2024 Program 8 by vancanadians

Q&A WITH C’S CATCHER

ROBERT BROOKS

Meet the team behind our team as we feature those who work around the clock to ensure your best ballpark experience. 14 2024 PROMOTIONAL SCHEDULE

This is your chance to map out the entire summer using our vibrant and colourful Promo Schedule that shows you every single moment this season. A great tool to plan out the games you absolutely HAVE to see this season.

17 ROAD TO THE SHOW

Climbing through the Blue Jays system.

18 TEAM ROSTERS

22 MEET THE 2024 VANCOUVER CANADIANS

This year’s squad is looking to bring home Northwest League Championship #5! Let’s meet this year’s ‘Boys of Summer’!

30 Q & A WITH ROBERT BROOKS

Each week, Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium PA announcer and de facto team historian Niall O’Donohoe catches up with a different C’s player. The latest C’s Chat is with 2024 Vancouver Canadians catcher Robert BRooks

36 A LIFETIME OF PERSISTENCE BROUGHT JIM LEYLAND TO THE HALL OF FAME

Tears welling in her eyes, Katie Leyland explained exactly why she was happy to see her husband receive baseball’s highest honor.

40 ADRIÁN BELTRÉ’S PASSION FOR THE GAME TURNED AN INJURY INTO A PATH TO COOPERSTOWN

The bone spurs in Adrián Beltré’s left ankle were so painful in 2004 that he limped noticeably around the bases on many of the career-high 48 home runs he hit for the Los Angeles Dodgers that season. He needed surgery that October to remove them.

50 TODD HELTON SHOWCASED A HALL OF FAME WORK ETHIC OVER 17 BIG LEAGUE SEASONS

Beyond the .316 career batting average, five All-Star appearances and four Silver Slugger Awards, dozens of small interludes helped define Todd Helton’s 17-year tenure with the Colorado Rockies.

54 CANADIANS TO REACH THE MAJOR LEAGUES

A list of alumni who have gone to 'The Show'

56 HOW TO SCORE THE BASEBALL GAME

A Scorekeeping 101.

58 MEET OUR MASCOTS!

The Canadians feature not one, not two, but seven amazing mascots all with their own claim to fame! Take a look at the colourful characters that keeps fans smiling all summer long.

60 KIDS FUN PAGE

Fun kids activities

8,000,000+ Kilometers | 500,000+ Passengers Every year | We're going your way

Whatever the event, no matter how large, Universal has the experience and the fleet to make it happen in comfort and style. From customer shuttles, team buses, student transportation, to major conventions and multi-departure tour programs, we do it all.

FRIDAYS

Gates Open at Noon. First Pitch 1:05 BUY TICKETS

The Vancouver Canadians Baseball League is looking for your help this season. Your assistance will help more than 300 local children between the ages of 6-11 learn a number of life skills on the diamond including teamwork, fair play and how to develop conﬁdence and pride. If you would like to make a donation to Vancouver Canadians Baseball Foundation, please go to www.vancouverfoundation.ca/vancouvercanadians and click on the donate button.

THANK YOU for supporting the Vancouver Canadians Baseball Foundation and Vancouver Canadians Baseball League. Because of your generosity, we can move forward and bring a summer of fun and memories to children from right here in our own neighbourhoods.

FRONT OFFICE STAFF

JAKE KERR

CHAIR OF VANCOUVER CANADIANS BASEBALL

Born and raised in Vancouver, Jake Kerr attended the University of British Columbia before completing his MBA in Economics and Finance at the University of California at Berkeley. A Canadian business icon, Mr. Kerr has been the recipient of the Order of Canada and Order of British Columbia for his remarkable contributions to both our country and province.

Taking ownership of the Canadians back in 2007, Mr. Kerr has led the Vancouver Canadians Baseball Club to eight (8) franchise attendance records, multiple Larry McPhail Awards for excellence within the Northwest League, and Minor League Baseball’s most coveted accolade - the John H. Johnson President’s Trophy, awarded to MiLB’s most complete franchise.

JEFF MOONEY CHAIR OF THE VANCOUVER CANADIANS BASEBALL FOUNDATION

In addition to his valuable contributions to the Vancouver Canadians, Jeff Mooney is Chairman Emeritus and a major shareholder of A&W Food Services of Canadians Inc. Today, A&W is a strategy-driven organization that has grown to over 1,000 locations across Canada. A&W has been recognized as one of the 50 Best Managed Companies in Canada for the past 10 consecutive years, and in 2008, it was honoured to become an official member of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Platinum Club.

Mr. Mooney is an alumnus of both the University of Saskatchewan and Harvard University Graduate School of Business. In 2003, Mr. Mooney received Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee Medal and three years later was inducted into the Restaurant Hall of Fame(2006). In 2016, Mr. Mooney was inducted into the B.C. Business Laureates Hall of Fame and this year received the Order of Canada

ALLAN BAILEY GENERAL MANAGER

Allan Bailey has been with the Vancouver Canadians since 2007 and was appointed General Manager on September 5th, 2018 after spending the previous seven seasons as the organization's Assistant General Manager.

Allan has led several departments during his tenure with the C's including the Nat Bailey Stadium Box Office and its ticket operations as well as his more recent efforts in the Team Operations handling everything from player housing and travel right through to Information Technology (IT).

Born in Victoria, B.C., Allan was raised on the North Shore and up on the Sunshine Coast. Allan completed his education at McGill University while playing five seasons with the McGill Redbirds baseball program. Prior to university, Allan played for the North Shore Twins of the B.C. Premier League.

STEPHANI ELLIS

ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER 2024 is Stephani’s tenth season with the Vancouver Canadians. She was promoted to the role of Assistant General Manager in 2019 and was the recipient of the 2019 Northwest League Female Executive of the Year for her work with the C's.

Stephani has led the Canadians Group Sales, Social Media, and Community platforms during her time out at historic Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium.

After a standout collegiate softball career at California University of PA where Stephani played for the Vulcans, the Prince of Wales Secondary graduate and former Team BC member began her marketing career with the Canadians.

Stephani works in concert with group leaders who expect the Canadians to provide an excellent ballpark experience with each visit to The Nat. Even with the demands that come with that responsibility alone, Stephani still lends her time to the Vancouver Canadians Baseball Foundation and its fundraising efforts.

WALTER COSMAN VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES & MARKETING

With more than 20 years of Sales & Marketing experience here in Vancouver, Walter decided to put those skills to work in the sport he's most passionate about, baseball.

With a B.A. from the University of New Brunswick, Walter has worked with Proctor & Gamble, Molson Canada, Granville Island Brewing and Steamworks Brewing.

With a longstanding corporate partnership with the Canadians prior to his arrival in May of 2019, Walter joined the organization fully aware of the standard that has put the C's among the best in Minor League Baseball.

BRENDA

CHMILIAR FINANCIAL CONTROLLER

Brenda enters her 16th season at Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium and her sixth as Financial Controller for the Canadians. She spent the first 10 of those years with Aramark Food Services in the company's financial division, dividing her time between the ballpark and Rogers Arena. Her knowledge of stadium operations thanks to her time with both Aramark and the Canadians have proven to be invaluable during her tenure.

Brenda is responsible for all aspects of the financial operations and is right at home here at The Nat; much of her childhood was spent on local baseball fields up in Kamloops.

JACOB NAKHLEH

MANAGER,

TICKET OPERATIONS

Jacob returns for his eighth season with the C’s and his first as Manager, Ticket Operations.

He first joined the club for the 2016 season, when he began his time with the C’s in the Box Office. Jacob was first hired as a member of the game day staff, then promoted to Box Office Assistant before joining the sales team at the conclusion of the 2021 season. After spending the last couple of years working in sales and community relations, Jacob is excited to be back at home in the Box Office.

Prior to joining the C’s in a full-time role, Jacob graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance).

When Jacob’s away from The Nat, you can find him watching Blue Jays baseball, Seahawks football, or dreaming about ice fishing in Saskatchewan.

ROSEMARY ALBERTS COORDINATOR, MARKETING SERVICES

Rosemary enters her first year with the Canadians as a Marketing Services Coordinator. She recently graduated from the University of British Columbia with her Bachelor of Arts in May 2023 and her Master of Management in December 2023.

Born in Richmond, Rosemary was raised in Victoria, B.C. where she grew up playing volleyball. Her previous work experience includes being the Communications & Administrative Coordinator for Athletics for Kids and a Varsity Game Day Statistician for UBC Athletics. She is excited to help the C’s organization in any way she can.

When Rosemary is not at the Nat, she enjoys her time watching the Canucks, kickboxing, or spending time with family and friends.

CHARLENE YAROSHUK ACCOUNTING COORDINATOR

Charlene is excited to be entering her sixth season with the Vancouver Canadians as their Accounting Coordinator. In 2020 she graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting.

Growing up in the Vancouver area she spent most of her free time practicing martial arts and currently has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

TYLER ZICKEL

MANAGER OF BROADCASTING & MEDIA RELATIONS

2024 is Tyler’s fourth with the Canadians, seventh within the Toronto Blue Jays organization and 10th in Minor League Baseball.

Before the C's, Tyler served as the Director of Promotions & Entertainment and Radio Broadcaster for the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Over the course of three seasons in Manchester, he oversaw the entire ingame presentation and promotions departments while traveling throughout the Eastern League calling 'Cats games. He has especially fond memories of the 2018 campaign, when he worked alongside current Jays (and former C’s) skipper John Schneider and the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio and Jordan Romano. He began his MiLB career in 2014 as a communications intern for the Advanced-A Lake Elsinore Storm in the California League. He made his professional baseball radio debut with the Storm in 2015 and handled the middle innings of road games for the rest of his tenure. Tyler, his wife Kate and dog Rosie make their offseason home in Portland, OR, where they play copious amounts of pickleball and obsess over the University of Texas Longhorns football season each fall. Born and raised in San Diego, Tyler is a lifelong Padres fan and will always “Keep The Faith.

Proud to support the

AVAILABLE ON THE CONCOURSE AND at THE 3RD BASE CRAFT ZONE

LEVI WEBER HEAD GROUNDSKEEPER

Levi―the 2023 Northwest League Groundskeeper of the Year―is no stranger to this circuit, with prior experience as the Head Groundskeeper for the Spokane Indians at Avista Stadium. His talents have also taken him to the desert, where he was the Field Manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Spring Training facility in Arizona. The Colton, WA native graduated from Washington State University with a Double Major in Turfgrass Management and Vegetable Management and two minors in Horticulture and Agricultural Systems.

In his time away from the ballpark, you can find him on the golf course, weight training or enjoying time with family and friends.

COOPER MISIC CO-ORDINATOR, SALES

Cooper enters his third season with the Canadians and his second season as Coordinator, Sales. He is excited to take on more responsibilities during the 2024 season.

A former Langley Blaze star pitcher who took his talents south of the border to play for both Galveston College and Central Washington University, Cooper graduated from CWU with a degree in Sports Management with a Specialization in Business.

When Cooper’s away from The Nat, you can find him enjoying even more baseball, playing golf, or trying out every new restaurant in town.

DREW HOWSON SALES ASSOCIATE

2024 marks Drew’s third season in the Toronto Blue Jays organization and second full season in Vancouver. This season will be his first in an office role as a Sales Associate.

After graduating St. Clair College with a degree in Sport and Recreation Management and interning with the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, Drew began his career in professional baseball as a member of the Canadians Grounds Crew. He would go on to gain experience with the Toronto Blue Jays Facility Department, assisting with the renovation and clean-up of Rogers Centre before returning to Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium.

Drew is a baseball junkie. He played and coached at many levels in his hometown community of Windsor, Ontario, most notably with the Tecumseh Rangers. In his off time, you’ll usually find him hiking, playing his guitar, or cheering on the Detroit Tigers and his beloved Michigan Wolverines. Go Blue!

LIAM GUERRIERO

CO-ORDINATOR, SALES

2024 is Liam’s second season with the C’s, and first as a Sales Coordinator. The 24-year old graduated from Brock University with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from their four-year program.

A native of Waterloo, Ontario, Liam grew up playing competitive hockey for the Waterloo Wolves. He loves playing and watching hockey, baseball, golf and football. He’s a fan of the Boston Bruins, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Browns and Rory McIlroy.

IZZY DINO SALES ASSOCIATE

Izzy joins the C’s as a Sales Associate for the 2024 season. She recently graduated from Seattle University with her Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and Media Studies. A native of North Vancouver, Izzy grew up playing competitive softball in both Vancouver and Richmond. She went on to log five NCAA Division I seasons between the University of Hawaii and Seattle University. In her spare time, she coaches youth softball pitchers on the North Shore. Izzy’s hobbies include watching and playing softball, yoga, going to the beach, and travelling to new places.

