The Alaska Baseball League @ Alaskan-Legacies.com

Jamie D’Antona’s three-run home run in the 11th inning lifted Tennessee past Huntsville 9-6 Thursday night in the opening game of a five-game set at Joe Davis Stadium. The Smokies won their fourth straight game to improve to 10-11 on the season, while the Stars fell to 12-9 and saw their four-game win streak was brought to a halt.

By: Matt Wikler

The release of Strat-o-matic baseball each January signals the start of spring for fans.

Some of my earliest memories are of baseball. The crack of the bat, the smell of a new glove, the grip of the ball in your hand, all vivid memories from childhood that so many of us share. Yet for me, my early memories of baseball involve none of these things. The crack of the bat is replaced by the rolling of dice and the grip of the ball by that of a pen as I mark the scorecard.

Strat-o-matic baseball is a statistics based game that has been around for years, since the 1960s. It’s a simple game in execution, but lends itself to all the complexity and depth that is the game of baseball.

It involves using dice and cards that correspond to different baseball players. The dice are thrown and the resulting numbers correspond to certain outcomes on either the batter, or pitcher’s card. Examples are strike-out, walk, error, single, etc, encompassing all the possible outcomes of a real baseball at-bat.

The cards are all created based on the players’ statistics for the previous year. So obviously, players like Albert Pujols and Roger Clemens would have terrific cards, while players like Victor Zambrano, or anyone who plays for Kansas City, would have terrible cards. Even more interestingly is that it allows you to find players who are actually terrific players, with really good stats, even if they aren’t given sufficient playing time, like Aaron Heilman.

The game also provides rules by which squeeze plays, stealing, defensive adjustments and other special circumstances in baseball might be employed. One of the true beauties of the game is that you as the player have the ability to make any decision you want. Want to double steal home and second? Go ahead. Feel like playing the infield in, but the outfield deep? That’s fine as well.

Strat-o-matic baseball has its own rules and guidelines, but many players usually end up making their own rules, allowing for individuality for every player as they play.

However, the real beauty of the game is the match-ups. Now you can play out those dream match-ups that would only ever occur in videogames or on espn.com polls. Want to see if the 2003 Red Sox are better than the 1927 Yankees? They aren’t. Think Barry Bonds can get a home-run off of Bob Gibson? Not unless he wants his head knocked off. With strat-o-matic baseball you can find the answers to these questions and any other baseball fantasy you might have.

The former University of Minnesota star, enshrined in Cooperstown after even greater success in the major leagues, was among 10 former players and coaches elected Wednesday as the College Baseball Hall of Fame’s inaugural class.

Winfield was joined by fellow former big leaguers Will Clark (Mississippi State), Bob Horner (Arizona State), Brooks Kieschnick (Texas) and Robin Ventura (Oklahoma State) as the other players selected.

The late Rod Dedeaux, who helped Southern California win 11 College World Series titles — including an unprecedented five straight from 1970-74 — headlined the list of coaches included in the hall’s first class.

Also elected were LSU’s Skip Bertman, Miami’s Ron Fraser, Texas’ Cliff Gustafson and Arizona State’s Bobby Winkles.

“In talking to the guys elected, several of them were emotional about it,” said John Askins, chairman and CEO of the College Baseball Foundation, which established the hall. “Many of them said this would probably be the highest honor they would achieve in their careers.”

The honorees were the top 10 vote-getters from a list of 34 nominees, selected by an 80-member committee consisting of current and retired head coaches, former players, NCAA commissioners, sports information directors and media. Voting was based solely on players’ and coaches’ college achievements.

“This is really very special because it’s the first class,” Askins said. “I think this is very important for the sport of college baseball, and important for their respective universities.”

The inaugural class will be honored during a two-day celebration in Lubbock, Texas - the site of the new hall. The hall of fame museum will be part of a new baseball stadium complex, which will be built on the campus of Texas Tech and is scheduled to open before the 2008 season.

Winfield, who never played in the Minors and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001, went 19-4 with a 2.24 ERA and 229 strikeouts in 169 innings in his three-year career as a pitcher and outfielder with the Golden Gophers. A few days after being picked as the Most Outstanding Player of the 1973 College World Series, Winfield made his Major League debut with the San Diego Padres and was on his way to becoming a 12-time All-Star slugger.

Kieschnick was one of college baseball’s most versatile players, hitting .360 with 43 homers and 215 RBIs and going 34-8 with a 3.05 ERA for Texas from 1991-93.

He played 11 seasons in the Minors with stops in Daytona, Orlando, Iowa, St. Petersburg, Durham, Edmonton, Louisville, Colorado Springs and Indianapolis. Last year, he played with Corpus Christi and Round Rock. In all, he won three games as a pitcher, while as a hitter he batted .277 with 151 homers and 518 RBIs.

