Don't miss out on an exciting opportunity for your child to attend a Blue Jays Instructional Clinic in your neighbourhood.  Former major leaguer Duane Ward, a dominant reliever during the Blue Jays World Series era, will be there.

Where & When:
Pinecrest Little League home park on Friday, June 1st, 2012 from 4:30-8:30pm.


This clinic was a great success last year and we are happy to welcome back the Blue Jays organization along with players from any league who would like to participate and learn from the professionals! Follow the link to register online at the Blue Jays registration site and we will see you on the field!

As a part of our 2012 season, the Toronto Blue Jays will be running 30 Instructional Clinics presented by Honda across Ontario. Qualified Blue Jays instructors will focus on teaching baseball players 8 to 14 years old (8-16 for the Halifax and Charlottetown clinics) of all abilities the fundamental skills of baseball in a fun and structured atmosphere. Each clinic will be four hours in length with the players being grouped by age.

During the clinic each group will rotate through stations that will deal with skills such as: hitting, throwing, fielding, pitching, and base running. We also invite coaches to come on to the field to observe and ask our Instructors questions. The Blue Jays Instructional Clinic fee is only $40 per player.

Click here to register/pay.

• Clinics cost $40 per participant
• Participation is open to both boys and girls.
• Participants must be between the ages of 8 and 14 to participate.
• Participants should arrive in appropriate workout attire, running shoes and bring a baseball glove.

Interview with Mike Kusiewicz

I recently sat down with former Pro-player and Team Canada player, Mike Kusiewicz, to discuss his playing career, his thoughts on youth baseball and other things baseball.


This is the first in a series of interviews:

On Your Career Patch

Readers of my blog are interested in your career path from t-baller to Professional baseball player.
You played youth baseball in the Ottawa area. Can you tell me where it all began?
I began playing ball in Ottawa at the age of 7. I played with East Nepean.


Who was your greatest influence during your time playing in youth baseball?
I think that my 2 older brothers were my biggest influence. I would go and play with them and would try to keep up with them. This pushed me to get better so that I wouldn’t be left behind.

What major difference do you see between youth baseball today in Ottawa, and when you were playing?

I do not see a difference with the younger players- 13 and younger. I do however see a difference in players 14 and up. Many of today’s players seem to be going about their business the wrong way. When I came up, you were seen and not heard. You earned the respect of your teammates.

When did you realize that you might have a future in baseball?
I went to an open scouting camp for the Atlanta Braves when I was 15 at Kinsmen. I threw 2nd hardest in the city- 79mph. They said they could not officially talk to me, but that they would be interested in talking to me the next year. That was when I thought it would be possible.

There are rotating scouting combines across the US, did you ever attend one of those?
I went to a Braves, Blue Jays and Expos camp when they came to Ottawa. I also went to Montreal for a MLB bureau camp.

How did you get scouted?
I had a great coach who had some connections. He would make some calls for me and would make sure that I pitched first so that scouts could get a look. I also made myself available for workouts if scouts ever wanted one.

Tell us about the day you were drafted. How did you find out?
I came home from school and there was no call, so I went to McDonalds with my brother and best friend. When I came home, my Mom was waiting at the top of the stairs at my house. She said that Rockies had called and drafted me in the 8th round. We all started screaming. It was a great day to say the least.

What happened after you were drafted? Where did you have to report and what was it like?
It was actually a long process. I did not sign right away. I wanted to play with Team Canada, and I also had a scholarship to the University of Houston that I was considering. I only signed late August, so I missed the season. I ended up going to instructional ball in Tuscon- basically 6 weeks of practice…everyday.

(In another segment to follow, I will discuss Mike's professional career)


On Your Camps

Did you attend camps as a youth?
I went to a Montreal Expos camp here in Ottawa. The headliner was Bill Mackenzie- a scout. Funny thing is, he ended up being the scout that signed me 8 years later.

Do you see the value in attending a 1 week sleep-away camp in the States?
Yes, and No. I attended one when Iwas 15. It was Bucky Dents baseball school in Florida. We never saw Bucky Dent, and I don’t remember much of the baseball, but as a life experience, it had value.

