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Canadian Baseball League
2015 Articles


Battery Re-Charge

Port Hope Looks at the Future and Likes What It Sees

(CBL Newswire) - by Chris Kinsella

Port Hope, ONTARIO - It’s the bottom of the fourth, and the crowd has settled in. It’s a good crowd, about 22,000, far short of the glory days when Battery Park was 35,000 every single game and kids were boring holes in the fence on Towson Street to get a look at Mighty Riggs "Big Rig" Babiarz, but far better than two seasons ago, when 22,000 wouldn’t have bought tickets for Free Beer Night. The sky has the beginnings of night creeping up from over the outfield fence across the Lake, and the lights are on. By the centerfield lamps, the moths are starting to buzz.

So are the fans.

No, no, there’s no talk of a division crown this year, or the playoffs, much less a run at the Beer. There are no international superstars queuing up to sing O Canada. Good seats - some of them - are still available. The stadium isn’t rocking, yet. But behind home plate, on the third row where Buzz MacReady has sat for sixteen years, there’s a sound you can hear that hasn’t been heard in this place, this magical place, for many years.

Is it the sound of hope?

TonightPort Hope, aptly named, is beating Val D’Or. Yep, that Val D’Or, the Sharks, winners of 103 games and the division and the pennant in 2014. The Val D’Or of Ole Ducotey and Wayne Campbell and the ageless Jeramy Politi, who’s won 12 games this year before the All-Star Break, his best start ever. It’s Politi who the Batteryare leading tonight.

The breeze is cool but the assembled are heating up, hoping for a repeat of last inning, when 24-year-old 3B Tim Atchley launched a curveball into the Lake and staked the Battery to a two-run lead. There have been some two-run leads this year, and though not often against competition such as this, it does happen. Sometimes those leads turn into wins, even against the best. As I said, it happens. It happened just last night.

This inning we’ll see Cory Mendelson, the husky first baseman currently platooning with Greg Lamp, who might as well be his twin, and Sterling Hodges, a shortstop management keeps trying to replace, and second-baseman Marc Frobel, one of the more promising young guys in a farm system that averages 23 years of age. If things go well, we might get around to Andy Hambrick, whom the crowd calls "Brick" and who is one of the fastest and most intriguing players on the team. He’s a rookie. Nobody in the starting lineup has more than 8 years in the league, and only two have more than 4. In Port Hope they’re starting over, but they’re starting. Now, after three terrible years, they’re finally starting.

Mendelson strikes out, but Hodges gets a hit, and though the Batterydon’t manage another run this inning - or at all tonight - nobody seems disappointed. "We know what we’re seeing out there," Buzz says, "and we have the glasses from 2017 that let us see it clear." There’s Leon Lemon, at the moment only a minor star and all but unknown outside Battery Park, but he’s 7th in the league in hitting and 8th in RBI. Hambrick may be called Brick, but he flies like Flicka and they’re already calling right field the Brick Hole, Where Doubles Go to Die. Frobel might yet become someone. Brent Ponson is back from a year in the slumps. And what about super-phenom Danny Linosele? "Didn’t he win the College triple crown?" one teenager asks, mauling a wad of chewing gum, "He can play. He’s better right now than Babiarz was." Hyperbole aside, Linosele did rank in the top 10 in slugging, doubles, homers, RBI and steals in college and if that’s not exactly MVP territory, it’s closer to the Mighty Big Rig than fans have seen on the shores of the Ontario in some time.

The magic will have to wait another night, it appears, as Val D’Or, looking somewhat annoyed, explodes for four runs in the 5th and cruises to win comfortably. But even tonight, even in another loss (Port Hope trails the division, so it’s not unusual), you can hear something in the conversations as the faithful, not downcast at all, even grinning here and there, point out that 22-year-old fireballer Scott Sidden went 3 1/3 innings in relief and, for the sixth time in a row, did not allow a runner to reach 2nd base. "Didn’t allow a runner at all," points out Hannah VanOrman, one of Buzz’s Bunch behind the plate. "Like he’s been up here forever." She nods. "That’s what it’s gonna be here in a couple years. One-two-three strikes you’re out."

Ah yes, the pitching, currently stitched together with 40-year-old rookies (no, really - yesterday’s winner was 40-year-old Slade Wragg in his third-ever CBL start) and whoever can throw 100 kph, is loaded for the future and showing promise already. Two of the future starting rotation (Sidden is one of these) are in the bullpen now, and neither has allowed a run since June 18. Port Hope once had the Four Horsemen. Now it’s a new day. Canny fans are scanning the minor-league reports and whispering - still just whispering - about the Magnificent Seven.

Thomas Cutcheon is turning out the lights and making the last sweep of the park now that everyone’s gone home. The bleacher seats down in the left-field corner have been swept, and the berm in right watered, and Battery Park is empty, but sleeping peacefully. "She feels better now," Cutcheon says, presumably referring to the stadium, "now that the people believe again. She’s got the dream back." In this town the anxious faithful are indeed dreaming again, but not of the Glorious Ride of 2008. No, not these days. They’re dreaming of the future. Of 2016 and 2017 and, especially, Buzz tells me, of 2018 and beyond.

"You can hear it, if you listen close," Buzz says confidentially as he gathers up his Bunch and heads out. "The echoes. They’re back." I look at him skeptically, but he only nods, and one or two of the other regulars join him. "You wait," they say. "You keep coming back here, you’ll hear it." Later, I pause at the top of the press section down the first base line, following Cutcheon out, the last human in a park full of ghosts, and shrug. Okay, Buzz, I’ll listen.

Sure enough. If you cup your hand just right, and listen very hard, over the echoes of Madge Bryson’s organ playing and Spuds hawking his fries to Section G, you can hear something, floating up over the lake, past the tattered pennant flag of half a decade ago, over the paint-cracked fences of deep center and across the still-green lawn where heroes once did their Olympian deeds.

No, it’s not hope. It sounds like winning. And it sounds mighty good.

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