The Alaska Baseball League @ Alaskan-Legacies.com

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Oilers 5, Bears 4

Anthony Aliotti’s two-out, two-strike, two-run single to left field in the bottom of the ninth inning capped a four-run rally Wednesday night that earned the Peninsula Oilers a 5-4 win over the visiting Bears of California.

The victory at Coral Seymour Memorial Ballpark in Kenai cemented the Oilers’ perfect run (9-0) of their early-season, non-league schedule. Tonight, they travel to Palmer for their first Alaska Baseball League game, against the Mat-Su Miners.

Peninsula trailed 4-1 entering the ninth, and parlayed a single, four walks, a wild pitch and Aliotti’s walk-off hit into victory.

Meanwhile, the Bears endured a tough nine-game road trip on which a victory would have at least salved their sorrow. Instead, they went 0-9 against ABL teams.

With the Oilers trailing 4-2 after Trey Dennis’ bases-loaded walk forced home a run, Bears reliever Kevin Ayers unleashed a wild pitch that allowed Bryan Horst to score and runners to advance to second and third bases with no outs. Ayers got Ryan McCurdy to ground out back to the mound, intentionally walked Vince Belnome, and then got P.J. Sequeira to pop up for the second out.

Ayers worked a 0-2 count on Aliotti, who then fouled off two pitches before delivering his game-winning hit.

Glacier Pilots 3, Running Birds 1

The Anchorage Glacier Pilots used solid outings from a trio of pitchers and capitalized on miscues by the SoCal Running Birds to overcome a sluggish offense to score a 3-1 victory at Mulcahy Stadium.

The Glacier Pilots bounced back from Tuesday’s 9-3 loss to the AIA Fire by scoring their first two runs on a passed ball and a throwing error.

Bryan Haar extended his hitting streak to six games with two hits including an RBI triple to add an insurance run in the eighth.

The Pilots’ pitching threesome of starter Antwonie Hubbard, David Brown and Eric Best slowed the Running Birds by scattering seven hits and walking one. Hubbard, who gave up the lone run in the fifth, went five innings and struck out five. Brown put down six straight batters in middle relief, and Best overcame two singles to start the ninth by striking out the next three Running Birds to end the game.

Seals 5, Bucs 1

A third-inning letdown led the Anchorage Bucs to their first losing streak of the season Wednesday afternoon as they lost a non-league game to the San Francisco Seals at Mulcahy Stadium.

A throwing error from Bucs starter Paul Bargas, trying to throw out a runner at second base in the third inning, opened the floodgates and led to a two-run inning and a lead the Bucs never relinquished.

Although the lefthander out of UC Riverside suffered the loss, he pitched well, striking out eight and walking one batter in seven innings.

Miners 7, AIA 0

In a meeting of last year’s co-ABL champs, Max Peterson rung up five strikeouts and allowed just two hits in six shutout innings Wednesday as the Miners blanked Athletes in Action at Hermon Brothers Field.

Michael Carlson, Will Musson and David Rowse each pitched one inning as the unbeaten Miners (5-0) notched their second straight shutout.

Through five games, the Miners have allowed just eight runs.

Catcher Wes Dorrell finished 2 for 4 with a double and two RBIs.

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Well-worn path to the majors starts in Alaska League
Alaska league has decades-long tradition of helping amateurs become All-Stars

By DOYLE WOODY
dwoody@adn.com

Published: June 8th, 2008 02:37 AM
Last Modified: June 8th, 2008 05:22 AM

The other night in Arlington, Texas, Cleveland Indians outfielder Ryan Garko drove in six runs. Rangers shortstop Michael Young banged out three hits and drove in two runs.

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In Chicago, Mark Teahan homered for the Kansas City Royals.

In San Francisco, Rich Aurilia, who recently played his 1,500th game in Major League Baseball, furnished a pinch-hit single.

In Oakland, A’s shortstop Bobby Crosby provided two RBIs and two hits, including his 20th double, which tied him for the American League lead.

In Seattle, Angels right-hander Jered Weaver earned his fifth win of the season.

In Boston, Red Sox outfielders Jacoby Ellsbury, baseball’s leader in stolen bases, and J.D. Drew each slashed a couple of hits for manager Terry Francona. Rays first baseman Eric Hinske bagged two hits too.

And in San Diego, Padres right-handed reliever Heath Bell, who last season led major-league relievers in innings pitched and strikeouts, pitched a scoreless eighth to get the win over the Cubs.

What links these men — beyond exorbitant salaries and the joy of playing a kid’s game for a living — is that before they went pro, they played here as college kids in the Alaska Baseball League.

Scan any day’s Major League box scores, and you’ll find a dozen or two former Alaska Leaguers. Back several years ago, there were days when seven of nine Giants in the starting lineup had ABL ties.

Nearly 400 guys who played in the ABL dating back to the 1960s have gone on to Major League Baseball. Many became household names — Tom Seaver (Fairbanks Goldpanners), Mark McGwire and Randy Johnson (Anchorage Glacier Pilots), Jeff Kent (Anchorage Bucs), to name a few.

Each summer, major league scouts flock to Anchorage and Fairbanks, and Kenai and Palmer, to sniff out talent. The ABL merited a long story in this week’s edition of Sports Illustrated.

Mulcahy Stadium, where the Glacier Pilots or Bucs — or both — play nearly every day during June and July, really is a field of dreams.