Players are eligible for the hall five years after their final college season, and can’t be active at any level of professional baseball. Coaches are eligible after they end their college careers, but can’t be active as coaches at the pro level.

Dedeaux won 1,332 games from 1942-86 and retired as the winningest coach in Division I history. He coached nearly 60 future big leaguers, including Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson, Tom Seaver, Dave Kingman, Fred Lynn and Roy Smalley. Dedeaux, who died in January at 91, had winning seasons in 41 of his 45 years with the Trojans.

Bertman led LSU to five College World Series titles — in 1991, ‘93, ‘96, ‘97 and 2000 — in 18 seasons before retiring from coaching in 2001 and becoming the school’s athletic director.

Fraser won 1,271 games at Miami from 1962-92, including national titles in 1982 and ‘85. He was nicknamed “The Wizard of College Baseball” for his innovative marketing and promotional plans that helped fill the stands at Coral Gables.

Gustafson guided the Longhorns to College World Series titles in 1975 and `83, and had surpassed Dedeaux as the winningest coach in Division I history when he retired in 1996 with 1,427 victories.

Winkles took over Arizona State’s program when it was first elevated to varsity status in 1959 and led the Sun Devils to the national title just five years later. He won two more College World Series titles in 1967 and ‘69, before leaving in 1971 to manage in the Majors for four years.

Click for Promotional Video by Jim Carroll

Associated Press

Boston — The Boston Red Sox and their former first baseman, Doug Mientkiewicz, have come to an agreement to send the ball from the final out of the 2004 World Series to the Hall of Fame.

The agreement ends a sometimes bitter legal fight over who rightfully owns the ball.

“An amicable agreement was reached many weeks ago, and it provides a permanent home at the (Hall of Fame), with opportunities for some public display as well at Fenway Park,” Red Sox president Larry Lucchino said via e-mail on Sunday.

Pitcher Keith Foulke fielded the ball off the bat of Edgar Renteria on Oct. 27, 2004, and threw to Mientkiwicz for the final out of Boston’s four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was Boston’s first World Series title since 1918.

Mientkiewicz held onto the ball, gave it to his wife, and then secured it in a safe deposit box and claimed it as his own, joking that it was his “retirement fund.”

The Red Sox said they were the rightful owners of the ball, and even though Mientkiewicz loaned the team the ball for a year, the team went to court last November to get permanent ownership. The suit was dropped a few days later and the sides agreed to arbitration.

Mientkiewicz, a midseason pickup in 2004, was traded the following offseason to the New York Mets.

PHOENIX — Arizona left fielder Luis Gonzalez doubled Tuesday night to become the 21st major leaguer to hit 300 home runs and 500 doubles.

Gonzalez doubled off San Francisco’s Matt Morris to drive in Chad Tracy in the sixth inning. Gonzalez, a 16-year veteran, has 320 home runs.
The game was stopped while the Diamondbacks replaced second base.

Gonzalez joins a list led by Hank Aaron, who hit 755 homers and 624 doubles. The only other active player in the group is Barry Bonds, who has 708 homers and 567 doubles. Bonds doubled in the top of the inning.

Allan Simpson
All Allan Simpson had was a passion for baseball 25 years ago.

He had been the general manager of the rookie-class Lethbridge Expos in 1975, and before that he spent three summers with the Alaska Goldpanners, serving as sports editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Simpson had a dream and passion, but he didn’t have a visa allowing him to head south to the United States.

He started the All-America Baseball News in his garage in White Rock, B.C., and drove across the border to Bellingham, Wash., where he had a post-office box. The Bellingham Herald published his first issue, which rolled off the press in early 1981.

“I didn’t think a magazine entitled Baseball America with a Canadian mailing address would sell,” Simpson used to joke.

Miles Wolff, owner of the Durham Bulls, bought the paper in 1982, re-named it Baseball America and moved the offices to Charlotte, N.C., with founder Simpson as editor.

Five days ago, Simpson walked away from Baseball America 25 years after founding the magazine. Squeezed out after he helped it grow to the point where it surpassed The Sporting News as “The Baseball Bible,” whether it be on a college campus, a single-A park or a major-league clubhouse.

Simpson’s was an only-in-America success story made in Canada. Just as Peter Gammons, then with The Boston Globe, and Tracy Ringolsby, now with The Rocky Mountain News, changed the way baseball was covered. Both have won the J.G. Taylor Spink award and both are inducted into Cooperstown. Like those two, Simpson changed the business as well.