ZACH MAHAFFY SALES ASSOCIATE

Zachary returns to The Nat for his third season with the Canadians and his first in sales. He spent the previous two seasons as Box Office Assistant for the club.

In April 2023, Zachary graduated with a BBA from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, concentrating in Marketing and Strategic Analysis.

A native of Surrey, Zachary played rep hockey with Semiahmoo MHA from U15 to U18, while also playing one season in the Pacific Junior Hockey League with the White Rock Whalers and Port Moody Panthers. During the baseball offseason, Zachary officiates hockey, from U15 all the way up to the Pacific Junior Hockey League. He achieved his Member High Performance certification with Hockey Canada in December 2023.

STADIUM OPERATIONS

MONday, JuLY 1

foam glove giveaway

FIRST 500 KIDS 12 & UNDER

BROOKS PRIMO TRAVIS PORTER CAMERON CARELSE

ADAM HAUXWELL

2024 PROMOTIONAL SCHEDULE

CRAFT CORNER ICE COLD - FRESH BEER -

LOCATED IN THE -

3RD BASE FOOD COURT

PROUDLY SERVING

ROAD TO THE SHOW

Baseball players work their way up through the organization in hopes of getting to the big leagues. Toronto is in the American League and pulls its talent from these teams.

JOHN SCHNEIDER MANAGER

MARK BUDZINSKI FIRST BASE COACH

GIL KIM FIELD COORDINATOR

LUIS RIVERA THIRD BASE COACH

DON MATTINGLY BENCH COACH

HUNTER MENSE ASSISTANT HITTING COACH

PETE WALKER PITCHING COACH

DAVE HUDGENS MAJOR LEAGUE HITTING STRATEGIST

MANAGER CASEY CANDAELE BENCH COACH DONNIE MURPHY HITTING COACH RYAN LONG

GUILLERMO MARTINEZ HITTING COACH

JEFF WARE ASSISTANT PITCHING COACH, BULLPEN

ADAM YUDELMAN MAJOR LEAGUE COACH ALEX ANDREOPOULOS BULLPEN CATCHER

PITCHING COACH DREW HAYES

POSITION COACH JUSTIN ECHEVARRIA

DAVID HOWELL ASSISTANT PITCHING COACH, STRATEGY

HURTADO BULLPEN CATCHER

BULLPEN COACH ANTHONY GOMEZ

MANAGER CESAR MARTIN BENCH COACH JAKE MCGUIGGAN

HITTING COACH MITCH HUCKABAY

PITCHING COACH JOEL BONNETT

BRENT LAVALLEE MANAGER

BARRETO BENCH COACH

WRIGHT HITTING COACH

PITCHERS HT WT B/T AGE DOB HOMETOWN ’23 CLUBS ACQUIRED

30 Alex Amalfi 6-1 185 R/R 23 02/18/01 Ashland, MA Dunedin MiLB FA, 07/26/22

11 Pat Gallagher 6-0 200 R/R 23 06/30/00 Leominster, MA Dunedin, Vancouver 11th, ’22, Connecticut

25 Conor Larkin 6-1 215 R/R 25 03/17/99 Royersford, PA Vancouver 9th Rd, ’21, Penn State

28 Johnathan Lavallee 6-4 240 R/R 24 08/11/99 Simi Valley, CA Fort Myers (MIN) MiLB FA, 02/02/24

26 Chris McElvain 6-0 205 R/R 23 09/15/00 Thompson Stn, TN Daytona, Dayton (CIN) Trade w/CIN, 03/20/24

Kevin Miranda 5-10 180 R/R 25 11/14/98 Dolega, PAN Dunedin, Vancouver INT FA, 08/04/22

5 Aaron Munson 5-10 180 L/R 22 03/15/02 San Antonio, TX FCL, Dunedin 19th, ’23, Angelo State (TX)

17 Connor O’Halloran 6-2 195 R/L 21 09/01/02 Mississauga, ON College, Dunedin 5th Rd, ’23, Michigan

32 Rafael Ohashi 6-1 185 R/R 21 10/08/02 Mogi Guacu, BR Dunedin INT FA, 07/02/19

4 Naswell Paulino 5-11 205 L/L 23 4/17/00 San Cristobal, DOM Vancouver INT FA, 07/04/16

3 Kai Peterson 6-1 195 L/L 21 08/14/02 Roseville, CA College 20th, ’23, Sierra College (CA)

18 Carson Pierce 6-3 215 R/R 22 09/10/01 Edmond, OK College, FCL, Dunedin ND FA, 08/04/23

16 Kendry Rojas 6-2 190 L/L 21 11/26/02 Ciego De Avila, CU Dunedin INT FA, 10/14/20

23 Rafael Sanchez 6-1 215 R/R 24 08/22/99 Antilla, CUB Dunedin, Vancouver INT FA, 05/13/22

34 Grayson Thurman 6-3 205 R/R 25 12/27/98 Lynch Station, VA Dunedin, New Hampshire MiLB FA, 03/24/23

36 Geison Urbaez 6-1 185 R/R 23 07/05/00 Cabral, DOM DNP INT FA, 10/14/20

10 Juaron Watts-Brown 6-3 195 R/R 22 02/23/02 Hanford, CA College 3rd, ’23, Oklahoma State

20 Chay Yeager 5-11 180 S/R 21 09/11/02 Fort Wayne, IN FCL, Dunedin 12th, ’23, Pasco-Hernando State JC

CATCHERS (3)

WT B/T AGE DOB HOMETOWN ’23 CLUBS ACQUIRED

22 Robert Brooks 5-9 215 R/R 25 11/21/98 Marietta, GA FCL (TB) MiLB FA, 06/07/24

19 Jommer Hernandez 5-11 205 R/R 23 10/20/00 Puerto Plata, DOM Vancouver MiLB FA, 09/08/21

31 Jackson Hornung 6-2 215 R/R 23 02/06/01 Ashland, MA College, Dunedin 16th, ’23, Skidmore

INFIELDERS (6) HT WT B/T AGE DOB HOMETOWN ’23 CLUBS ACQUIRED

21 Jean Arnaez 5-10 175 R/R 21 08/22/02 Aguadulce, PAN Dunedin INT FA, 7/2/19

15 Jamari Baylor 5-11 195 R/R 23 08/25/00 Richmond, VA JS (PHI), ACL (COL), FRE (COL), SPO (COL) MiLB FA, 05/22/24

1 Nick Goodwin 6-1 205 R/R 22 09/06/01 Overland Park, KS College, DUN, VAN 7th Rd, ’23, Kansas State

14 Estiven Machado 5-10 190 S/R 21 10/04/02 Barlovento, VEN Dunedin INT FA, 7/3/19

15 Brennan Orf 6-4 230 L/R 22 09/06/01 Wildwood, MO College, Dunedin 13th, ’23, So. Illinois-Edwardsville

7 Jeff Wehler 6-0 195 R/R 25 01/10/99 St. Marys, PA College ND FA, 6/9/23

44 Peyton Williams 6-5 255 L/L 23 9/14/00 Johnston, IA Dunedin, Vancouver 7th Rd, ’22, Iowa

OUTFIELDERS (4) HT WT B/TAGE – DOB HOMETOWN ’23 CLUBS ACQUIRED

8 Jace Bohrofen 6-2 205 L/R 22 10/19/01 Oklahoma City, OK College, FCL, Dunedin 6th, ’23, Arkansas

6 Dasan Brown 6-0 195 R/R 22 9/25/01 Oakville, ON Dunedin, Vancouver 3rd Rd, ’19, Abbey Park HS (ON)

9 Marcos De La Rosa 5-11 175 S/R 24 01/28/02 Santo Domingo, DOM FCL, Dunedin, Vancouver INT FA, 06/15/19

27 Dylan Rock 6-0 210 R/R 25 08/21/98 Sugar Land, TX FCL, Dunedin, New Hampshire 8th, ’22, Texas A&M

24 Jaden Rudd 5-11 190 L/L 21 08/16/02 Panama City, FL Dunedin 7th, ’21, Mosley HS (FL)

24 Je'Von Ward 6-2 195 L/R 24 10/25/99 Cerritos, CA Wisconsin (MIL) MiLB FA, 06/15/24

TOR SYSTEM: BUF – AAA | NH – AA | VAN – A+ | DUN – A | FCL – R

MANAGER: 33 Brent Lavallee

BENCH COACH: 13 Deiferson Barreto

PITCHING COACH: 29 Austin Bibens-Dirkx

HITTING COACH: 12 Ryan Wright

POS. PLAYER COACH: 2 Ashley Stephenson

BULLPEN COACH: 37 Carson Phillips

STRENGTH & CONDITIONING: Bailey Forst

ASSISTANT S&C: Zane Hunt

ATHLETIC TRAINER: Rob Shifrin

ATHLETIC THERAPIST: Katie Reyes

TECH ASSISTANT: Cristian Cordova

DIETITIAN: Stephanie Boville

MENTAL COACH: Raul Pimentel

HOME CLUBHOUSE MANAGER: Glenn Hall

VISITOR CLUBHOUSE MANAGER: Cole Howes

NO. PITCHERS

10 Blake Adams 6-2 215 R-R 9/11/2000 13th/2022 Kansas State Springdale, AR Spokane

35 Luis Amoroso 6-1 190 R-R 12/12/1999 IFA/2017 N/A Valencia, Venezuela Spokane

8 Braden Carmichael 5-10 185 R-L 5/23/2000 FA/2023 Oklahoma Prosper, TX Fresno

50 Brayan Castillo 6-0 170 R-R 9/11/2000 IFA/2017 N/A Santiago, D.R. Spokane

36 Caleb Franzen 6-3 200 L-L 6/10/2001 12th/2022 Portland Phoenix, AZ Fresno

43 Mason Green 6-1 195 L-L 2/5/1999 12th/2021 Central Missouri Lenexa, KS Spokane

26 Welinton Herrera 6-0 170 L-L 4/3/2004 IFA/2021 N/A Fantino, D.R. Fresno

25 Braxton Hyde 6-3 195 R-R 6/6/2001 14th/2022 Butler CC (KS) Liberal, KS Fresno

6 Victor Juárez 6-0 175 R-R 6/19/2003 IFA/2019 N/A Monterrey, Mexico Spokane

27 Davis Palermo 6-4 200 R-R 12/16/1999 8th/2022 North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC Fresno

28 Michael Prosecky 6-3 200 L-L 2/28/2001 6th/2022 Louisville Hinsdale, IL Fresno

41 Felix Ramires 6-4 175 L-L 9/26/1999 IFA/2017 N/A Sabana de la Mar, D.R. Spokane

30 Sergio Sanchez 6-0 180 R-R 1/13/2001 IFA/2018 N/A San Cristobal, D.R. Fresno

16 Connor Staine 6-4 200 R-R 1/12/2001 5th/2022 Central Florida Clinton, NJ Fresno

22 Sean Sullivan 6-4 190 R-L 7/22/2002 2nd/2023 Wake Forest Boston, MA Fresno

18 Carlos Torres 6-4 240 R-R 5/3/2001 20th/2022 Lehigh Ponce, Puerto Rico Fresno

NO. CATCHERS HT. WT. B-T DOB ACQUIRED LAST SCHOOL HOMETOWN PREVIOUS

7 Bryant Betancourt 5-11 170 L-R 10/12/2003 IFA/2021 N/A Valencia, Venezuela Fresno

19 Jose Cordova 6-0 180 R-R 1/11/2000 IFA/2018 N/A Guayana, Venezuela Spokane

3 Jesus Ordonez 5-8 180 R-R 12/26/1999 IFA/2019 N/A Coro, Venezuela Fresno NO. INFIELDERS

15 Jack Blomgren 5-11 180 R-R 9/27/1998 5th/2020 Michigan Milton, WI Hartford

4 Cole Carrigg 6-3 200 S-R 5/8/2002 CB-B/2023 San Diego State Modesto, CA Fresno

11 Dyan Jorge 6-3 170 R-R 3/18/2003 IFA/2022 N/A Havana, Cuba Fresno

2 Kyle Karros 6-5 220 R-R 7/26/2002 5th/2023 UCLA Los Angeles, CA Fresno

20 Jean Perez 5-10 180 R-R 7/20/2002 IFA/2019 N/A Boca, Chica, D.R. Spokane NO. OUTFIELDERS

29 EJ Andrews Jr. 5-11 210 R-R 9/28/2000 13th/2021 Fresno State Long Beach, CA Fresno

44 Jesus Bugarin 5-10 180 R-R 12/2/2001 IFA/2018 N/A Ciudad Piar, Venezuela Fresno

14 Juan Guerrero 6-1 160 R-R 9/10/2001 IFA/2018 N/A San Pedro de Macoris, D.R. Spokane

9 GJ Hill 5-9 170 S-R 9/30/2000 4th/2019 Santa Crus HS (CA) Santa Cruz, CA Fresno

1 Jake Snider 5-10 190 L-R 5/19/1998 20th/2019 Louisville Waterloo, IA Fresno

NO. FIELD STAFF

37 Robinson Cancel - Manager

38 Blaine Beatty - Pitching Coach

21 Tom Sutaris - Hitting Coach

23 Joe Mikulik - Bench Coach

Jacob Mathis - Physical Performance

Maranda Briney - Trainer

Joey Scott - Clubhouse Manager

Connor Carroll - Video Coordinator

PRONUNCIATIONS: Luis Amoroso (AM-uh-ROH-soh), Anderson Bido (Bee-dough), Jesus Bugarin (Hey-soos Boo-guh-reen), Cole Carrigg (Care-igg)

