of deal. The armadillo is probably the worst thing I’ve eaten. We ate it because we shot it, and anything we shoot we’re supposed to eat.

Okay, now finally.  FOTL, the Vermont Lake Monsters sit in first place in the very tight Stedler division with a record of 7-6.

Recent WordPress changes have me decidedly less than impressed.  When you have to struggle with the program to get it to handle the simplest request, something’s wrong.  So for tonight, I’ll take the easy way out with a little FLP video.

More coming as I work out the kinks…

Scrolling through Baseball America’s weekly report on MiLB transactions yielded up a couple of finds - most notably, blog favorite and FLP Zack Segovia has been picked up by the Washington Nationals.  Best wishes to Zack with his new club.

Quick note on Gary - our Taiwan “affiliate”, Hansioux has an update:  Gary’s back with the Bears.  He’s also posted a quick vid of a pre-game warm-up.   Ummm…, different. 

 Gary also dropped by the blog a week or so ago and was kind enough to give out his email for anyone who had any questions -  burnhambaseball21@hotmail.com.

Finally for today, quick update on Keith Reed.  Keith disappeared for a short period of time in 2007 - we finally tracked him back to Japan before he signed with the Newark Bears of the Independent Atlantic League.  Here’s a quick interview conducted last summer after he returned stateside.

ITW: You were one of the Orioles first round draft picks in the 1999 draft; were there any other teams interested in drafting you that year?

Keith Reed: I took batting practice in Three Rivers [Stadium] for the Pirates before the draft. Dana Brown was the scout and they talked about selecting me with their pick in the first round.

ITW: What expectations did the Orioles communicate to you after they drafted you?

Keith Reed: They didn’t really give me any specific expectations. I wanted to go out and try to improve every year and get to the big leagues in a few years. It took a while for me to develop and I didn’t develop as fast as they hoped. I finally got my chance in `05.

ITW: The Orioles left you exposed to the Rule 5 Draft in 2001. Were you hoping to get taken by another team?

Keith Reed: Anything to get to the big leagues, that’s what ran through my mind. I ended up back at AA, but I can only worry about things I can control.

ITW: How do you prepare for a game?

Keith Reed: Basically, I try to get loose, shag balls in batting practice, stretch and run a bit. If I have faced the pitcher before, I look back at what he got me out on, or, if someone else knows what he has, we talk about what he has; I ask people who know him.

ITW: What would the scouting report on you say?

Keith Reed: It would say ‘a 5 tool guy’. I have the ability and the work ethic. I have the ability to get back into affiliated ball and the ability to compete at the big league level.

ITW: In 2005, the Orioles called you up to take Sammy Sosa’s place on the roster. How did that feel?

Keith Reed: It felt pretty good. Friends told me I would be the answer to a trivia question. I would have like to stick around a while longer, though.

ITW: It seemed like you were starting to put it all together for the Orioles the last few seasons. Do you have any regrets you aren’t still with them?

Keith Reed: I had some good years the last few seasons, but I didn’t know if I was going to be an organizational guy with them or not. I wanted to test the waters to see if there were any better opportunities there for me. It didn’t seem like the Orioles were interested in having me back.

ITW: Is there any one player in the majors you have tried to model your game after?

Keith Reed: I have always like Vlad [Guerrero]; I wear #27, play right field, don’t wear batting gloves. He has power and speed as well. He is a good guy who is never in trouble. I have never met him.

ITW: Compare the major leagues, minor leagues and the independent leagues.

Keith Reed: Independent & AAA are pretty much the same. There are a lot of guys here with big league experience. I don’t have like 4 years in the big leagues so I really can’t compare them.

Just a “quick hit” post for today.  Over the weekend, Zak’s team won their division in the East Nepean Little League.  Somewhat convoluted pitching rules meant “the boy” couldn’t pitch on consecutive days - he threw the maximum two innings in their Saturday semi-final game, striking out six and allowing one unearned run.  Good, creative coaching allowed the Athletics to spread out their remaining pitchers for the rest of Saturday and Sunday’s final.

Slapping an opposite field double to right field in Sunday’s final.

The 2008 East Nepean Major Nationals Champs!

Number 1!