That’s where current St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ryan Ludwick, off to a sizzling start, bashed home runs for the Glacier Pilots in 1997. And it’s where Weaver (2002) and Colorado Rockies left-hander Jeff Francis (2001) flummoxed hitters while dominating for the Bucs.

At Mulcahy, fans can see a player before he becomes somebody. That’s part of the fun of going to the park — trying to sniff out which players you may be watching on television a few years from now. You can see them when they’re accessible — autographs are easy to come by before and after games … even during games (visit the boys in the bullpen).

You can see players do humble work like chalk the baselines and batter’s box before the game. You can see them when they retain some innocence — before the fat salaries, the postgame clubhouse spreads and the chartered flights of the major leagues.

You can go to the ballpark and see some of the nation’s finest developing talent, and do it for peanuts — speaking of which, crack open a few shells during the game and enjoy the national pastime. You can often do it from seats so close to the action you can see the dirt flying from beneath cleats and hear every word between manager and umpire when things get hot.

And because the ABL long ago rid itself of aluminum in favor of wood bats that give a truer indication of skill at the plate and on the mound, you can enjoy the crack of the bat while you savor the boys of summer.

You could do a lot worse than spending nine innings at Mulcahy, or at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer, where the Mat-Su Miners play. Same goes up north for Growden Park, which the Fairbanks Goldpanners and Athletes In Action call home, and Coral Seymour Memorial Ballpark in Kenai, home to the Peninsula Oilers.

All those ABL diamonds are links to baseball’s past — and its future.

High gas prices concern Bucs general manager
CUTTING: Team won’t go to NBC tournament even if its wins ABL.

By ANDREW HINKELMAN
ahinkelman@adn.com

Published: June 8th, 2008 01:02 AM
Last Modified: June 8th, 2008 01:36 AM

A year ago, Anchorage Bucs general manager Dennis Mattingly could fill up his two buses for $300-$340.

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This year, it’s closer to $600 at the pump. And that was before Friday’s record jump in oil prices.

For teams in the Alaska Baseball League, busing around the largest of these United States has always been a challenge for players. Now it’s an even bigger challenge for the people who run the clubs.

“Nothing goes down, everything keeps going up,” Mattingly said. “It sure would be a lot easier if the prices were a little cheaper. Who would have thought that fuel was going to go up the way it did? Did we plan for this? Good lord no, we didn’t plan for it.

“We try to keep our prices down, but in the same respect we have to be able to maintain and put on a good program, and that costs a lot of money. It just does.”

For all the pump pain the Bucs and other teams will feel this summer, Mattingly knows it isn’t confined to baseball teams. Families too, will be feeling the pinch and perhaps not making as many trips.

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“With the price of gas being the way it is, (we’re) pretty cheap entertainment,” he said. “We’re 100 percent all about doing things for families, trying to get families involved and get them to come to the games and bring the kids.

“We’re in entertainment, right? We’re just out there on a stage and our job is to put on the best performance we can. We just don’t play guitars, jump up and down, scream and yell.”

Hoping for a bump in crowd size because of high fuel prices may not be the best way for the Bucs to offset expenses, though. With operating costs ballooning, Mattingly has to find new revenue streams, or increase the ones he has.

“We have to get more sponsorship, that’s the big thing,” he said. “Get more people involved, get more people to spend more money with us.”

One way the Bucs are cutting costs is by eschewing the National Baseball Congress World Series. Even if the Bucs win the ABL, they won’t go to Wichita, Kan.

“Everyone agrees that going to these outside tournaments is costly,” Mattingly said. “What is our return on it? What do we get out of it? Our sponsors didn’t get to see us play, our fans didn’t get to see us play. What’s it doing for us? Nothing.

“We’ve talked about all kinds of things instead of participating in the tournament that’s 6,000 miles away. And there’s been talk on all fronts of what we can do, how can we make our league more exciting.”

One idea is a season-ending championship series between the ABL’s top two teams, but nothing has been decided yet.

For the time being, the Bucs and the rest of the ABL will have to improvise during a season that may see fuel prices continue to rise.

“We’ve had to make some adjustments,” Mattingly said. “Even doing that we still find ourselves scratching our heads going, ‘How are we going to pull this out?’

“There’s nobody in the league, including ourselves, that has an overabundance of money to throw around. At the end of the season the checkbooks are bled. There’s nothing left.”

The Alaska Pipeline
A rugged, no-frills league in the Last Frontier State has funneled almost 400 college players to the majors and kept fans in Fairbanks up late each June with its quirky Midnight Sun Game

By Luke Winn

“Remember to never take the game home with you.”
– Former major league closer Lee Smith, on how a reliever can maintain his sanity

What, however, is a pitcher to do when his team’s bullpen is closer to his bed than it is to the dugout? That was the conundrum facing Kevin Camacho last summer on college baseball’s last frontier. At 2 a.m. on June 22, not long after the conclusion of the 102nd Midnight Sun Game, many of Camacho’s Alaska Goldpanners teammates mounted bicycles and rode off, still in full uniform.

They receded like a gang of supersized Little Leaguers into Fairbanks’s Arctic glow, which had made the game — a 6-1 loss to the visiting Oceanside Waves that had begun at 10:36 p.m. under a cloudy tapestry of blues and pinks — possible without the aid of artificial lights. On the summer solstice the natural light never dies out in Fairbanks, 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and on this night Camacho, a California-raised righty, would never leave the confines of Growden Memorial Park, where the centerfield backdrop is the eight-starred Alaskan flag and Take Me Out to the Ballgame is forsaken during the seventh-inning stretch in favor of the Beat Farmers’ 1985 country-punk song Happy Boy. Out with the peanuts and Cracker Jack, in with lyrics about a dead dog in a drawer, as well as the most guttural refrain ever to blare from a stadium speaker: “Hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba!”