You've been running baseball camps for youth for how many years now?
We are going on 7 years now.

You offer camps at different periods of time throughout the year, not just during the summer?
Yes, we have a camp in the fall, a camp in the spring and a summer camp in July.

What do your camps offer that some of the other camps do not?
Two things = Credentials and Honesty. I take pride in my career and what I accomplished over my 14 years as a professional and Olympian. On top of my playing career, I have been coaching in Ottawa for the last 19 years. My coaches also have a tremendous amount of experience with most playing either professional or college baseball. We are also honest. We realize that baseball is a specialized sport, and we do not pretend to know everything. For example, if I have a player that has progressed above my knowledge level with regard to hitting, I’ll refer him to Cam Pelton. He played 4 years of Division 1 baseball and knows way more about hitting than I do. After all, he is the hitting coach, not me.

When is your next camp?
We are running our next camp July 2nd to the 6th at the Nepean Sportsplex.

How do people find out more information about your camps?
For the most part, we rely on word of mouth. Also, District 2 has been great getting the word out by putting up information on their website about baseball camps in the city. When people find us online, our website provides information about our camps and our personal training services as well.

On Coaching

Are you presently involved in coaching a team with any association?
I am currently working with multiple leagues including Kanata Little League, South Ottawa Little League and Perth Little League; I run skills camps for players and coaches in the spring and summer.

Would you consider coaching a youth competitive travel team (like the ONC or the Knights) in the future, if you were approached?
I admire the people that coach these teams. The amount of time that these individuals sacrifice is amazing. Unfortunately, given my personal life- a new little one at home and a change in professional career- I can’t supply the time needed to coach a successful program right now. In the future, I would love to get involved with a program that I truly believe in.

What sort of coaching philosophy to subscribe to with regards to development, game-play, making it fun (for youth players)?
Baseball is a simple game, keep it that way. It has been around for over 100 years yet people try to re-invent it all the time.

What advice do you give to young players who hope to play collegiate ball or beyond?
Play for fun. Do not expect anything from the game, it owes you nothing. If anything else comes from playing like a scholarship, then take it as it comes and enjoy it.


On Baseball in Ottawa

As you know, I'm a proponent of youth baseball and while I'm presently involved in Little League, I try to take a non-partisan approach to promoting baseball in Ottawa. You are familiar with all the associations and levels and you see the ground that the sport of baseball keeps losing to other non-winter sports like soccer, football and lacrosse.

What do you think needs to happen in Ottawa to baseball structurally or fundamentally in order for the sport to reverse this downward trend?
Take out the politics. Take out personal agendas. Everyone involved, from the coaches, to the trustees all the way to the league presidents are supposed to be there for the kids; we need to remember that. We have organizations dying because of changing community demographics, but our league boundaries are not changing to reflect this problem. Why have we not changed the boundaries to help organizations like Carlingwood Frank Ryan or Pinecrest? This is just one problem, but it serves as an example of issues that need to be addressed in order to reverse “the downward trend” you speak of.

I would like to thank you for your time and I look forward to our next sit down where we discuss your professional career and your involvement with AA baseball in Ottawa.

Vlad4040

Keeping Tabs on a Local Boy

This article originally ran in YourOttawaRegion.com and was written by Brier Dodge on Feb 27, 2012.

Chris Bisson earns spot in Baseball Hall of Fame at 22


Chris Bisson. Chris Bisson never expected he would be inducted into Canada’s Baseball Hall of Fame at the age of 22.

As a teenager, he never even expected to play college baseball.

But no one expected Team Canada to win a gold medal at the Pan American Games, a tournament dominated by Cuba and the United States – and this past year, it happened.

“Everyone was hot at the same time,” Bisson said. “Before that, we’d had only ever won one medal, a bronze in 2009.”

He was part of that gold medal team, and in June, the Orleans player will be one of the youngest players to be inducted as a part of Team Canada’s gold medal winning team from the Pan American Games.

“As soon as I saw that email, I started calling everyone,” he said.