Chase Dollander (Dough-lander), Brayan Castillo (Brian), Dyan Jorge (Dee-on Hor-hey)

2024 CANADA CUP

FIELD STAFF

BRENT LAVALLEE 33 MANAGER

• Entering his second year as Manager in Vancouver, coming off a 67-62 campaign... Served as a Manager for the first time in 2021 while with the FCL Blue Jays...Played at LSU Shreveport until 2009 and joined their coaching staff as a Graduate Assistant in 2010...Started as a full-time assistant in 2012 and was named the Head Coach in 2016...In three years, his teams produced with an overall record of 126-57 and claimed the last two conference championships.

• The North Delta, British Columbia, native played for LSU for five seaons, including a medical redshirt campaign...Played a total of 200 games and earned 2009 1st Team All-Canada while runner up for Canadian College Baseball Player of the Year.

DEIFERSON BARRETO 13 BENCH COACH

• Moving up to Bench Coach after spending the last two seasons as Position Coach for the DSL Blue Jays...Started his coaching career in 2018 with Advanced-A Dunedin by assisting the coaching staff...In 2019, was assigned as Assistant Pitching Coach at The Toronto Blue Jays Dominican Academy...That July, he transitioned to the infield coach for the J2 signed players...In 2020, served as Infield Coach for the Dominican Academy and was instrumental in assisting the club with the Venezuelan players who were unable to get back home because of the pandemic.

• Signed with the Toronto Blue Jays as an international free agent in September of 2011....Played as an infielder in the Blue Jays system from 2012-2017, reaching as high as Triple-A Buffalo..

AUSTIN BIBENS-DIRKX 29 PITCHING COACH

• Officially retired in January and is entering his first year in professional baseball as a coach, taking on Bullpen Coach for Vancouver.

• The native of Salem, OR, was selected out of the University of Portland by the Seattle Mariners in the 16th round of the 2006 draft...Eventually reached the Majors for 37 games while with Texas in 2017 and 2018... Has also pitched in the Venezuelan Winter League, the Dominican Winter League, the Mexican League, and the Chinese Professional Baseball League.

RYAN WRIGHT

HITTING COACH

• Made his Minor League coaching debut in 2021, in his current role, after his debut with Class-A Lansing was cancelled in 2020...Began his coaching career at Capital High School in Boise, ID, from 2015-2016... Was a Graduate Assistant at California State University Northridge in 2016... Joined the organization from Montana State University Billings where he was on staff since 2017... Served as the Hitting Coach & Recruiting Coordinator at MSUB...Has also managed the Spearfish Sasquatch Baseball Club in Spearfish, SD (2018-2019), and the Kelowna Falcons Baseball Club in Kelowna, BC (2019).

• Played collegiately at the University of Utah, Treasure Valley Community College, and Oklahoma City University.

ASHLEY STEPHENSON 2 POSITION COACH

• 2024 is Ashley’s second season with the Blue Jays...Follows Jaime (Vieira) Lever as the second female coach in the organization...Coached with the Canadian Women’s National Team since 2018, leading to a Bronze medal at the COPABE Women’s Pan-American Championships in 2019, and was the first woman to manage the Women’s National Team when Canada played against USA in Thunder Bay in 2022...Was also the first woman to coach in the Canadian Futures Showcase, hosted by the Blue Jays baseball academy in Ottawa last year...Made history in November as she became the first woman to capture Baseball Canada’s Lionel Ruhr Elite Coach of the Year Award.

• Was an original member of the Women’s National Team in 2004 and played for 15 years...Won four Women’s Baseball World Cup medals (three bronze, one silver), and a silver at the Pan American Games in 2015.

• 2024 Inductee into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

CARSON PHILLIPS

37 BULLPEN COACH

• Joins the Vancouver Canadians for his first season in the organization...Was working at the University of Arizona as a Graduate Assistant Pitching Coach.

• Played at Dixie State University where he completed a Bachelors in Exercise Science... Also attended the University of Arizona.

ROSTER

ALEX AMALFI

HT: 6-1 WT: 185

B/T: R/R

DOB: 02/18/01

HOMETOWN: Ashland, MA

23 CLUBS: Dunedin

AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 07/26/22

CHRIS McELVAIN 26

HT: 6-0 WT: 205

B/T: R/R

DOB: 09/15/00

HOMETOWN: Thompson Station, TN

23 CLUBS: Daytona, Dayton (CIN) AQUIRED: Trade w/CIN, 03/20/24

NASWELL PAULINO 4

HT: 5-11 WT: 205

B/T: L/L

DOB: 4/17/00

HOMETOWN: San Cristobal, DOM

23 CLUBS: Vancouver

AQUIRED: INT FA, 07/04/16

PAT GALLAGHER 11

HT: 6-0 WT: 200

B/T: R/R

DOB: 06/30/00

HOMETOWN: Leominster, MA

23 CLUBS: Dunedin, Vancouver AQUIRED: 11th, ’22, Connecticut

KEVIN MIRANDA 17

HT: 5-10 WT: 180

B/T: R/R

DOB: 11/14/98

HOMETOWN: Dolega, PAN 23 CLUBS: Dunedin, Vancouver AQUIRED: INT FA, 08/04/22

AARON MUNSON 10

HT: 5-10 WT: 180

B/T: L/R

DOB: 03/15/02

HOMETOWN: San Antonio, TX 23 CLUBS: FCL. Dunedin

AQUIRED: I19th, ’23, Angelo State (TX)

CARSON PIERCE

HT: 6-3 WT: 215

B/T: R/R

DOB: 09/10/01

HOMETOWN: Edmond, OK

23 CLUBS: College, FCL, Dunedin

AQUIRED: ND FA, 08/04/23

CONOR LARKIN 25

HT: 6-1 WT: 215

B/T: R/R

DOB: 03/17/99

HOMETOWN: Royersford, PA

23 CLUBS: Vancouver AQUIRED: 9th Rd, ’21, Penn State

CONNOR O' HALLORAN 17

HT: 6-2 WT: 195B/T: R/R

DOB: 09/01/02

HOMETOWN: Mississauga, ON

23 CLUBS: College, Dunedin

AQUIRED: 5th, ’23, Michigan

KENDRY ROJAS 16

HT: 6-2 WT: 190

B/T: L/L

DOB: 11/26/02

HOMETOWN: Ciego De Avila, CU 23 CLUBS: Dunedin

AQUIRED: INT FA, 10/14/20

JOHNATHAN LAVALLEE 28

HT: 6-4 WT: 240

B/T: R/R

DOB: 08/11/99

HOMETOWN: Simi Valley, CA

23 CLUBS: Fort Myers (MIN) AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 02/02/24

RAFAEL OHASHI 32

HT: 6-1 WT: 185

B/T: R/R

DOB: 10/08/02

HOMETOWN: Mogi Guacu, BR 23 CLUBS: Dunedin AQUIRED: INT FA, 07/02/19

RAFAEL SANCHEZ 23

HT: 6-1 WT: 215

B/T: R/R

DOB: 08/22/99

HOMETOWN: Antilla, CUB

23 CLUBS: Dunedin, Vancouver

AQUIRED: INT FA, 05/13/22

GRAYSON THURMAN 34

HT: 6-3 WT: 205

B/T: R/R

DOB: 12/27/98

HOMETOWN: Lynch Station, VA

23 CLUBS: Dunedin, New Hampshire

AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 03/24/23

JOMMER HERNANDEZ 19

HT: WT: 205

B/T: R/R

DOB: 10/20/00

HOMETOWN: Puerto Plata, DOM

23 CLUBS: Vancouver

AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 09/08/21

ESTIVEN

MACHADO 14

HT: 5-10 WT: 190

B/T: S/R

DOB: 10/04/02

HOMETOWN: Barlovento, VEN

23 CLUBS: Dunedin

AQUIRED: INT FA, 7/3/19

GEISON URBAEZ 36

HT: 6-1 WT: 185

B/T: R/R

DOB: 07/05/00

HOMETOWN: Cabral, DOM

23 CLUBS: DNP AQUIRED: INT FA, 10/14/20

JACKSON HORNUNG 31

HT: WT: 215

B/T: R/R

DOB: 02/06/01

HOMETOWN: Ashland, MA

23 CLUBS: College, Dunedin AQUIRED: 16th, ’23, Skidmore

BRENNAN ORF 15

HT: 6-4 WT: 230

B/T: L/R

DOB: 01/10/99

HOMETOWN: Wildwood, MO

23 CLUBS: College, Dunedin

AQUIRED: 13th, '23, So. IllinoisEdwardsville

JUARON WATTS-BROWN 10

HT: 6-3 WT: 195

B/T: R/R

DOB: 02/23/02

HOMETOWN: Hanford, CA

23 CLUBS: College AQUIRED: 3rd, '23, Oklahoma St

JEAN ARNAEZ 21

HT: 5-10 WT: 175

B/T: R/R

DOB: 08/22/02

HOMETOWN: Aguadulce, PAN

23 CLUBS: Dunedin

AQUIRED: INT FA, 7/2/19

JEFF WEHLER 7

HT: 6-0 WT: 195

B/T: R/R

DOB: 01/10/99

HOMETOWN: St. Marys, PA

23 CLUBS: College

AQUIRED: ND FA, 6/9/23

CHAY YEAGER 20

HT: 5-11 WT: 180

B/T: S/R

DOB: 09/11/02

HOMETOWN: Fort Wayne, IN

23 CLUBS: FCL, Dunedin AQUIRED: 12th, ’23, PascoHernando State JC

JAMARI

BAYLOR 15

HT: 5-11 WT: 195

B/T: R/R

DOB: 08/25/00

HOMETOWN: Richmond, VA

23 CLUBS: JS (PHI), ACL (COL), FRE (COL), SPO (COL)

AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 05/22/24

PEYTON WILLIAMS 44 OUTFIELDER

HT: 6-5 WT: 255

B/T: L/L

DOB: 9/14/00

HOMETOWN: Johnston, IA ’23 CLUBS: Dunedin, Vancouver ACQUIRED: 7th Rd, ’22, Iowa

ROBERT BROOKS 22

HT: 5-9 WT: 215

B/T: R/R

DOB: 11/21/98

HOMETOWN: Marieta, GA

23 CLUBS: FCL (TB) AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 06/07/24

NICK GOODWIN 1

HT: 6-1 WT: 205

B/T: R/R

DOB: 09/06/01

HOMETOWN: Overland Park, KS

23 CLUBS: College, Dunedin, Vancouver AQUIRED: 7th Rd, ’23, Kansas State

JACE BOHROFEN 8

HT: 6-2 WT: 205

B/T: L/R

DOB: 10/19/01

HOMETOWN: Oklahoma City, OK

23 CLUBS: College, FCL, Dunedin

AQUIRED: 6th, ’23, Arkansas

DASAN BROWN 6

HT: 6-0 WT: 195

B/T: R/R

DOB: 09/25/01

HOMETOWN: Oakville, ON

23 CLUBS: Dunedin, Vancouver

AQUIRED: 3rd Rd, ’19, Abbey Park HS (ON)

ROB SHIFRIN HEAD ATHLETIC TRAINER

MARCOS DE LA ROSA 9

HT: 5-11 WT: 175

B/T: S/R

DOB: 10/25/1999

HOMETOWN: Santo Domingo, DR 23 CLUBS: FCL, Dunedin, Vancouver AQUIRED: INT FA, 06/15/194

KATIE REYES ASSISTANT ATHLETIC TRAINER

DYLAN ROCK 27

HT: 6-0 WT: 210

B/T: R/R

DOB: 08/21/98

HOMETOWN: Sugar Land, TX

23 CLUBS: FCL, Dunedin, New Hampshire AQUIRED: 8th, ’22, Texas A&M

BAILEY FORST HEAD STRENGTH & CONDITIONING COACH

RAUL PIMENTEL MENTAL PERFORMANCE COACH

CRISTIAN CORDOVA TECH ASSISTANT

HALL HOME CLUBHOUSE MANAGER

JADEN RUDD 24

HT: 5-11 WT: 190

B/T: L/L

DOB: 08/16/02

HOMETOWN: Panama City, FL

23 CLUBS: Dunedin

AQUIRED: 7th, ’21, Mosley HS (FL)

ZANE HUNT ASSISTANT STRENGTH & CONDITIONING COACH

HOWES VISITOR CLUBHOUSE MANAGER

JE'VON WARD 24

HT: 6-2 WT: 195

B/T: L/R

DOB: 10/25/1999

HOMETOWN: Cerritos, CA

23 CLUBS: Wisconsin (MIL)

AQUIRED: MiLB FA, 06/15/24

STEPHANIE BOVILLE DIETICIAN

GLENN

COLE

ROBERT

BY NIALL O’DONOHOE OF C’S

Each week, Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium PA announcer and de facto team historian Niall O’Donohoe catches up with a different C’s player. The latest C’s Chat is with Vancouver Canadians catcher Robert Brooks.