While his teammates biked a mile or two to their host families’ houses, Camacho had a shorter trip home. He made a left at the batting cage down the leftfield line, then a hard right at the Port-o-Lets. He passed through a chain-link gate, climbed four wooden steps and unlocked a door, marked D4, on a 50-foot white trailer. Camacho tossed his equipment bag on the floor of the 9-by-12 room with a view… of the back of Growden’s third base bleachers. “Welcome to the O.V.,” he said. “This is how we live.”

O.V. is short for Olympic Village, 13 weather-beaten trailers in which visiting teams in the Alaska Baseball League often bunk when in Fairbanks. The vehicles are so named because Goldpanners general manager Don Dennis, a thickly bespectacled 68-year-old who lives in his office at the park, has leased them in the past to actual Olympic teams — U.S. skiers and lugers, and the Taiwanese and Korean baseball teams — which have occasionally trained in Fairbanks. During the 2007 season, however, the trailers housed four Goldpanners players, all of them from NAIA national champ Lewis-Clark State in Lewiston, Idaho, who had chosen not to live with host families. In its previous life the four-decade-old O.V. fleet harbored some of the men who built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline near Atigun Pass, 300 miles to the north. Dennis bought the trailers for $125,000 in 1986 and relocated them to an asphalt lot adjacent to leftfield. The amenities are few and dated — wood-grain paneling, vintage ’80s TVs and no AC, which means players often wake up drenched in sweat — but there is a Last Frontier State authenticity to the spartan quarters that the players appreciate.

“It’s kind of like camping,” explained one of Camacho’s D-block neighbors, pitcher Brad Schwarzenbach. “But I’ll tell you this: I’ve never been late to the field.”

The only latecomer to last year’s Midnight Sun Game was the sun itself, which in the end never showed at all. A sellout crowd of about 4,000 had filled the park, but the sun stayed tucked away behind a horseshoe of clouds beyond the leftfield foul pole. Camacho threw 6 1/3 innings of one-run relief in the dusk before making the trek to his trailer. When a visitor described his digs as “pretty rugged,” Camacho corrected him: “It’s pretty Alaska.”

The term Alaskans use for the Lower 48 is Outside, and the six-team, four-city ABL is stocked with college standouts who are primarily Outsiders. The league — founded in 1969 but with roots going back more than a century — bills itself as an unvarnished version of the more prestigious Cape Cod League, another wood-bat summer league that serves as a showcase for top U.S. college players; last spring Dennis took a jab at the Cape circuit, calling it a “show league” for scouts and tourists compared with the “down and dirty competition among the cities” in Alaska. The ABL is best known for its alumni; it has produced almost 400 major leaguers, including Hall of Famers Tom Seaver and Dave Winfield and stars such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson and J.D. Drew. The league’s character, however, is shaped more by things uniquely Alaskan: pipeline trailers, perpetual summer light and that signature tradition, the Midnight Sun Game, which grew out of a 1906 bet between two Fairbanks bars, California’s Saloon and the Eagles Club. Their patrons formed teams called the Drinks and the Smokes.

The ABL has no Hall of Fame, but much of its history resides in the head of an 87-year-old who lives six hours south of Fairbanks, in Anchorage. On the day after last year’s solstice Henry Aristide (Red) Boucher, the de facto Godfather of Alaskan Baseball, was convalescing from a stroke in his three-bedroom town house. His wife, Vicky, who’s 22 years his junior, apologized to a visitor that her husband’s trove of memorabilia was in storage because of a recent flood in the basement.

Red Boucher, in his peculiarly raspy voice, is a charming storyteller, and he explained that he had come to Alaska in 1958 at the urging of U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy. JFK wanted the former naval officer and fellow Massachusetts Democrat — who’d assisted with Kennedy’s ‘56 campaign — to get involved in politics in the vast territory that in 1959 would become the 49th U.S. state. Boucher met his first wife, an Icelandic Air flight attendant, in the early ’50s at a wrap party for Name That Tune, on which the two had been contestants, and persuaded her to move to Fairbanks, where in 1966 he was elected mayor. Five years later he became the state’s lieutenant governor.

Boucher founded the Goldpanners in 1960. He ran the franchise — which mostly played exhibitions against competition from Outside until the ABL’s founding — out of his sporting-goods store. Boucher was manager, fan entertainer and Alaskan baseball evangelist; he happily recalls how, during the ‘Panners’ 1963 trip to the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kans., he had a black bear tranquilized and flown in from Fairbanks as a promotional stunt. (Boucher proceeded to parade the animal, which was named Midnight, around the field on a chain, “until he started chasing me and nipping at my rear end. I ran toward the dugout, and it cleared out fast.”)

He is most proud that the ace of the ‘64 and ‘65 teams used his stint with the Goldpanners as a stepping-stone from Fresno City College to USC and later a major league career in which he won 311 games. Twenty-eight years after combining on a no-hitter in the NBC World Series in Wichita, Tom Seaver invited Boucher to his induction ceremony in Cooperstown.