In his very first issue, Simpson tabbed Mike Moore of the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles and Joe Carter of the Wichita State State Shockers as the first two picks in the 1981 June amateur draft.

Simpson is credited with increased coverage of the draft, suggesting a prospects game, which now takes place every all-star game week and is entitled the Futures Game.

Simpson always was an advocate of international competition, which grew into the recently-concluded World Baseball Classic.

His top prospect lists — top 400 high schoolers, top 300 collegians, top 100 pro prospects, top 10 organizational prospects — were debated and disputed but were can’t-miss reading from Key West, Fla., to Fort McMurray, Alta.

With Paul Beeston no longer the CEO of Major League Baseball, it could be argued that along with Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin and Canadian director of national teams Greg Hamilton, Simpson was one of the top three most influential Canadians in baseball.

His departure was a sad day for the magazine.

But Simpson will not be out of work for long.

Tribune photo by David Middlecamp

Jimmy Van Ostrand has evolved from a badminton star into one of the most feared hitters in the Big West

By Brian Milne

Around the Van Ostrand household, it’s known simply as “The Tape.”

Jimmy Van Ostrand’s mother, Sandy, breaks it out on occasion for friends or when her son’s team is on the road, cooped up in its hotel and in desperate need of some entertainment.

When she pops in the treasured highlight video of her son, a wiry, 16-year-old Van Ostrand wows the room with his smashing swing and dashing defense.

And all of the tales that have been told about this young Canadian phenom quickly become a reality.

Jimmy Van Ostrand used to be one big, bad … badminton player?

“I’ve seen the video and he’s legit. He’s no scrub because there was some serious highlights on there,” said Cal Poly second baseman Brent Walker, who first saw the tape last summer when he and Van Ostrand played for the Anchorage Glacier Pilots. “He’s running around everywhere in his badminton clothes — that collared shirt and those super short shorts.

He was a stud.”

Not exactly how you pictured the Big West Conference’s most feared hitter honing his baseball skills back home in British Columbia, eh?

The 6-foot-4, 230-pound Van Ostrand was indeed an acrobatic shuttler long before he was known as a burly slugger for the Cal Poly baseball team.

Van Ostrand, who came into the weekend with four more home runs than anyone in the conference, was ranked as high as third in the country as a junior shuttler and even won a pair of gold medals with Team Canada during the 2000 Junior

Pan-Am Games in Cuba.

The senior outfielder/first baseman even credits some of his success on the diamond to badminton, which can improve hand-eye coordination, conditioning and flexibility.

“I definitely get bugged by my buddies back home about not becoming a hockey player,” Van Ostrand said. “Because of the weather up there, you could only play baseball for three or four months out of the year. Everything else you did had to be indoors. Badminton was something to do and I just started playing. I liked it because it was a great workout.”

Van Ostrand’s father,

Tim, agrees the “physically demanding” sport is what helped his son become a great all-around athlete.

Physically demanding?

Considered a leisure sport by many in the U.S., competitive badminton can be a fast-paced game where players leap and dive about to rally a shuttlecock that travels at speeds reaching 200 mph.

Average matches last more than an hour with shuttlers traveling anywhere between 3 and 4 miles during a single match.

“And Jimmy was pretty good at it … always in the top five in Canada,” his father said in a phone interview from their hometown of Richmond, British Columbia. “Back then he was tall, thin and hadn’t put on the bulk he’s had the last couple years. He looks completely different now. It’s scary. Last time I saw him I hit him in the stomach and it was like I was hitting a wall.”

Van Ostrand, realizing there wasn’t much of a professional future in badminton, finally gave up hitting “birdies” for baseballs after his senior year at McMath Secondary School.

Without any major scholarship offers, Van Ostrand’s high school coach, Ari Mellios, suggested he play baseball for an old friend at Allan Hancock College.

Focusing on the sport full-time for the first time, Van Ostrand quickly starred for the Bulldogs and was a first team All-Western State Conference selection as a freshman and sophomore. Van Ostrand was drafted in the 29th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2003 but turned down the offer to continue working on his game at Cal Poly.

“The thing about Jimmy is his work ethic and desire for the game are off the charts,” said Cal Poly assistant coach Jesse Zepeda, a former Hancock assistant who recruited Van Ostrand to play for the Mustangs. “The ability was there (at Hancock) but that talent still had to be tapped. He was a kid that had to put in more time, and he’s developed into that hitter a lot of guys don’t want to throw to.”

Despite missing six weeks with a broken wrist last season, Van Ostrand returned from the injury and hit safely in 22 of his next 49 at-bats (.449).