BROOKS

The Marietta, Georgia native is looking to make good on his first extended opportunity in professional baseball. He was with the Tampa Bay Rays organization in 2023 and played nine games at the Florida Complex League and collected his first two hits against the FCL Red Sox on June 29. Brooks was let go by the Rays at the end of 2024 Spring Training but was able to catch on with the Staten Island FerryHawks of the independent Atlantic League, the same team 2023-2024 C’s infielder Jeff Wehler played for last season. Brooks’ stay in New York State lasted just 27 games as he put up a batting line of .354/.514/.646. That included five doubles, six home runs and 20 runs batted in and a perfect 3-for-3 in the stolen base department. After winning back-to-back Atlantic League Player of the Week honours, Brooks was signed as a free agent by the Toronto Blue Jays on June 8.

The video game numbers posted by Brooks with Staten Island was not the first time he reached that level of performance. The four-time letterman at Wheeler High School in Marietta enjoyed a standout five-year career with Division II Columbus State where he compiled a slash line of .353/.481/.652 from 2018-2022. When he was done with the Cougars, he set the Peach Belt Conference career mark for home runs with 66. He had 301 total hits, 118 of them for extra bases. Brooks was also efficient in his stolen base attempts by going 9-for-11.

PLUS BASEBALL

A four-time PBC Player of the Week winner in his collegiate career, Brooks helped the Cougars win the NCAA Southeast Regional title in 2018 to earn a trip to the Division II National Championships to go along with the 2021 PBC Tournament title and 2022 PBC regular-season championship. In 2022, Brooks led the Peach Belt Conference in batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, runs scored, hits and RBI and was second in slugging percentage and home runs.

Brooks was also busy on the summer college ball circuit. He was with the Macon Bacon of the Coastal Plain League in 2020 and batted .400/.552/.780 with four doubles, five homers and 18 RBI in 18 games. He was also a hit with his teammates off the field.

In 2022, Brooks spent time with the Holly Springs Salamanders and had a .981 on-base-plus-slugging percentage with three homers and 10 RBI, earning him a Coastal Plain League All-Star selection.

Salamanders head coach Brian Rountree had lots of good things to say about Brooks.

“Brooks is a good leader. He not only leads when he’s on the field, but when he’s not playing, he leads in the dugout. Brooks is even-keeled and everything is positive and optimistic.”

From there, Brooks joined the Frederick Keys of the MLB Draft League and continued to post outstanding numbers with a .997 OPS, eight extra-base hits and 15 RBI in 26 contests.

The next team Brooks was going to join was the Missoula PaddleHeads of the Pioneer League for the 2023 campaign but that was when the Tampa Bay Rays came calling. Though Brooks was not coming to Montana, PaddleHeads manager Michael Schlact was pleased to see Brooks getting the opportunity to play pro ball.

“Robert is a very talented baseball player and a cerebral catcher. It’s no wonder he attracted the attention of many MLB teams. We are excited to watch Robert as he progresses through the ranks and wish him the very best in his journey to the show.”

Now Brooks is north of the border with the Vancouver Canadians and he has made an early impact with the club. He threw out two baserunners and scored a run in his Northwest League debut in Everett when the C’s rallied from a 7-0 deficit to beat the AquaSox on June 8. In his first game at Nat Bailey Stadium, he had a hit and a walk against Spokane on June 12. His first multi-hit effort came in a victory over Spokane on June 15 and he reached base four times in Tri-City with three hits and a walk on June 20.

It was on July 2 when Brooks hit his first professional home run and it was not a cheapie as he cleared the center field wall of Nat Bailey Stadium in a win over Everett. He went yard twice in Eugene as his home run on July 10 sparked a six-run second inning in a win over the Emeralds. His second blast with a three-run shot to give the C’s a come from behind victory over the Em’s on July 14.

C’s Plus Baseball had a chance to talk to the 25-year-old Brooks during the team’s homestand against Hillsboro in late June. This interview has been edited for clarity.

C’s Plus Baseball – Let’s first start off how you arrived here in the Blue Jays organization. How did that all come about?

Robert Brooks – I was with Staten Island in the Atlantic League. I felt like I was doing pretty well. The ownership over there had some phone calls with some people that they knew with the Blue Jays and next thing I knew, I was on a plane on the way to Seattle to meet up with the team in Everett.

CPB – Who got a hold of you from the Blue Jays?

RB – Charlie (Director of Minor League Operations Charlie Wilson) was the first one to reach out to me. I had some good phone calls and conversations there, kind of just working out some logistics of how to get me from where I was. I was actually on the road. We were on the road in North Carolina so I had to fly from North Carolina back to New York, drive from New York to Maryland to meet up at my fiance’s house, drop all my stuff there and get on a plane from Baltimore to Seattle.

CPB – And you arrived during the Everett series?

RB – Yeah, I met up with the team in Everett. That was my first series there. Got acclimated a little bit in game one, got in there for game two. I faced a guy that I just found out today was going to Double-A. He was pretty good. So that was a fun welcome to High-A.

CPB – That was Brandyn Garcia?

RB – Yeah, Brandyn Garcia. He got called up today or yesterday so yeah, that was a fun. He punched my ticket a couple of times. He was a really solid arm so seeing him go to Double-A makes a lot of sense but that was a good welcome to High-A. I got back on the bus and came back got to experience what it’s like in Vancouver with all these fantastic fans and how good this team is.

CPB – You were with the Tampa Bay Rays but how did you wind up with Staten Island?

RB – My agent definitely helped me out. I had a couple of people that were hoping I would go some place. I had an opportunity to go to the Atlantic League. I understood that that was one of the better leagues for independent ball. Got some connections over in Staten Island and I just got to go over there and I’m so glad I did. The coaching staff over there, the players, just getting to play with some all-time greats like Pablo Sandoval. Got to meet Drew Maggi a little bit while he was there. And just some of the guys just getting to share different experiences, different talents. Everyone brings something different to the table and that’s what makes it a great team over there. And I can’t speak enough about the management, about the ownership, about the coaching staff. And I do miss them a lot. They were a good group of guys and I can’t thank them enough for helping me get here.

CPB – You put up really good stats with Columbus State and very similar stats with Staten Island, what was working for you there?

RB – Just trusting myself and knowing that I can compete at any level. I have yet to get to a level where I can’t (compete) and I’d like to take that mentality with me and make it to the big leagues one day. Just know that at every level I can compete and know that there isn’t really anything that I can’t handle and just kind of go out there and trust myself, know that swing changes are going to come, defensive changes are going to come. But as long as I continue to trust myself and go out there and compete, I know I can handle anything that’s put in front of me.

CPB – Jeff Wehler was with Staten Island last year. Did you to get a chance to compare notes with him?

RB – We did have some similarities and knew a couple of same people with the owner. The management changed and the coaching staff changed since we were there so we didn’t get to talk about different things or the same similarities in coaching. Just being able to talk about the field and the area and being able to hop on the ferry and be in Manhattan was really, really cool. Seeing how Jeff has embodied what it’s like to be a (Vancouver) Canadian here and just see how he treats you and how hard he plays. I’ve only gotten to see him play a

couple times now coming back from the injured list but watching the way that he takes over the clubhouse and how he really is the captain. That’s really fun to see a guy that came from similar shoes to mine and that you can become somebody like Jeff Wehler.

CPB – How did you get started in baseball? Take us through the timeline that set you get to Columbus State. Were you always a catcher?

RB – I started playing baseball when I was seven. I wanted to play when I was five. My Dad wouldn’t let me yet. He wanted to make sure that I could protect myself and I’m thankful for that. I started watching baseball games with him when I was young and just fell in love with it. I was playing a couple of different sports when I was younger but I really bought into baseball, around 10 (years old), right around middle school but I was playing since I was seven. I started catching when I was nine. Mike Piazza was my guy. I loved watching Mike Piazza and I was like, ‘I want to be like him.’ I went to Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia and made varsity as a freshman and was able to kind of learn from some of the older guys there and understand you know how to carry yourself around people that are, quote-unquote, better than you, and just older than yo. Just being able to compete as an underdog, I guess you could say. I really attest a lot of my time to the coach that’s still there, Mark Collins. He really helped me out a lot. I loved learning from him. I really grew into myself at Nelson Baseball school, shout-out to Coach Nelson, he was awesome. I found my way into Columbus State and the same mentality goes there. I know that I can compete at any level and just go out there and do my thing and the rest takes care of itself.

CPB – How did you wind up at Columbus State. Were there there any other schools you were considering?

RB – Yeah, I had about three offers coming out of high school. Two D2s and one junior college. I had interest from a smaller Division I but it was kind of after I already committed. I was just a little bit of an undersized guy coming out of high school. I went to Columbus State and just found my way and had a lot of really great teammates that took me under their wing and showed me what it’s like and how to work and put on a lot of muscle. I became the hitter I am today because of those teammates I had.

CPB – You find your way to Tampa Bay. I don’t know if you want to comment on your brief experience there, but what was that like being with Tampa?

RB – I was a free agent and signed about a week before camp in ’23. I wasn’t really prepared for it. I was more preparing for a couple months down the road in independent ball. I was already signed to go play in Missoula, Montana but I never actually got there. I got to spring training, got to learn what it was like and live out the dream of being a professional baseball player. That’s the first step and I got to learn a lot. That was my biggest takeaway from Tampa. I had a lot of really great coaches that helped me out a lot over there. I can’t speak highly enough about the way that they were intentional with their time and it didn’t really matter if you were a top prospect or a no-name free agent sign. They made sure that they took intentional time to make sure that you learned and you understood how to go about your business the right way and how they wanted you to do it. I can’t speak highly enough about some of the coaches over there and just the coaching staff and the front office people who treated me very, very well. Even when it was time for me to leave, they handled it with a lot of respect and I can never speak highly more highly enough about the people over there.

CPB – I came across a press release from Missoula that wished you the best (with Tampa). I thought that said a lot about you and about Missoula that you know they were pretty classy and they were happy to see you go on to the next level.

RB – Yeah, I think that’s kind of the goal of most independent leagues and most independent teams. I would like to think it’s to make sure that you get guys going out and have a good turnaround of guys. Michael Schlact, the manager over there, he and I have a relationship for when he coached me in high school. He was somebody that I wanted to play for a while again. Their goal is to get you out (to affiliated baseball) and the fact that I didn’t even have to go there, I would like to think speaks for my talent level. I wish I would have gotten to go out there and experience what life is like in Montana and just understand how beautiful that area and how good the team is and how good the culture is over there. I’ve heard nothing but great things over there and I’m glad to see that they’re doing well.

RB – As far as catching goes, what’s your favorite aspect of it?