“Red was a character cut from a different cloth,” says Seaver, who now runs his own vineyard in Calistoga, Calif. “I remember my first flight into Alaska. I went from San Francisco to Seattle to Fairbanks, and when I landed, they had a uniform waiting for me. I changed in the car and met Red — in mid-game — in the dugout. He said, ‘Go to the bullpen. Somebody get him ready.’ I got called in and met my catcher for the first time on the mound. The discussion went, ‘What’s your name?’ ‘O.K., Marty.’ ‘O.K., Tom. What do you throw?’ ”

The drive from Boucher’s home to Anchorage’s Mulcahy Stadium is 10 minutes, spitting distance by Alaskan standards. The facility is home to two ABL teams, the Bucs and the Glacier Pilots, and has become familiar to millions of Outsiders thanks to a surreal YouTube clip. Through May 31, footage of a Cessna Skywagon crashing behind Mulcahy’s leftfield fence in mid-inning of an ‘03 ABL game had been viewed 2,402,436 times. (Although the plane flipped as it skidded, none of its four passengers were killed, and two escaped unscathed.)

Seventy-five-year-old Pilots general manager George (Lefty) Van Brunt, another of the ABL’s elder statesmen, is living proof that dive-bombing an outfield in a single-engine Cessna can be less dangerous than warming up Randy Johnson. Van Brunt keeps a desk in the windowless equipment room of the Pilots’ first-base-line shed (which also serves as a clubhouse), and from there, a few hours before the start of a game against the Bucs last June 20, he waxed nostalgic about the Big Unit’s Alaskan summer of ‘84. Van Brunt liked to goad the then USC pitcher about mechanics. “I’d say, ‘One of these days, Randy, you’ll learn how to bend your back,’ ” he recalls. “That must have ticked him off.” Soon after, in a bullpen session at Mulcahy, Johnson broke Van Brunt’s right big toe with an errant fastball. The Pilots’ G.M. insists, however, that the incident belied the Unit’s true temperament. “Randy was just a beach bum who loved his guitar,” Van Brunt says. “He played country western, but we always told him, ‘Don’t sing. You ain’t worth a darn as a singer.’ ”

It is a 3 1/4-hour drive south from Anchorage to Kenai, where the Peninsula Oilers occupy the ABL’s southernmost outpost. En route, innumerable signs warn of moose crossings, and drivers are likely to spot Dall sheep on fjordside cliffs as well as anglers battle-fishing for salmon in the Russian River. There is an abundance of wildlife, but a dearth of wild life — there’s a desperate shortage of college-age women in Alaska, which forces ABL players to find other forms of entertainment; one Oiler said that by summer’s end, he might “be willing to have sex with a moose.” Former Goldpanners southpaw Bill (Spaceman) Lee, who won 119 games in 14 big league seasons, met his first wife, airline greeter Mary Lou Helfrich, as he got off a plane in Fairbanks in ‘66. The Spaceman recalls that he wooed her in a typically Alaskan way. “I had a pickup truck from my host family, and after games I’d court Mary Lou by taking her out to the city dump,” he says. “We’d watch the wolves and bears in the twilight.”

Kenai is also home to a bayside Hilton, albeit an unofficial one attached to a bingo hall, with a sign inside that reads, ABSOLUTELY NO CLEATS ARE ALLOWED TO BE WORN IN THE HILTON AREA. In addition to supplying bunks to visiting players and raising money for the Oilers through weeknight bingo games, the so-called Bingo Hilton (which the team owns and runs) features a storefront that displays Oilers trophies and sells “pull tabs” — gambling tickets with perforated flaps that reveal whether the purchaser has won a cash prize. On a Sunday at 12:30 p.m., 90 minutes before an Oilers-Bucs game, two diehards sat at the Hilton’s U-shaped counter, surrounded by clear-plastic boxes of tabs.
Jim Petterson, a 58-year-old retired Unocal loader, explained almost apologetically, “Alaska doesn’t have casinos, so this is the only way we can gamble.” He and his 46-year-old wife, Betsy, don’t attend Oilers games. But given that they buy $200 to $300 worth of pull tabs a week, Jim estimated that “we’ve probably paid for a few jerseys by now.” To which Betsy interjected, “More like, we could have bought the stadium a couple of times.”
The vistas beyond the outfield fences at most ABL stadiums are relatively subdued — there are no calving glaciers or salmon jumping out of rivers — but the field in Kenai is ringed by 80-foot-high spruce trees, Anchorage’s Mulcahy Stadium looks out on a lovely cluster of additional athletic fields, and a curling club flanks Fairbanks’s Growden Memorial Park. The state’s famed peaks almost always loom in the distance, though at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer, the home of the Mat-Su Miners, the mountains of the Chugach Range appear close enough to touch. Four hours northeast of Kenai and a half hour northeast of Anchorage, Palmer’s ballpark is situated off a road leading to the Alaska State Fairgrounds, marked only by a couple of small wooden signs. The field is dwarfed by the presence of a 6,400-foot crag — Pioneer Peak — that seems to rise just beyond the leftfield corner. It is a mere taste of what William H. Seward, who as Lincoln’s secretary of state negotiated the purchase of the Alaskan territory from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, once described as “scenery which surpassed in sublimity that of either the Alps, the Apennines, the Alleghenies, or the Rocky Mountains.”
It is said that Alaska has but two seasons: winter and day. Taking advantage of the latter, Miners assistant coaches Conor Bird (now the head coach) and Nate Thompson headed out for a fishing marathon at sunrise — 4:11 a.m. — after a win last June. Bird, 27, who coaches at the College of Marin, in California, and Thompson, 26, now at Nebraska, were perched on a muddy bank of the Eklutna Tailrace, near a power station outside Palmer that is a hot spot for king salmon.
Bird, a dry-witted, soul-patched San Franciscan who was serving as the Miners’ pitching coach, rigged up rods with proper weights and baited egg-loops with globs of reddish roe. “The person who does the least preparation is the one most likely to catch something,” he lamented, and when the reporter accompanying the two coaches hooked the lone king (and failed to reel it in), Bird’s axiom was proved correct. The party went on to earn the angler’s equivalent of a Golden Sombrero — four hours of only nibbles and whiffs — while tantalizing noises, some melodious, others primal, emanated from up- and down-river. Splashes from leaping salmon. Whoops from more fortunate fishermen. Strangest of all, thuds from the impact of wood against the heads of fresh catch. The salmon must be killed this way and resubmerged in the river; if left out in the open, they are essentially homing beacons for hungry grizzly bears.
The coaches were in little danger, seeing that the only thing submerged nearby was a bottle of Jagermeister, which provided periodic solace. The white flag finally got waved at around six that morning. They had to have some sleep before batting practice began that afternoon. They had come here nearly straight from the field following last night’s game and should have been exhausted. But the Alaskan sun over the river was already so bright that it buoyed the spirits of sportsmen who, today, took nothing home with them.