He finished the year hitting .345 with four home runs and 25 RBI in 40 games before moving on to the Alaska Baseball League where Baseball America ranked him the league’s third-best prospect for the 2006 draft.

“He’s been working for this ever since I can remember,” said his younger brother David, currently a cleanup-hitting third baseman at Hancock. “I remember him asking for a weight set for Christmas when he was 13, and he’s been using them ever since. He’s been going nuts for the last year or so because he’s really focused on getting ready for professional baseball.”

Those thighs that resemble tree trunks and arms that pass for pythons are proof of the hours the older Van Ostrand spent in the weight room this past offseason.

That sheer size combined with a Big West-best 11 home runs, 34 runs scored, 40 RBI and 77 total bases, are making the scouts drool and pitchers shiver (evident in the 25 walks and 9 hit by pitches he’s received).

Then there’s the part of the stoic slugger those outside the program rarely get to see.

“He’s the first true leader I’ve had in my four years here,” Cal Poly head coach Larry Lee said. “He’s taken that role and cherished it and our team is better for it. We’ve had guys who were quiet and led with their actions but nobody like this. He’ll confront the team if a practice or a game isn’t going the way it should be and does the things that leaders are supposed to do.”

All of which makes the former badminton star an intriguing prospect for local baseball scouts.

“He’s definitely not hurting his cause this season,” one scout said of Van Ostrand last week. “The thing that’s helped him is he’s performed well against some of the better pitchers going right now. …

If he continues to show consistency, I can see him being

A FIRST-DAY, TOP-10 ROUND GUY.”

If that’s the case, Sandy Van Ostrand might have to start showing another highlight tape to all her friends back home in Richmond.

One of her son playing baseball instead of badminton.

“Baseball’s my sport now,” Van Ostrand said. “It’s been that way since my freshman year of college. Once I played my first full season of baseball and started lifting weights and all that, that’s when I realized I wanted to take my game to the next level. Now it’s all I want to do.”

By BILL PLUNKETT
The Orange County Register

VERO BEACH, FLA. – Kent Powersports will have to make do with an absentee owner for a bit longer.

Veteran second baseman Jeff Kent put off the start of his second career as a full-time motorcycle salesman Wednesday by agreeing with the Dodgers to a one-year contract extension with an option for the 2008 season.

Kent, 38, arrived at spring training in the final year of the two-year contract he signed with the Dodgers in December 2004 and said he had not decided if he would play beyond this season.

Informal discussions on a contract extension among Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti, Kent and his agent, Jeff Klein, began shortly after that. But Kent said it wasn’t until experiencing the renewed atmosphere and optimism brought by Colletti and Manager Grady Little as well as a conference call with owner Frank McCourt on Tuesday night that he made his “final decision.”

“It’s been a pretty emotional spring training for me dealing with all these type of things. I’ve been racking my brain, pulling my hair out thinking about it,” said Kent, who consulted with his family and “people in the game” before deciding on the extension.

“I’ve got enough money. I really understand his (McCourt’s) passion and what he wants to achieve. … Last night was convincing for me it was the right thing to do.”

The contract extension conceivably will take Kent into his 40s as a Dodger. He said he was “99.9 percent” certain it would be his last contract.

“I’ve never ruled anything out in my career, but it’s safe to say I’ll be proud to retire as a Dodger,” Kent said.

He will do so after a multimillion dollar parting gift. Kent is scheduled to make $9.4million this season. The extension adds between $11.5million and $22million to that in the next two years.

Kent is guaranteed a base salary of $9million in 2007, which escalates $250,000 each if he makes 500, 525 and 550 plate appearances this season. He also will receive a $2million signing bonus payable in 2009.

If Kent makes 550 plate appearances in 2007, the option for 2008 vests at a base salary of $9million again with performance bonuses that could take it higher. If he doesn’t reach 550 plate appearances in 2007, the Dodgers have a club option for 2008 at $7million which can be bought out for $500,000.

Colletti said he has no qualms about committing so much money to a player coming off wrist surgery and about to turn 40.

“To me, he has Hall of Fame credentials,” Colletti said. “You look at his history the past 10 years , he plays a lot (an average of 145 games per season), he plays hurt, he plays through just about anything. I believe he’s one of the best players on the club. He sits in the middle of our lineup. Those players are hard to find.

“There’s always a risk with any player you sign whether he’s 38, 28 or 18. This club knows him, knows his work ethic. Once you get beyond the fact that anyone can get hurt at any time - I don’t know how you don’t go forward with it.”

Kent led the Dodgers in virtually every offensive category in 2005, has hit more home runs than any second baseman in baseball history (306) and has more 100-RBIs seasons than any other second baseman (eight).