RB – I just like being the field general, the field leader, you know? I’m the only one that can see everything and being able to know that even if I don’t know these guys that well, I’ve been here, this is going on my third full week, being able to manage a team and knowing that they trust me, that’s a really huge thing. I think this team’s done a fantastic job of bringing me in and understanding I’m new but I’m a Canadian, just like they are. That makes me really, really happy to know that it doesn’t really matter if you’ve been here all year or two years. Everyone’s the same, everyone works the same and everyone wins the same. Being a catcher on this team and knowing that our pitching staff is as great as it is knowing that they trust me in my pitch calling and learning how they pitch. I’d like to say that my favourite aspect is that field generalship of being able to help the team win however I can do it.

CPB – How do you go about breaking the ice wiht your pitchers? I know the coaches help you out with that but eventually you have to be one-on-one with these pitchers. How do you go about breaking the ice?

RB – I feel like I’ve always been a pretty outgoing person. My fiance’s Mom likes to say that I know no strangers so being able to go up and talk to anybody and be able to kind of have that relationship with anybody like I’ve known them my whole life. I think one thing that really helped me from my situation with the Rays was I was surrounded by a lot of Latin American teammates. So I learned and I picked up on Spanish pretty well. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent by any means, but I know enough to get by and understand that I can communicate with pitchers who don’t speak English. So being able to be that guy that is able to communicate with both English and Latin American pitchers definitely really helps me be more versatile to help with that. So being able to break the ice that way and understand what they want, what pitches they have, what signs they want, all of those things. For them to be able to trust me, that helps me out a lot too.

CPB – When you’re behind the plate, there’s so many facets to the job such as calling your own games and setting up behind the plate. What is your process when you get behind the plate?

RB – I think the most important thing is building a relationship with the umpires as much as you can because as much as you see them on the other side, they’re people too, they’re your friends too. They can help you out along the way, especially if you think they miss a call. As long as you’re nice about it, you can kind of let them know and they’ll

work with you a lot better. But I think it’s just important to kind of understand we have a lot of meetings before the week starts, before games start about lineups and how to pitch certain guys certain ways. But I think it’s really important that we understand we pitch to our pitcher’s strengths rather than a hitter’s weakness because that just instills confidence in our pitching staff and in our pitchers to throw their best pitches. Just understanding the other team a little bit too helps with me managing the running game and helps our pitchers understand and manage the running game too. You have certain teams that run a lot more than others and just understanding that kind of game plan.

RB – Speaking of umpires, you were shown on the @VanCanadians social media channel shaking hands with umpire Isabella Robb. Is that something you’ve always done?

RB – Yeah. At the end of the day it’s a respect thing. I think it’s something that’s really important, that you build relationships with these umpires. It’s one of those things that before the game, you introduce yourself. Even if I’ve seen Isabella three times now or Nate (Nathan Hall), who will be behind the plate tonight. I’ve caught for Nate. I think this will be my fourth or fifth time. I’m going to go out there. I’m going to shake his hand. He is someone to be respected out here and he is somebody to be understood. And at the end of the game, when you work with somebody, at the end of a business deal, you stand up and you shake hands. And this is it for us. This is our work day. At the end of our work day, I’ll stand up and I’ll shake his hand.

CPB – When did you start doing that?

RB – As soon as I started catching. I had a really good catching coach when I was younger and just kind of understand that these are relationships you build and these are relationships that are understood that you need to make sure you have, regardless of who they are, how much they’ve called against you, how much they may have not helped you throughout the game. It’s a business deal, and this is your business. This is your job, and it’s a respect thing for me. Dennis Jordan was one of the catching coaches I kind of had a lot of my initial teachings with and it kind of started there. And since then, it’s just been something that I teach. When I’m giving lessons in the offseason or anything like that. I say, ‘Hey, the number one important relationship is that umpire. You go out there, you shake his or her hand, and you learn their name.’ You go out there, you can talk to them throughout the game. They’re people too. Go out there and have a good relationship with them. You never know when it could help you.

CPB – As far as setting up behind the plate, I notice sometimes you stretch the leg out. When did you kind of adopt that style of catching?

RB – I was going one knee down. That was how we were taught with the Rays, that we were exclusively one knee down. Left or right knee doesn’t really matter with nobody on base, but once there’s a runner on base, it’ll be right knee down. You’ll notice I’ll always be right knee down with a runner on base, and very rarely am I going to kick out with a runner on base. I put myself in a good position to throw, block, and receive from that right knee down stance. When I kick out, it’s usually to give myself a better target for the pitcher and give myself a better chance to receive the ball properly. But that’ll really only be with nobody on because I am in a less athletic position there that I’m kind of selling out to receive the ball well.

CPB – I also wanted to ask as well about the hockey goalie style of mask. When did you start wearing that?

RB – I never wore a two-piece. Never been a fan of them. I just don’t feel protected with them. And I wear glasses while I play too so that kind of becomes factor. If the two-piece is going to be sliding around a little bit, that’ll mess up the glasses. So I just always rocked with the hockey-style mask. I fell in love with it and figured out how to use it. Pop-ups, I don’t really take it off. I just learn how to see through it, and yeah, just have to make some modifications to it sometimes with my glasses, but I’ll never stray away from it.

CPB – Let’s go to the hitting aspect of things. How have you found it hitting here at Nat Bailey Stadium? I guess you could say it’s a fairly neutral park, maybe shading more towards a pitcher’s park.

RB – I think you’d be right saying it’s shading more towards a pitcher’s park with the high walls and winds not always blowing out. You have a short porch to left but I think people very rarely pull the ball down the line as often as they stay to the middle of the field. So, yeah, definitely, in my opinion, it’s a pitcher’s park until I hit a home run. Then it’ll be a hitter’s park. But yeah, this place is absolutely beautiful. You can’t say enough about how well the grounds crew takes care of it. The grass is green every day. The dirt’s always nice. It’s perfectly watered. Home plate’s beautiful. It’s just a really, really cool area. Sometimes it feels like we have 8,000 people here. It’s an amazing crowd, an amazing turnout. People that love seeing the Canadians win and i’m happy to say that we’ve been doing that a lot. It feels good to give the crowd what they want.

CPB – So far, you’ve been able to succeed with runners in scoring position. What is your approach when you come up to the plate?

RB – One line drive. Just try and hit one-line drive. Go 1-for-1. That’s what I have found helps my team the best. There will be times I take more selfish swings, no doubt, trying to see how far I can hit one. But I think there’s a time and place for that. Like, for example, I think with two strikes and runners on less than two outs, the worst thing you can do there is strike out. The best thing you can do there is either move a runner or get them in. Even if it’s a sac fly or a groundout up the middle, having that approach really, really helps to kind of mitigate the strike out, which is what I try and not do with two strikes. With nobody on, I’m more okay with striking out because I’d like to drive the ball in the gap beyond second so that my teammates can drive me in. But until then, it’s about doing a job and helping the team.

CPB – I know you said Mike Piazza was someone you looked up to but was it the Braves that you cheered for as a kid?

RB – I was a born and raised a Mets fan but once you kind of step into professional baseball, you’re a fan of professional baseball. And I do enjoy just watching it. I’ve been enjoying watching the Blue Jays recently and seeing how they’ve been doing. I’ve been a fan of my friends that have made it with the Rays and watching a lot more minor league baseball now and just becoming a fan of players has been really, really important to me. And rooting for guys that are above you, with you, below you, rooting for everybody’s success.

CPB – Final question. The Canadians have five different uniforms— red, black, white, gray and blue. Do you have a favourite?

RB – I do. The blue Canadians one with the Canadians hat is definitely my favorite to look at. I think it’s really cool. I’d have to say the blue, I think we’re in red today but O’Halloran (Connor O’Halloran) is kind of exclusively the blue guy. But yeah, it was really cool to wear those the other day. I got a win in them and I kind of want to keep going with the good win streak.

Jim Leyland managed the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Tigers over 22 MLB seasons, winning three Manager of the Year Awards and the 1997 World Series title. (Jed Jacobsohn/MLB Photos)

BY JOHN

A LIFETIME OF PERSISTENCE BROUGHT JIM LEYLAND TO THE HALL OF FAME

Tears welling in her eyes, Katie Leyland explained exactly why she was happy to see her husband receive baseball’s highest honor.

“Jim has worked so hard for this,” she said. “He worked his way all the way up from the bottom to the top.”

The scene was the Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn., in December.

Leyland had been elected to the Hall of Fame a day earlier in a vote of the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee and was holding a news conference for the assembled media members at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.

Leyland has indeed covered a lot of territory during his journey to Cooperstown.

He signed his first professional contract with the Detroit Tigers in 1964 after being a multi-sport star at Perrysburg High School in Northwest Ohio. He received a modest $1,000 signing bonus. “The scout

mentioned $1,000, and my father told

him that

we

Leyland cracked.

didn’t

have that kind of money,”

Leyland spent seven seasons as a backup catcher and 11 more managing in the Tigers’ farm system. It took 18 years in the minor leagues before he finally got a shot at the major leagues when future Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa asked Leyland to be the Chicago White Sox’s third base coach prior to the 1982 season.

Following a four-year stint with the White Sox, Leyland was hired following the 1985 season to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates. Thus began a legendary 22-year managerial career that included 11 seasons with the Pirates (1986-96) before stops with the then-Florida Marlins (1997-98), Colorado Rockies (1999) and Tigers (2006-13).

Leyland had a 1,769-1,728 record while winning six divisions titles, three pennants and three Manager of the Year awards. His crowning moment came in 1997 with the Marlins, when his team won the World Series.

However, Leyland wasn’t sure he would join the legends in Cooperstown until he finally got the word from Jane Forbes Clark, the chairman of the Hall’s Board of Directors, on Dec. 3. Leyland was one of eight candidates on a strong ballot that featured former managers Cito Gaston, Davey Johnson and Lou Piniella; retired umpires Ed Montague and Joe West; former National League President Bill White; and longtime executive Hank Peters.

Leyland becomes just the fourth Hall of Fame manager — along with Joe McCarthy, Frank Selee and Earl Weaver — who never played a game in the major leagues.

“I’m almost ashamed to say that I didn’t really take it that seriously to start with because I didn’t really think I had a chance,” Leyland said. “There were a lot of great names on that ballot, a lot of really strong candidates.”

One of Leyland’s endearing traits when he was managing was his knack for telling funny stories. Fittingly, he had one about the night he learned he was going into the Hall of Fame.

Leyland was at his home in Thornburg, Pa., a Pittsburgh suburb, with Katie and his son Patrick, a manager in the Chicago White Sox’s farm system. After spending a good deal of the day wondering if he would get elected, Leyland decided to go upstairs to lie down and collect his thoughts.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang, with Clark calling to tell Leyland he had indeed been elected.

“My wife asked me who that was on the phone,” Leyland recounted. “I said it was Jake from State Farm.”

Despite having a rough exterior accentuated by his gruff voice, Leyland is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve. He once summed up his managerial career as saying he went from “Jim Who to Jim Boo Hoo.”

Not surprisingly, he shed some tears as he was embraced by his wife

and daughter and grasped the magnitude of the moment in Nashville. “It’s the final stop, really, as far as your baseball career goes,” Leyland said. “And to land there in Cooperstown, it doesn’t get any better than that. I mean, that’s the ultimate. I certainly never thought it was going to happen. Most people probably don’t. For it to happen to me, well that’s a little overwhelming.”

Leyland certainly was not on a Hall of Fame trajectory during his playing days. He never made it past the Double-A level in his seven seasons and had a .222 career batting average, with four home runs, in 446 games and 1,420 plate appearances.

Gene Lamont also was a catcher in the Tigers’ farm system, selected in the first round of the inaugural MLB Draft in 1965. He and Leyland became teammates a year later at Class A Rocky Mount in the Carolina League, and the two shared an apartment with fellow catcher Joe Cernich.

Lamont, who would go on to coach under Leyland in Pittsburgh and Detroit, sensed there was something special about Leyland despite his poor statistics.

“He was the kind of a guy that everybody gravitated toward, with his personality,” Lamont said. “He had a quick wit, was a guy that people wanted to be around. You could tell he really loved baseball, had a real keen interest in the game.”

It was that love of the game that sustained Leyland through 11 years as a minor league manager with the Tigers, during which he had seven winning seasons.

“I never really thought about getting to the big leagues,” Leyland said. “I enjoyed managing, and I liked trying to help young players get to the big leagues.”

While managing the Tigers’ Triple-A Evansville affiliate in the American Association, Leyland caught the eye of La Russa, who was then managing the White Sox’s Iowa farm club. Leyland also made a small connection with a young member of the White Sox front office named Dave Dombrowski, and those two would eventually team up in the major leagues.