Touching The Game, Alaska
A Documentary Film About The Alaska Baseball League

Greetings Alaska Baseball friends,

We just wanted to take a moment an update everyone on the exciting documentary film we have been working on for the last couple of years. With our recent trips to the West Coast and Arizona to interview some famous alumni of the ABL, we have just about completed the filming. We still have a few more alumni interviews to conduct and there most likely will be one quick trip to Alaska to get a couple pick-up shots and aerials, but we feel we have accurately captured the essence of the league and it’s remarkable history. Once again, thank you to everyone in Alaska for being so accommodating and helpful the past few years. You have truly made us want to come back again and again, and hopefully we can show the rest of the U.S. what makes summers in Alaska so special.

Our plan right now is to have the film finished and ready to release some time this summer. We may have an opportunity to premiere the film at a major film festival so we can not be specific on release date or venue, but we will be sure to keep everyone informed as we get closer. They may also be a television premiere and eventually a DVD release.

We have had a great time interviewing some of the famous alumni of the league. Both Tom Seaver and Dave Winfield have given us lengthy interviews on their time in Alaska. Making the rounds at Spring Training, we spoke to many current MLB players such as Jered Weaver, Michael Young, Craig Counsell and Mark Teahen. All shared great memories of their time in the ABL.

There is plenty more information on our website: http://www.touchingthegame.com We continue to receive inquiries about how to contribute to the film in a variety of ways. We are still looking for investors and donations to help in the final post-production and marketing of the film. As you can imagine, it has been quite the undertaking. Anyone interested can go to: http://www.touchingthegame.com/alaska/investors.shtml or contact us directly.

Finally, the 2007 Anchorage 4th of July doubleheader video is up and can be viewed at: http://www.touchingthegame.com/alaska/trailer.shtml Feel free to link your site directly to it.

As more news becomes available, we will let you know, and continue to check our website as well. Hope to see you all again very soon.

Jim Carroll
Anthony Keel
Eric Scharmer
John Martin

Touching the Game , LLC

Former Spartan experiences “The Last Frontier”

By Owen Reid/Special to the Monitor-Index

NOTE: Owen Reid is the son of Bill and Regina Reid Jr. of Moberly, and is a 2005 graduate of Moberly High School where he played baseball. He currently is a junior attending Winthrop University of Rock Hill, S.C. where he is also a member of the Eagles baseball team. Reid spent his 2007 summer playing in a collegiate baseball league in Alaska, and provided the following story about his summer adventure.

Many people go through life without truly making the most of the opportunities thrown their way. I would like to think of my life as the reciprocal of this theory, and the summer of 2007 was just another example.

I was fortunate enough to play in one of the most prestigious summer collegiate baseball summer leagues in the United States, but with somewhat of a catch. Even though I would be in the United States, I was going to spend the summer in Alaska, which is closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to my hometown. “The Last Frontier” is home to one of the oldest collegiate baseball summer leagues, the Alaska Baseball League, and has housed some of this era’s most talented players. Names like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Randy Johnson are at the top of an abundant list of Major League All-Stars who have spent time in the ABL. I welcomed the chance to join such an elite list of baseball players. Since I knew very little about Alaska before I journeyed halfway across the Northern Hemisphere, I had a very open mind and was looking forward to mingling with the Alaskan culture.

It was the crack of dawn on Saturday, June 2 when I started my quest to our union’s largest state. I left from Charlotte, North Carolina and flew to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. My third and final flight of the day took me from the Bay Area to Anchorage, Alaska, my summer home for the next two months. Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city as it possesses nearly 40 percent of the state’s population. Anchorage is surrounded by mountains to the east and is bordered on the west by the Cook Inlet, which flows into the Pacific Ocean. This beautiful scenery made for the backdrop to every day I spent in “The Last Frontier.” The breathtaking views often took the spotlight off of my real reason for visiting Alaska.

Once our baseball season got underway and I was spending a lot of time on the diamond, things reached somewhat of a state of normalcy. I was playing the same game I had played for my entire life, but there was one huge adjustment I had to make: I would be playing all of my games in daylight due to the lack of darkness during the summer months in Alaska. I have always played night games and typically during the summer in the “Lower 48,” it gets dark around 8 p.m. This was not at all true in Alaska as the sun would typically go down around 11:30 p.m. or midnight.