As a high school player for the Nepean Canadians, Bisson was thrilled to make Team Ontario.

Team Ontario lead to Team Canada, which lead to another lucky chance.

“The (University of) Kentucky coaches were just passing by at Canada Cup,” he said. “I had one good play, and ran like hell to first.”

Bisson, then a Francophone Grade 11 student at Beatrice-Desloges Catholic high school started hitting the books for the English American university entrance tests to see where it could take him.

Soon enough, he was playing second base for the University of Kentucky, playing top southern schools in front of thousands of fans.

Baseball is serious business in the South, with attendance at division one university games sometimes surpassing 10,000.

Bisson excelled at Kentucky, named an All-American multiple times, becoming one of few Canadians to do so.

He’s always stood out as being more northern than most of his teammates, whether it was at university, where he tried to convince classmates he lived in an igloo, or with his current organization where he is only one of two Canadians.

"But all the Canadians want to see the medal at spring training,” he said.

With Ottawa gaining an AA team, there’s a chance his baseball career could even return him home. He currently plays for the Fort Wayne TinCaps, the A affiliate team for the San Diego Padres, who drafted him in the fourth round.

“If I could play in Ottawa, to be a kid from Canada that plays in his hometown, that’s unheard of,” he said.

He came back home for the off-season, and worked with sports study baseball players at Gatineau’s Nicolas Gatineau high school, an ideal job.

Coming back and seeing his old coaches and hometown teams has let him tell teenage players that they can make it too.

“It’s hard – but not impossible,” he noted.

While spring training for the Padres started on Feb. 24, he plans to return to Ottawa during the off-seasons to complete his kinesiology part time at the University of Ottawa and eventually hopes to pursue a career in physiotherapy.

The baseball season is intense, with multiple games some days and days off far and few between. They are so few that players actually being inducted into the Hall of Fame will not be able to attend the June 23 induction.

So Bisson knows what his first stop upon season end and return to Canada will be – St. Mary's, ON, to see his name posted under Team Canada 2011, next to other baseball greats like Larry Walker and Jackie Robinson.

“I could retire right now and look back and be happy,” he said. “I’ve accomplished a lot, it’s been a dream. I never thought the hard work was going to pay off like this.”

Tim's Time

I'm going a bit off topic (of youth baseball) with this post, but these are quiet times.  And it's that time of year, when writers have to submit their Hall of Fame baseball ballot.

The "Rock" on 1981 Topps Traded

This coincides with an annual habit of mine, of sifting through the arguments (and sometimes, illogic) behind voters who continue to leave Tim Raines off the ballot.

Some, instead of admitting that they never really paid attention to Tim Raines as a Montreal Expos, they come up with ludicrous singular reasons for leaving him off the ballot.  This one being one of my favorite preposterous reasons (by Ron Chimelas):

"But if Raines gets in because he is fifth in steals, what about Vince Coleman, who is sixth? That’s why I talked myself out of it.”

Vince Coleman never hit more than 6 home runs in a season, and finished with 28 for his career. While Raines hit double digits in home runs seven times and finished with 170 over his career.  Another glaring difference ... Coleman had 1200 fewer hits than Raines. 

Now consider for a second that Tim Raines wasn't just a speed-demon, but a 5 tool player.  If he were to rank among the elite of the elite in these statistical categories, wouldn't you say that's pretty Hall-worthy?!

Well here's my take on making that point:

Other than Tim Raines, there are no players from the modern era that compiled a career of fewer than 1000 strike outs while having:

500+ SBs (Raines: 808)
2500+ Hits (Raines: 2605)
150+ HR's (Raines: 170)
900+ RBI's (Raines: 980)
----------------------------
<1000 K's (Raines: 966)

Not even his peers like Rickey Henderson (1694 K's) or Lou Brock (1730 K's) could match Tim's eye at the plate.  To find players with those power & speed numbers and low strikeouts, these are the only names you'll find: Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins and Honus Wagner. 

To read more on Tim Raines remarkable career goto: http://raines30.com/

My 2 heroes growing up.