Dombrowski was the general manager and Leyland the manager when the Marlins won the World Series in 1997, and again with the Tigers when they won American League pennants in 2006 and 2012. In the summer of 1980, Dombrowski was in Des Moines watching the Iowa club. He wound up joining Leyland and Pete Ward, then Iowa’s manager, for dinner one evening.

“I didn’t know Jim (at that time), but I knew of his reputation as a manager and the type of great baseball person that he was,” said Dombrowski, now the Philadelphia Phillies’ president of baseball operations. “My first impression was very good. You could see why he had such an outstanding reputation. It really stood out. He had great knowledge of the game and a lot of personality.”

Leyland burnished those credentials during his four years on the White Sox’s staff and caught the attention of Syd Thrift, who had been hired as the Pirates’ GM following a dismal 1985 season.

The Pirates were coming off a 57-104 campaign, but that was only part of their problems. The team was almost sold by the Galbreath family to out-of-town interests before Pittsburgh mayor Richard Caliguiri put together a coalition of public and private investors who kept the Pirates from moving.

Things were so bleak that Leyland held a champagne toast in the clubhouse when the Pirates avoided 100 losses in 1986, on the way

to a 64-98 finish. The Pirates gradually improved, though, and broke through with three National League East titles in a row from 1990-92.

“I think everyone thought Jim was a good manager for that situation because he had a lot of experience working with young players,” Lamont said. “What I think he really showed, though, was that he was probably a better manager than people expected. They found out he was more than just a teacher. They found out he understood the game and knew how to run a game.”

It was in Pittsburgh that Leyland established his reputation as a manager who connected with his players. He could relate just as well to a superstar like Barry Bonds as he could to a bench player like outfielder Gary Varsho.

Leyland displayed that trait at every stop across his career.

“Jim was so far ahead of his time,” Varsho said. “Now teams have a mental skills coach; they have psychiatrists. Jim was the master of that long ago. He knew when to talk to players, when to pat them on the rears or kick them in the rears. He was the master of getting 25 guys pulling at the same end of the rope. You wanted to win for him. We didn’t want to let him down. It would be like letting down your father.”

The winning didn’t last. As a small-market team operating on a low budget with underfunded ownership, the Pirates could not keep the nucleus of their team together.

Bonds, who went on to become the major league’s all-time home run leader, was allowed to leave as a free agent, and other stars either walked away or were traded.

That began a string of 20 consecutive losing seasons in Pittsburgh, which lasted through 2012 and remains the longest streak of sub-.500 seasons in major North American professional sports history. Leyland grew tired of losing and left the Pirates by mutual accord following the 1996 season.

A managerial free agent with multiple teams interested in hiring him, Leyland chose to go to the Marlins and a reunion with Dombrowski.

Florida had not had a winning season since entering Major League Baseball as an expansion franchise in 1993. However, owner Wayne Huizenga gave Dombrowski a large budget with the mandate to put together a championship-caliber roster.

Dombrowski assembled a star-studded crew that included Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla, Moisés Alou, Kevin Brown and Al Leiter. The Marlins went 92-70 to gain the NL wild card berth, then won it all, beating the Cleveland Indians in extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series.

Rich Donnelly, who had been on Leyland’s coaching staff in Pittsburgh and followed him to Miami, remembers that expectations were high, but Donnelly wasn’t so much impressed by how Leyland handled a roster filled with veteran stars. Instead, Donnelly made note of how Leyland motivated rookie pitcher Liván Hernández, who went on to become a key member of the starting rotation after being called up from the minor leagues in June.

“Liván was about 30 pounds overweight when he reported to Spring Training,” Donnelly remembered. “Jim went to the kid and told him: ‘If you lose 20 pounds and do good, I’ll bring you up. But right now, you’re not going to make the team because you’re out of shape.’

“Liván lost 20 pounds, and Jim kept his word. Liván got called up and ended up winning a lot of big games.”

Leyland’s tenure with the Marlins was short. Because of financial challenges, Huizenga ordered Dombrowski to slash the payroll and

Miami cratered to a 54-108 record in 1998 while relying on young players.

Huizenga let Leyland out of his contract to become manager of the Colorado Rockies, but things did not work out for Leyland in Colorado. He did not like managing in the offensively charged atmosphere at Coors Field. The Rockies stumbled to a 72-90 finish and Leyland stepped away after that season.

“I felt like I wasn’t making a difference,” Leyland said.

Leyland walked away from managing for six years and joined the St. Louis Cardinals as a special adviser. He would assist La Russa, then the Cardinals’ manager, during Spring Training and scout teams that came through Pittsburgh during the regular season.

It was a great gig, as it kept Leyland in baseball without having all the responsibilities that come with being a manager. However, Leyland attended the 2005 All-Star Game festivities in Detroit with his son, and those couple of days in Detroit started giving him the itch to manage again.

Dombrowski was the Tigers’ GM at that point. When he dismissed Alan Trammell as manager following that ’05 season, the top name on his list of potential replacements was Leyland.

The Tigers made it all the way to the World Series in Leyland’s first season before falling to the Cardinals in five games. It was Detroit’s first trip to the Fall Classic since 1984.

While Leyland had long ago earned his reputation as a players’ manager, he had to do things differently when he got to Detroit. The veteran skipper did not make many friends early in his first Spring Training, recalled Lloyd McClendon, who was on the Tigers’ coaching staff and had played for Leyland in Pittsburgh.

“It was a unique situation,” McClendon said. “We were taking over a team that had some talent on it but had some flaws, and more than anything, the players just weren’t very disciplined. I’ll never forget [Leyland’s] initial meeting with his staff in Spring Training. He talked about the fact that we were going to have to be very tough and very disciplined with these guys and let them know there is no substitute for hard work.

“It was tough, and [the players] didn’t like it in a lot of respects. But we showed them what they had to do. It was a tough spring, but it paid off.”

Leyland also took the Tigers to the World Series in 2012, when they were swept by the San Francisco Giants. However, Detroit had only one losing season in his eight-year tenure.

Now 79 years old, Leyland remains involved in the game. He is a special assistant to Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris. He also gets together regularly for lunch during the season with Pirates manager Derek Shelton.

“It’s in his blood,” Katie Leyland said. “It’s been his life.”

John Perrotto is a freelance writer from Beaver Falls, Pa.

Reprinted with permission from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum receive free admission to the Museum, as well as access to exclusive programs, such as the Voices of the Game Series. Additionally, members receive a subscription to the Hall of Fame's bi-monthly magazine, Memories and Dreams, the annual Hall of Fame yearbook and a 10% discount and free shipping on retail purchases. For information on becoming a member, please visit baseballhall.org/join or call 607-547-0397.

Adrián Beltre became the fifth native of the Dominican Republic to be elected to the Hall of Fame. (Milo Stewart Jr./National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)

BY MIKE DIGIOVANNA

ADRIÁN BELTRÉ’S PASSION FOR THE GAME TURNED AN INJURY INTO A PATH TO COOPERSTOWN

But for as much discomfort as he felt that year — he often winced when he planted his front foot on a vicious swing — that nagging injury may have helped spur Beltré’s transformation from promising young third baseman to a place in the Hall of Fame.

“Well, [many writers] said that was the reason why [I had such a good year], which I cannot deny,” said Beltré, whose 93.5 career wins above replacement (WAR) ranks third among all big league third basemen behind Mike Schmidt (106.8) and Eddie Mathews (96.0).

“There’s no doubt that I had to be more in control of my swing and understand that I needed to be more focused on the pitcher when I hit, because if I didn’t make contact, it was really painful in my ankle. That was my best year numbers-wise. I can’t tell you for sure that was [the reason], but I believe it had something to do with it.”

Of his many mannerisms displayed during his 21-year career —his aversion to being touched on the head, the home runs he’d hit off one knee, the flat-footed bullets he’d fire to first base — one that didn’t serve Beltré so well early in his career was the happy-feet shuffle he’d sometimes do in the box.

Beltré was a good-but-not-yet-great player during his first six seasons, when he hit .262 with a .748 OPS and averaged 16 homers and 65 RBI a season from 1998-2003, and former Dodgers teammate Shawn Green thought the excessive movement in the box may have hurt Beltré’s swing.

“He was kind of a wild horse at that point, where he just wanted to run,” Green said of Beltré, who was 25 and in his seventh big league season in 2004. “He was very aggressive offensively and defensively and would sprint to chase down popups that most left fielders would catch.

“That injury to his front foot kind of slowed him down, and that’s when he started to figure things out and realize that he could be patient at the plate. He didn’t jump at the ball as much, and I think the game slowed down quite a bit for him.”

The bone spurs forced Beltré to quiet his lower half in 2004, and the contact he generated grew consistently louder, producing a breakout season in which Beltré hit .334 with a 1.017 OPS, 121 RBI and 104 runs to go with those 48 homers — all career highs — and finished second to Barry Bonds in National League MVP voting.

Beltré went on to play 14 more years with the Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers, amassing 3,166 hits, 477 homers and 1,707 RBI, five Gold Glove Awards and four All-Star selections. On Jan. 23, he was elected to the Hall of Fame on his first appearance on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot.

And to think, he might not have reached Cooperstown if not for that bum ankle in 2004.

“It’s like the stars were aligned,” said Green, a Dodgers first baseman and outfielder from 2000-04. “It’s almost the perfect injury for a

lot of young players, because that’s the hardest thing for a hitter, to slow your feet down. You get antsy at the plate, you dive into the ball and stride a little too quickly. But that injury just slowed everything down.

“He was in his seventh season, so he had the experience. He got off to a fast start and got moved into the heart of the lineup. After a couple of years where people were kind of questioning whether he was going to be that middle-of-the-order guy, it got to the point where everyone believed in him, and I think that was a big boost.”

Beltré was a teenage prodigy when he signed with the Dodgers for $23,000 out of the Dominican Republic in 1994, but his early career was affected by a contract issue and a botched appendectomy.

The Dodgers broke an MLB rule by signing Beltré before his 16th birthday, and the investigation into the birth certificate snafu resulted in a $50,000 fine and a one-year ban on signing first-year Dominican players.

The team hoped to make amends by awarding Beltré a three-year, $5.05 million contract before 2000, and he responded by hitting .290 with an .835 OPS, 20 homers and 85 RBI.

But Beltré missed the first six weeks of 2001 after undergoing abdominal surgery in March to close a wound in his large intestine, the result of an infection that occurred after he had an emergency appendectomy in the Dominican Republic that January.

Beltré arrived at Spring Training with an IV port in his arm, and he lost more than 30 pounds during the ordeal. He hit only .265 with a .720 OPS, 13 homers and 60 RBI in 126 games that season.

Beltré put up decent numbers in 2002 (21 homers, 75 RBI) and 2003 (23 homers, 80 RBI), but the Dodgers were unable to retain him as a free agent after his monster 2004 season, when he departed for a five-year, $64 million deal with the Mariners.

The expansive outfield dimensions of pitcher-friendly Safeco Field did not seem to suit Beltré, but he persevered — fighting off several nagging injuries to hit at least 25 homers and drive in an average of 88 runs from 2006-08. He returned a little more than two weeks after a bad-hop grounder in August 2009 caused a painful groin injury.

“My first thought when I think of Adrián, mostly when he was in Seattle, is that he didn’t miss games,” said infielder Michael Young, who played 13 seasons (2000-12) for the Rangers. “You’d come into Seattle, pick up a newspaper in the clubhouse, and you’d always read that ‘Adrián tweaked a hamstring, Adrián sprained this, Adrián broke that.’

“Then the game would start, and Adrián is hitting cleanup, without fail. That just grabs a player’s attention, that this guy would do anything to help his team win a ballgame.”

Beltré also missed five weeks in 2009 because of surgery to remove bone spurs in his left shoulder and was limited to 111 games that season, batting .265 with a .683 OPS, eight homers and 44 RBI.

He signed a one-year, $9 million “pillow contract” with the Red Sox in 2010 and re-established himself as a force, batting .321 with a .919 OPS, 28 homers and 102 RBI and pelting Fenway Park’s Green Monster with many of his league-leading 49 doubles.

“That meant a lot, because I had a tough year (in 2009) with injuries, and I didn’t play well,” Beltré said of his one-year stop in Boston. “I thought what I did the year before wasn’t me, so once I got the offer from the Red Sox, I understood I had a clear chance, if I was healthy, to show what I can do.”