It took some getting used to and certainly threw me for a curve as I went to bed the first couple of nights. However, once I got used to having more than 20 hours of daylight, I realized that it really provided a great opportunity to take in more of Alaska’s beauty.

One of the more enjoyable activities I was able to experience was hiking. I hiked on a regular basis and not only got a really good workout, but I was also able to see Anchorage and its vicinity from a different perspective. The views from the top of the mountains were indescribable as the ranges often went beyond what my eyes could see. The ranges in Alaska are some of the most expansive in the world and “The Last Frontier” is home to 19 mountains over 14,000 feet tall.

One of my more memorable hikes was during early June when I summitted “Peak 3,” which is part of the beautiful backdrop for downtown Anchorage. Though the summer season was in full bloom, there was still a good amount of snow from the long Alaskan winter. I was hiking in shorts and a t-shirt, and once I reached the summit of the peak, I sat down on the empty trash bag I was carrying, and used it as a sled. I sledded down the mountain multiple times, all at rather high speeds. An Alaskan winter, on average, sees almost six feet of snow and even though it was the first week in June, I was able to enjoy part of it. This experience really enlightened me as to what the outdoor world of Alaska had to offer.

Another perk I was privy to in Alaska was the world-class fishing. Many die-hard anglers came to Alaska in an attempt for a big catch during June and July. I went king salmon fishing with regularity and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I frequented the rivers, streams and creeks in the Anchorage area and was amazed at the size of the “kings” as I saw several 50-pounders reeled in.

Unfortunately, I was never able to land one as my line broke with a king on the hook on two separate occasions. Even though I wasn’t able to bring home a salmon, I wasn’t left fishless. On an off-day our team went deep-sea fishing, travelling 45 minutes off of the Kenai Peninsula to our destination. In a very short time I had reeled in five halibut. It was quite a chore reeling in over 200 feet of line from the ocean floor, let alone with a flat, 40-pound fish on my hook. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun finally getting to catch some fish and it was an experience not easily repeated elsewhere.

But fish aren’t the only form of wildlife to be seen in Alaska. On multiple occasions when I was fishing, I was within 50 yards of grizzly bears. These enormous creatures had one thing in common with me: we both wanted salmon. We were in search of the same prey, but their success rate was much higher than mine. The grizzlies came right down to the creek, pawed a couple times and then had themselves a nice snack. This is a regular occurrence, but witnessing it up close and personal gave me a much better perspective on the grizzlies’ size and presence. While they are intimidating and obviously deadly creatures, I was surprised that the bears were timid when simple clapping and shouting from nearby fishermen scared them away from the creek.

Even the somewhat frequent sighting of a grizzly was often overshadowed by the abundance of moose. This animal is scarcely seen in the “Lower 48,” but I saw moose nearly every day and the sight of them never got old. The size of a full-grown bull moose, which is the male, is almost surreal. I had several run-ins with moose, both from my car window and on foot. They are very calm, cool and collected creatures unless they feel like you mean harm to their young or unless they sense some sort of general danger. At that point, you will likely be charged and the result will not be fun. The only creature I can somewhat compare to a moose is a horse. Picture a good-sized horse, only taller and with a huge rack of antlers on its head. Now picture that creature standing in your backyard, or at the local gas station. Moose have been spotted in the middle of downtown Anchorage and often appear in backyards of suburban neighborhoods.

As the moose and grizzly bears roamed the Alaskan soil, our national bird’s beauty soared through the crisp mountain air. The bald eagle was arguably one of the most incredible sights I witnessed during my time in Alaska. Nearly half of the world’s bald eagles reside in Alaska, and at times I felt like I saw all of them.

During one weekend trip down the Kenai Peninsula, I literally saw several hundred bald eagles in a 300-yard stretch of the beach. They are fierce animals but their grace and speed in the air is an incredible sight as they use their seven and a half foot wingspan to glide around. I stood at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and watched as dozens of bald eagles pounced on several fish carcasses. Once the bald eagles got their share of the kill, they would leave the carcass and several more would soar in for a nibble. Most of the time, the bald eagles would take their food back to their nests, which were high on the cliffs right near the ocean. With all of the amazing wildlife and outdoor opportunities, I often found myself overwhelmed with the everyday Alaskan experiences, but I couldn’t forget my primary objective in Alaska: baseball.

There are six teams in the Alaska Baseball League and two of them call Anchorage home. The team I played for, the Anchorage Bucs, shared the same stadium with the Anchorage Glacier Pilots. There are also two teams in Fairbanks, which is more than 350 miles north of Anchorage, who share a single stadium. Other than the two teams in Anchorage and the two in Fairbanks, the average distance an ABL team may travel for a series could be up to 11 hours-by bus. All six teams host each other throughout the summer and sometimes teams will visit multiple times.

A typical week for the Bucs would look something like this: travel by bus eight hours to Fairbanks on Monday; play a game Monday night and spend the night in trailers at the stadium. On day two, sit around all day waiting for another game, and then do it all over again for two more days before finally returning to Anchorage during the early morning hours of Thursday.

Even though the travel was somewhat grueling and very repetitive, the level of competition certainly made for a very worthwhile experience on the diamond. Each team knew that on any given night, victory was no guarantee. That is where the comparison to professional baseball comes into play. With the constant travel and competition, a summer in the Alaska Baseball League almost mirrors that of a short-season summer in pro ball. Pro teams are regularly on the road and live out of suitcases for multiple weeks while traveling by bus.

Without a doubt, the many unique atmospheres and situations I encountered, and the lessons I learned from them, were some of the most worthwhile I have had. Seeing the landscapes and the creatures that inhabit them solidified my perception of just how beautiful Alaska really is. I know that my interaction with the Alaskan wilderness and all it possesses will always have a spot in my heart. I will forever have the mental images and personal experiences that I was so fortunate to enjoy.

To most collegiate baseball players, the opportunity of spending a summer in the Alaska Baseball League would have entailed sleeping in and playing baseball, but I chose to fully experience “The Last Frontier.”

Logan Schafer basked in his return to San Luis Obispo.

But the Anchorage Bucs centerfielder’s hot bat didn’t figure much in the outcome of the WASABI Tournament at SLO Stadium.

Neither did the No. 1 seed Palm Springs Power, who said thanks but no thanks to the opportunity to win the tournament trophy and skipped town early after finishing round robin play 4-0.

And by the end of all 21 innings of the championship doubleheader Friday, the San Luis Obispo Blues ended their season with a second-place finish in the first year of a tournament organizers hope can become a “West Coast Championship” — an alternative postseason event for teams who decline an invitation to or are left out of the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kan.

The Blues beat Anchorage 5-1 with a four-run rally in the top of the 12th inning in a game that forced a later championship game. But Anchorage, which would have won the title had it beaten the Blues in the first game, came back to take the second and won the inaugural WASABI title 9-6 in the nightcap.

The Blues would have faced Palm Springs in the final, but the Power unexpectedly left for home early from a tournament that also had two teams back out in the week leading up.

Though none of his at-bats proved to be of major consequence, Schafer, a former Cuesta College standout who plays collegiately for Cal Poly, batted 8 for 10 with a double, a run and a stolen base in the doubleheader.

“It’s always fun playing in San Luis Obispo,” said Schafer, who said it was easy to relax playing against a Blues roster that included five players already at or headed to Cal Poly.

Schafer continued a hot streak that encompassed the entire Western Association Summer Amateur Baseball Invitational Tournament.

In tournament play, Schafer batted 14 for 28 with three doubles, two triples and four stolen bases.

But for all his base hits, Schafer scored just two runs against the Blues on Friday and both turned out to be irrelevant to the final scores.

Also relegated to box score fodder were the performances of both starting pitchers in the first game.

The Blues’ John James and Anchorage’s Christian Bergman dueled to a 1-1 stalemate through the first seven innings.

James allowed one earned run and eight hits in seven innings while striking out nine and walking just one. Bergman gave up one earned run and three hits in eight innings while also striking out nine and walking one.

But the outcome was decided by the bullpens.

Reliever Mark DeVincenzi struck out six in three scoreless innings of work, and Carson Bryant got the win by pitching the final 11/3 innings.

The Blues took the lead in the 12th on a wild pitch that allowed Jeff Cusick to score. An RBI fielder’s choice by Schafer’s younger brother Justin, who batted 3 for 4 in the second game, and a two-RBI double by Dan Pietroburgo gave the Blues some insurance runs.

In the second game, the Blues led 3-1 in the sixth inning before the Bucs got to Blues starter D.J. Smith for four more runs and Bryant entered to give up another two.

Anchorage put together a two-run rally in the seventh and led the rest of the way.

8-5: Taiwan’s Lee retires 11 of the last 12 Glacier Pilots he faces. .

By BRIAN SINGLER
bsingler@adn.com

Published: July 1, 2007
Last Modified: July 1, 2007 at 04:11 AM

Taiwanese pitcher Chen-Chang Lee doesn’t say much in any language, his native Mandarin Chinese or English.

But Saturday, the Glacier Pilots got the message.

Behind a solid seven innings from Lee, the Anchorage Bucs improved to 2-0 this season against the rival Anchorage Glacier Pilots with an 8-5 win at Mulcahy Stadium.

“He threw real well, getting ahead of people — he dominated the game for us,” Bucs first baseman Clay Calfee said. “That’s cool, because he can’t communicate too much.”

Lee, a 6-foot, 175-pound righthander, allowed no runs on three hits with three strikeouts. The Taipei Physical Education College sophomore struck out Avery Barnes and Matt Wagner in the first frame and cruised in the middle innings, retiring 11 of the last 12 Glacier Pilots he faced. Lee has allowed one run in his last 15 innings to drop his ERA to 2.12 and improve to 4-0

“Getting ahead with his fastball, putting people in play, letting the defense work, he’s been real consistent,” Calfee said.

Calfee, a 6-6 sophomore from Angelo State, continued to swing a strong stick for the Bucs, going 3 for 5 a night after homering against the Fairbanks Goldpanners. Calfee doubled for his team-high ninth two-bagger and is hitting .397.

“Coach Gar (Mike Garcia) has been working with me and I feel good,” Calfee said. “Staying back and staying soft on my front side. I hope it lasts.”

The Bucs jumped on Pilots starter Chris Smith with two runs in the second inning and five in the third. Tom Mendonca started the scoring with a two-RBI single in the second.

The Bucs opened the game up on Jared Gayheart’s two-run sun single in the third inning. Gayheart lofted a routine fly ball that leftfielder Luke Yoder misjudged and allowed to get behind him. Matt Lucchesi added another two-RBIs with a liner to left field and Logan Shafer rounded out the Bucs scoring with an RBI single.