Beltré parlayed that bounce-back season into a six-year, $96 million deal with the Rangers, who had reached the World Series for the

first time in franchise history in 2010 but lost to San Francisco in five games.

“He took a really good group and made it even better,” Young said. “We went from a team that was one of the best in the league, that caught fire in October and pushed its way into the World Series, to the dominant team in our league. And Adrián was right in the middle of the lineup, played great defense and came up big in big spots.”

Beltré was dominant for several years in Texas, batting .308 with an .873 OPS and averaging 28 HRs and 94 RBI from 2011-16. He finished among the top seven MVP vote-getters four times and won three Gold Gloves.

Beltré hit .296 with an .892 OPS, 32 homers and 105 RBI in 2011 to push the Rangers to within one strike of a championship before the St. Louis Cardinals rallied to win Game 6 of the World Series in 11 innings and then took the decisive Game 7.

“That was the toughest day of my life,” Beltré said of Game 6.

That Beltré’s Hall of Fame honor came three months after he was on hand to see the Rangers beat Arizona to clinch their first-ever World Series title last fall will make his July 21 induction all the more sweet.

“One reason I went to Texas is I wanted to be a world champion, and I believed the Rangers gave me the best chance,” Beltré said. “We got so close in 2011, and we proved we had the best team until Game 6. It didn’t happen, and I feel like we disappointed a lot of people in Texas. But I felt relieved when they won because we got that monkey off our backs.”

The 5-foot-11, 220-pound Beltré was thick for a third baseman, but he had quick feet, soft hands, a strong and accurate arm, and he rivaled Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson’s ability to charge slow rollers and make off-balance throws to first.

Beltré accumulated 200 defensive runs saved in his career, according to FanGraphs, more than any other third baseman in major league history.

“Adrián wasn’t the fastest guy on the field, but he was one of the quickest and most agile,” Young said. “When you talk about everything a third baseman has to do…he had great hands, great body awareness, took perfect angles, moved to his left and right, and came in on the ball as well as anyone.”

And he did it all with a smile that was as infectious as his bat was lethal as Beltré’s fun-loving personality rubbed off on every teammate he played with — especially longtime Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus, whom Beltré mentored for a decade.

“Everyone who watched Adrián play baseball could tell he was having fun, but he toed that line perfectly,” Young said. “He had a blast playing the sport he loved, but at the same time, there wasn’t anybody who was more competitive or more intense.”

Beltré is the fifth Dominican-born player to be elected to the Hall of Fame, joining Juan Marichal (1983), Pedro Martínez (2015), Vladimir Guerrero (2018) and David Ortiz (2022). As he toured the Hall of Fame’s Plaque

Gallery in January, Beltré lingered for an extra moment at the bronze bust of Marichal, the former Giants star.

“Being a kid from the Dominican, he was the first big name I heard in baseball, the first big leaguer I thought was like a god,” Beltré said of Marichal. “I remember every kid trying to emulate his big leg kick, his famous leg kick.”

Beltré also paid homage to lifelong mentor Felipe Alou and to Ralph Avila and Pablo Peguero, the scouts who signed him in the Dominican Republic.

“They were the men who gave me the chance to become a baseball player,” Beltré said of Avila and Peguero. “They believed in me, they saw something in me when I was 15 years old that I didn’t believe at the time.”

Mike DiGiovanna covers baseball for the Los Angeles Times.

Reprinted with permission from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Todd Helton spent his entire 17-year big league career with the Colorado Rockies. (Brad Mangin/ MLB Photos)

BY JERRY CRASNICK

TODD HELTON SHOWCASED A HALL OF FAME WORK ETHIC OVER 17 BIG LEAGUE SEASONS

Beyond the .316 career batting average, five All-Star appearances and four Silver Slugger Awards, dozens of small interludes helped define Todd Helton’s 17-year tenure with the Colorado Rockies. Maybe it was saving a teammate an error with an adroit scoop at first base or eyeing a slider off the black before driving the next pitch to right-center field for one of his 592 career doubles. Helton grinded through injuries for much of his career, and three-hit games were routinely preceded by four hours of treatment courtesy of the Rockies’ training staff. His competitiveness and focus were seemingly surpassed only by his pain threshold.

For Rockies fans who regard Helton as the face of the franchise, two images resonate the most. Both came late in the 2007 season, when Colorado won 14 of its last 15 regular-season games en route to the franchise’s first World Series appearance.

On Sept. 18, Helton launched a 1-2 slider from Takashi Saito into the Coors Field seats to give the Rockies a 9-8 win and a doubleheader sweep over the Dodgers. He capped off his trip around the bases by vaulting into a crowd of teammates at home plate. About a month later, Helton bent to catch a throw from shortstop Troy Tulowitzki for the final out of Colorado’s pennant-clinching victory over Arizona and raised his arms in celebration. On both occasions, Helton flashed a side of himself that he rarely shared between the lines.

“Those were two iconic moments for me, to see a man in his element, representing an entire city and a franchise,’’ said Clint Hurdle, Colorado’s manager in 2007 and a longtime friend of Helton.

Helton rarely if ever entertained thoughts of personal glory. But glory found him, in much the same way all those line drives found refuge in the Coors Field gaps.

On Jan. 23, in his sixth appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot, Helton was elected to Cooperstown with 79.7 percent of the vote. He thought of his late father, Jerry, who set the bar high and established the standards that drove Helton to a perpetual state of mind that he once described as “comfortably miserable.’’

“My dad was very hard on me,” Helton said. “But when I would do bad, which was 1-for-3 when I was little, he’d say, ‘One-forthree will get you into the Hall of Fame.’’’

Since the Rockies’ inception in 1993 and Coors Field’s debut two years later, the stigma of hitting at altitude was a drag on the ambitions of potential Hall of Famers. All those 11-8 games in Denver obscure the physical toll of playing 81 games a mile above sea level, and the constant adjustments required of hitters who see pitches move in a completely different manner at home and on the road.

Then former teammate Larry Walker was elected to the Class of 2020, and Helton’s candidacy kept gaining momentum. He enters Cooperstown as Colorado’s franchise leader in most offensive categories and is one of only four players in MLB history with a .300 batting average and at least 350 home runs, 550 doubles and 2,500 hits. The other three: Hank Aaron, Miguel Cabrera and Stan Musial. Helton cleaned up against elite pitchers. He hit .417 against John Smoltz, .393 off Tom Glavine and .364 vs. Greg Maddux, and slugged over .700 against Trevor Hoffman, Jake Peavy and Curt Schilling. He went 12-for-18 with an OPS of 1.825 off 200-game winner and four-time All-Star Tim Hudson. He also finished his career with more walks (1,335) than strikeouts (1,175) — a rarity for any hitter, much less a career .500 slugger called upon to produce runs from the middle of the order.

“I think he probably embraced that one-on-one confrontation between pitcher and hitter as much as anybody I’ve ever met,’’ Hurdle said. “The closest comparison I have to him as a hitter was George Brett, and I always held George Brett at the top of my list. If he’s No. 1, Helton is 1(a).’’

Helton’s road to the Hall began in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn.,

where he established himself as a two-sport threat in football and baseball. As a Tennessee Volunteer, he spent his freshman and sophomore years as the backup quarterback to Heath Shuler, a Heisman Trophy finalist and eventual first-round draft pick. Helton eventually got an opportunity to start, but a knee injury and the arrival of a talented freshman named Peyton Manning hastened his transition to baseball. Their early encounters in the quarterbacks room were telling.

“[Peyton] came in raising his hand and answering questions,’’ Helton said. “He knew the offense better than I did, and I had been there three years. I realized real quick that I wasn’t going to be an NFL quarterback. Football was paying my way to college, but I definitely focused on baseball.’’

In his junior year, Helton won the Dick Howser Award as the nation’s top collegiate player for his performance at the plate and on the mound. The Rockies selected him with the eighth pick in the 1995 draft and sent him to their Class-A farm club in Asheville, N.C.

Rockies manager Don Baylor tossed out a Don Mattingly comparison and had only one request when the Rockies sent Hurdle, their roving minor league hitting instructor, to Asheville for a look: Don’t mess with the kid’s swing.

Problem was, Helton was running on fumes after a long and demanding junior year at Tennessee. He hit .254 in his professional debut, with one homer in 227 plate appearances.

“His bucket was empty,’’ Hurdle said. “He was hitting with a kid named Derrick Gibson, who was launching 450-foot homers, and we needed to get him out of that group and not focusing on right field. I told him, ‘Hey, you look tired. You look worn out.’ To this day, Todd would never tell you he was tired and worn out. He just said, ‘Yes sir, yes sir,’ kind of agreeing with me and taking in the conversation. I said, ‘All I’m asking you to do the rest of your time here is show up, do the work you need to be a good teammate and just hit the ball hard where it’s pitched.’’

It was a solid foundation for a Hall of Fame career. Helton tore it up in his subsequent minor league stops. And after a late call-up to Coors in 1997, when he hit .280, he reeled off 10 straight seasons with a batting average of .300 or better. In his signature season of 2000, he flirted with .400 into early September and won the batting title with an average of .372.

Helton’s arrival in Denver was complicated. Andrés Galarraga, a Colorado fan favorite and original member of the Blake Street Bombers, was in his free agent walk year in ’97, and he had earned too much respect for Baylor to sit him for a newcomer — even a hotshot, first-round draft pick. So Helton grabbed an outfield glove and mixed in 15 games of cardio in left and right field between cameos at first base.

At one point, when Helton was besieged with questions about replacing Galarraga during a dugout TV interview, veteran shortstop Walt Weiss intervened on his young teammate’s behalf.

“The swing was beautiful,’’ Weiss said. “He was just one of those pure hitters. But he was also very intense and very, very hard on himself. That’s the way it is with a lot of the great ones. There’s an old saying that you’d rather have to pull in the reins than crack the whip. Todd was definitely one of those guys where you had to pull in the reins.’’

By Helton’s 30th birthday, Hank Greenberg was his closest career comparable on Baseball-reference.com, and he looked like a firstballot Cooperstown lock. But persistent back problems sapped him of his power, and he underwent hip surgery in 2012. After averaging 37 home runs a year from 1999-2004, Helton hit 20 homers only once over his last nine seasons.

“There were days when he got to the ballpark and he literally couldn’t walk, and he ended up playing,’’ said former Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd. “He was the definition of a person who loves the game of baseball and competed at a high level no matter how he was feeling physically. There just aren’t many players wired that way in our game.’’

When Walker, Dante Bichette, Vinny Castilla and the other Blake Street Bombers moved on, the Rockies were reshaped in Helton’s image. He set the tone with tough love and leadership by example, and Matt Holliday, Tulowitzki, Carlos González, Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado were among the players who flourished on his watch.

“He wasn’t a big ‘rah-rah, let’s all go out to eat and talk about how cool baseball is’ kind of personality,’’ Blackmon said. “He was more the, ‘I’m going to go about my business and do what I need to do,’ guy. I would watch and observe, and in certain situations I could ask him questions. If he was in a good mood that day, he would hand out some advice and I was always quick to snatch that up.’’

If Helton seemed less than approachable at times, it stemmed from his quest for perfection in a game where 1-for-3 is a mark

of excellence. He kept a book on opposing pitchers years before analytic information was so readily available and took martial arts classes in the offseason to improve his flexibility. While his skills inevitably declined, his expectations never waned.

“I remember walking down the hallway and Todd would be coming out the back door after games,’’ O’Dowd said. “He could have gone 4-for-4, and he would be saying, ‘What does it look like, man? I feel terrible at the plate. I’ve got to get better than this.’ And I would be thinking, ‘Man, you’re the least of our problems.’’’

Two decades later, Helton received his validation for all those challenges in the form of a phone call from Cooperstown and a celebration with family and friends at his home in Knoxville. He could take gratification in the knowledge that he did it his way, true to himself and the old-school values he held dear.

“Todd wasn’t out there to make friends,’’ Hurdle said. “He already had enough friends. You might get a smile during the game. But it was going to come after a win, and it was going to be short and quick and he was going to move on. His joy came in beating your [butt].’’

After three decades as a baseball writer, Jerry Crasnick currently works as a senior adviser for the MLBPA.

Reprinted with permission from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

CANADIANS TO REACH THE MAJOR LEAGUES

The Vancouver Canadians Baseball Club has welcomed more than 800 players onto its rosters since 2000. That’s a lot of guys all striving to one day reach the bright lights of the Major Leagues. Here is a list of every one of our players who has arrived at the game’s highest stage and play in Major League Baseball.

2003 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Rich Harden P 2001 21-Jul Oakland

Neal Cotts P 2001 12-Aug Chicago (AL)

Mike Wood P 2001 21-Aug Oakland

2004 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Santiago Casilla P 2002 09-Aug Oakland

Nick Swisher OF 2002 03-Sep Oakland

Joe Blanton P 2002 24-Sep Oakland

2005 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Mark Teahen INF 2002 04-Apr Kansas City

Dan Johnson INF 2001 27-May Oakland

Omar Quintanilla INF 2003 31-Jul Colorado

Freddie Bynum INF 2000 30-Aug Oakland

Nelson Cruz OF 2002 17-Sep Milwaukee

2006 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

John Rheinecker P 2001 22-Apr Texas

Andre Either OF 2003 02-May Los Angeles (NL)

Chris Mabeus P 2001 29-May Milwaukee

Kurt Suzuki C 2004 12-Jun Oakland

Jason Windsor P 2004 17-Jul Oakland

Jeremy Brown C 2002 03-Sep Oakland

Mark Kiger INF 2002 13-Oct Oakland

2007 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Travis Buck OF 2005 02-Apr Oakland

Jared Burton P 2002 04-Apr Cincinnati

Danny Putman OF 2004 23-Apr Oakland

Dallas Braden P 2004 24-Apr Oakland

Connor Robertson P 2004 17-May Oakland

Marshal McDougall INF 2000 05-Jun Texas

Kevin Melillo INF 2004 24-Jun Oakland

Bill Murphy P 2002 03-Sep Arizona

2008 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Gregorio Petit INF 2004 18-May Oakland

John Baker C 2002 09-Jul Florida

Jeff Gray P 2005 08-Sep Oakland

2009 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Andrew Bailey P 2006 06-Apr Oakland

Landon Powell C 2004 11-Apr Oakland

Tommy Everidge INF 2004 28-Jul Oakland

Brad Kilby P 2005 02-Sep Oakland

Jeff Baisley INF 2005 09-Sep Oakland

2010 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

A.J. Griffin P 2010 24-Jun Oakland

Alexi Ogando P 2004 15-Jul Texas

2011 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Justin Sellers INF 2005 12-Aug Los Angeles (NL)

Anthony Recker C 2005 25-Aug Oakland

Corey Brown OF 2007 06-Sep Washington

2012 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Pedro Figueroa P 2007 21-Apr Oakland

Sean Doolittle P 2007 05-Jun Oakland

Dan Straily P 2009 30-Aug Oakland

2013 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Ian Krol P 2009 05-Jun Washington

Kevin Pillar OF 2011 14-Aug Toronto

Max Stassi C 2009 20-Aug Houston

Michael Choice OF 2010 02-Sep Oakland

2014 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Bo Schultz P 2009 23-Mar Arizona

Marcus Stroman P 2012 04-May Toronto

Aaron Sanchez P 2011 23-Jul Toronto

Dalton Pompey OF 2012 02-Sep Toronto

Daniel Norris P 2012 05-Sep Toronto

2015 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Miguel Castro P 2014 06-Apr Toronto

Roberto Osuna P 2012 08-Apr Toronto

Noah Syndergaard P 2011 12-May New York (NL)

Justin Nicolino P 2011 20-Jun Miami

Dusty Coleman INF 2008 03-Jul Kansas City

David Rollins P 2011 04-Jul Seattle

2016 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Andy Burns INF 2011 09-May Toronto

Matt Dermody P 2013 03-Sep Toronto

2017 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Dwight Smith Jr. OF 2012 18-May Toronto

Seth Frankoff P 2010 09-Jun Chicago (NL)

Ian Parmley OF 2013 23-Jun Toronto

Franklin Barreto INF 2014 24-Jun Oakland

Taylor Cole P 2012 09-Aug Toronto

Tim Mayza P 2014 15-Aug Toronto

Jairo Labourt P 2014 01-Sep Detroit

Carlos Ramirez P 2012 01-Sep Toronto

Richard Urena INF 2014 01-Sep Toronto

Tim Locastro INF 2014 29-Sep Los Angeles (NL)

2018 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Ryan Borucki P 2014 26-Jun Toronto

Justin Shafer P 2014 18-Aug Toronto

Murphy Smith P 2009 27-Aug Toronto

Dawel Lugo INF 2013 30-Aug Detroit

Jose Fernandez P 2014 01-Sep Toronto

Jonathan Davis OF 2014 05-Sep Toronto

Jon Berti INF 2011 26-Sep Toronto

2019 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

John Schneider MGR 2011/14-15 28-Mar Toronto

Travis Bergen P 2015-17 29-Mar San Francisco

Cavan Biggio INF 2016 25-May Toronto

T.J. Zeuch 2016 03-Sep Toronto

Lane Thomas OF 2015 17-Apr St. Louis

Ryan McBroom INF/OF 2014 03-Sep Kansas City

2020 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Nate Pearson P 2017 29-Jul Toronto

Dany Jiménez P 2017 23-Jul San Francisco

Patrick Murhpy P 2016 18-Sep Toronto

Ángel Perdomo P 2015 18-Aug Milwaukee

2021 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Josh Palacios OF 2016 09-Apr Toronto

Alek Manoah P 2019 27-May Toronto

Riley Adams C 2018 08-Jun Toronto

Tayler Saucedo P 2015 17-Jun Toronto

Nick Allgeyer P 2018 02-Jul Toronto

Otto López INF 2018 17-Aug Toronto

2022 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Zach Jackson P 2016 9-April Oakland

Zach Logue P 2017 19-April Oakland

Christian Lopes INF 2012 20-April Oakland

Vinny Capra INF 2018 1-May Toronto

Danny Young P 2015 9-May Seattle

Josh Winckowski P 2018 28-May Boston

Jake Fishman P 2017 31-July Marlins

2023 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Samad Taylor INF 2017 18-Jun Kansas City

Spencer Horwitz OF 2021 19-Jun Toronto

Davis Schneider INF/OF 2022 4-Aug Toronto

Hagen Danner P 2021 11-Aug Toronto

Cam Eden OF 2021 21-Sep Toronto

Jose Espada P 2018 24-Sep San Diego

2024 POS ALUMN MLB DEBUT TEAM

Addison Barger INF/OF 2021 24-Apr Blue Jays

Brandon Eisert P 2021 17-Jun Toronto

Orelvis Martinez INF 2021 21-Jun Toronto

Steward Berroa INF 2022 23-Jun Toronto

Leo Jimenez INF 2022 4-July Toronto

APRIL 10 SUPPORTING

APRIL 24 SUPPORTING

MAY 8 SUPPORTING

MAY 29 SUPPORTING

JUNE 12 SUPPORTING

JUNE 26 SUPPORTING

AUGUST 7 SUPPORTING

AUGUST 21 SUPPORTING

JULY 3 SUPPORTING

SEPT 4 SUPPORTING

JULY 31 SUPPORTING

HOW TO SCORE A BASEBALL GAME

Different fans have different methods of keeping a scorecard, and many use their own notations. But here's a simple method: For example, If the hitter grounds out to shortstop, for example, write in "6-3," which shows the shortstop threw him out at first base. If the hitter flies out to left field, write a "7."

If the batter gets a hit, write in the hit according to which base he reached. Each corner of the box represents a base, with the lowerright corner being first.

If he singles, put a "-" in the lower right. If he doubles, write a "=" in the upper right, and so on. For a walk, use "BB" in the lower right. As the runner advances, mark the appropriate symbol in the appropriate corner.

If a runner scores, put a circle at the bottom of the box, and inside the

1ST INNING

1. SINGLED, ADVANCED ON NEXT BATTER'S WALK, TOOK 3RD ON FIELDER'S CHOICE, SCOREO ON NO. 4 BATTER'S DOUBLE

2. WALKED, LATER FORCED OUT, SHORTSTOP TO SECOND BASE

3. REACHED ON FIELDER'S CHOICE, ADVANCED TO 3RD ON NEXT BATTER'S DOUBLE, SCORED ON NO. 5 BATTER'S SINGLE

4. DOUBLED, SCORED ON NO. 5 BATTER'S SINGLE

5. SINGLED, ADVANCED TO 2ND ON NEXT BATTER'S SINGLE, STOLE 3RD BASE, THROWN OUT ON GROUNDER, SHORTSTOP TO CATCHER

6. SINGLED, STOLE 2ND BASE

7. REACHED 1ST ON FIELDER’S CHOICE

8. POPPED OUT TO 2ND BASE 2ND INNING

9. LEADOFF WITH DOUBLE

1. FLIED OUT TO CENTERFIELD

2. POPPED OUT TO SHORTSTOP

3. STRUCKOUT SWINGING

Umpires use a number of signals. Some of these are familiar and are associated with the Rules of Baseball, like safe, out, foul, etc. These are a few you are likely to see when scoring a game.

1. CENTER FIELDER

2. SHORTSTOP

3. 1ST BASEMAN

4. 3RD BASEMAN

5. RIGHT FIELDER

6. LEFT FIELDER

7. DESIGNATED HITTER

8. 2ND BASEMAN

9. CATCHER

circle put the symbol of the play and/or the player that drove him in. For example, if the No. 5 hitter drives in two runs with a single, mark his single in the bottom right of his box and mark a circle with the number "5" in the boxes of the runners who score (Some people like to use uniform numbers here, so you can tell who did what, even after lineup changes).

At the end of each inning, total the hits and runs for that inning only. At the end of the game you'll be able to add the innings total to get the game score.

SYMBOLS FOR PLAY

Double: Triple: Homerun: Sacriﬁce: Walk: Strikeout: Called Out on Strikes: Balk: Fielder’s Choice: Hit by Pitch: Wild Pitch:

LEFT FIELDER CENTER FIELDER RIGHT FIELDER

FOUL BALL

FOUL TIP STRIKE OUT

BASIC UMPIRE SIGNS FOR THE PLAYERS AND FANS

BY LINA SETAGHIAN

MEET OUR MASCOTS

THE VANCOUVER CANADIANS HAVE AN ARMY OF MASCOTS THAT ARE ALL DESIGNED WITH ONE COMMON GOAL – ENSURE EVERYONE OUT AT HISTORIC ROGERS FIELD AT NAT BAILEY STADIUM HAS FUN! FROM A LOVEABLE BEAR TO A TRIO OF SUSHI THAT ARE READY TO ROCK – NOT TO MENTION A CONDIMENT AND UTENSIL? THE CANADIANS MASCOTS ARE TRULY ONE OF A KIND!

BOB BROWN BEAR

Debut: 2007

Occupation: Canadians’ official mascot

Favourite Pastime: Meeting fans, giving high fives and hugs, posing for photos

About BBB: Makes more than 150 local community appearances every year and named after Vancouver’s Mr. Baseball, Bob Brown who dedicated his whole life to the game we love so dearly.

MR. KAPPA MAKI

Debut: 2008

Occupation: Staying cool, Professional Racer

Favourite Pastime: Attending birthday parties, winning races

Make-Up: Few slices of cucumber wrapped in rice and then rolled in a piece of dried seaweed. Sleek and light - Mr. Kappa Maki is always a tough competitor.

CHEF WASABI

Debut: 2008

Occupation: Chef, professional racer

Favourite Pastime: Running, cooking

Make-Up: Whether you buy wasabi in root form or as a green powder, there is one thing that is for sure - Chef Wasabi is one spicy addition to our Sushi Race!

SADAHARU SOY

Debut: 2015

Occupation: Pot Stirrer, Professional Racer Favourite Pastime: Cooking, meeting fans, running

Make-Up: Known to add a little saltiness to any meal, Sadaharu Soy was named after the legendary baseball slugger Sadaharu Oh who’s legend is global. Sadaharu is both physical and a little trickly during the sushi races!

MS. BC ROLL

Debut: 2008

Occupation: Pageant queen, professional racer

Favourite Pastime: Beating Chef Wasabi in Sushi Races and hanging out at the ballpark Make-Up: Combination of barbecue BC smoked salmon and fresh cucumber with a little mayonnaise to keep her rollin'.

CHOP N’ STIX

Debut: 2018

Occupation: Hand Tools, Professional Racers Favourite Pastimes: Helping people, racing Make-Up: Renewable, reusable and environmentally friendly! Chop & Stix come to the ballpark to keep the peace between the super competitive sushi and sauce. Connected at the top, Chop & Stix have a few challenges to iron out during the race – but they always get an A for effort.

ERIC GAGNÉ

AUGUST 6

PACIFIC TOYOTA DEALERS

KIDS FUN PAGE

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