The Glacier Pilots made a late charge with a four-run ninth inning. The Pilots’ runs scored on an error, a bases-loaded walk, a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly. Bucs closer Mitch Bialosky earned the save, retiring the Pilots’ Mike Diaz swinging.

“That’s baseball,” Calfee said about the Bucs’ struggles in the ninth. “We got the win. That’s the bottom line.”

Find Brian Singler online at www.adn.com/contact/bsingler or by phone at 257-4335.

Clarion Staff report

The Peninsula Oilers saw their season-opening, 11-game winning streak at home end with a resounding thud on Monday with a 7-1 loss to the Anchorage Bucs in Alaska Baseball League play.

The Oilers are now 3-1 in the league, while the Bucs moved to 10-3 overall and 2-3 in the league.

Offense, pitching and defense, which had all been stellar in the winning streak, fell apart Monday.

The Oilers committed five errors and had two wild pitches and a passed ball. The Bucs also recorded five stolen bases. Three of the Bucs’ runs were unearned.

On the mound, Oilers starter and loser Mario Hollands struggled, yielding five runs — three earned — on four hits in 1 2-3 innings of work. Carlos Luna then allowed another run in 1 1-3 innings and the Oilers trailed 6-0 after just three innings.

That was more than enough for Bucs starter Cheng-Chang Lee to improve to 3-0. Backed by an errorless defense, Lee pitched seven innings and yielded just one run on four hits. The run came on a home run down the left field line in the sixth by Jeremiah Mejia.

The Bucs were led by Logan Schafer, who finished 3-for-4 with two runs scored and an RBI. Sean Ratliff added two RBIs and two doubles, while Erik Wetzel had two runs and Louis Ullrich had two RBIs.

Bucs catcher Matt Lucchesi nipped any aggressive baserunning in the bud by catching the Oilers on their only two steal attempts.

The Oilers have today off before starting a road trip by playing at the Mat-Su Miners at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

BUCS 7, OILERS 1

Bucs AB R H BI Oilers AB R H BI

Schafer cf 4 2 3 1 Buss cf 2 0 0 0

Ratliff lf 5 1 2 2 Melton 2b 4 0 0 0

Morgan rf 4 0 1 0 Dabbs rf 3 0 1 0

Mendonca 3b 4 1 1 0 Mejia 3 1 1 1

Calfee 1b 5 0 0 0 Goins 1b 4 0 1 0

Jacobo ss 5 1 1 0 Patterson c 4 0 0 0

Wetzel 2b 5 2 1 0 Younger ss 2 0 0 0

Ullrich dh 2 0 1 2 Lundy lf 3 0 0 0

Lucchesi c 4 0 1 0 Martinz 3b 3 0 1 0

Totals 38 7 11 5 Totals 28 1 4 1

Anchorage 321 000 010 —7

Peninsula 000 001 000 —1

E — Patterson, Melton, Younger 3. DP — Bucs 1, Oilers 1. LOB — Bucs 9, Oilers 6. 2B — Ratliff 2, Schafer. HR — Mejia. SB — Wetzel, Schafer, Ratliff, Mendonca, Jacobo. CS — Jacobo, Goins, Melton. S — Ullrich. SF — Ullrich.

IP H R ER BB SO

Bucs

Lee, W (3-0) 7 4 1 1 3 3

Belli 2 0 0 0 2 3

Oilers

Hollands, L (0-1) 1 2-3 4 5 3 1 1

Luna 1 1-3 4 1 1 1 1

Haug 3 0 0 0 1 0

Dunn 2 3 1 0 0 0

Wade 1 0 0 0 0 1

Luna pitched to one batter in the fourth.

HBP — by Lee (Younger). WP — Luna, Dunn. PB — Patterson.

Linda Douglass
Alaska e-Post online

http://www.usarak.army.mil/alaskapost/Jun01Story14.asp

2-month season gets NCAA players used to wood bats

The Alaska Goldpanners and Omaha (Nebraska) Strike Zone line up for the playing of the National Anthem prior to the 2005 Midnight Sun Game.

Story, photos by Linda Douglass
Fort Wainwright PAO

The boys of summer are back, and Alaska baseball fans’ winter-long dreams have finally become reality.

The sharp crack of the wooden bat connecting with the leather ball, the muffled slap of the ball hitting the pocket of the glove, the fans cheering their team and booing the umpires, homeruns, spectacular catches, well-executed double plays, stolen bases and occasionally even a triple play – all are signs that it’s baseball season once again.

The outfield is a dark rich green, the Astroturf infield a lighter faded yellowish-green. The smell of popcorn permeates the stands and hot dogs are cooking on the grill.

Though the nearest major league team is an overnight flight away in Seattle, fans can watch amateur baseball at its best right here in the form of the Alaska Baseball League.

The six teams comprising the league play in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kenai and Palmer. After a long, cold winter, there’s nothing quite like sitting under the Alaska evening sun watching a good game.

The Alaska Goldpanners and Athletes in Action Fire play at Growden Park in Fairbanks. The Anchorage Glacier Pilots and Anchorage Bucs call Mulcahy Stadium home. The Peninsula Oilers play at the Coral Seymour Memorial Ballpark in Kenai and the Mat-Su Miners host their visitors at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer.

The six teams recruit top college players from around the United States, many of them coming directly from the College World Series.

The Alaska League has been well represented in the big leagues over the years, sending up hitters, pitchers, fielders and one World Series-winning manager.

The ‘Panners have a total of 187 former players who were called up to the majors, and the Glacier Pilots have sent 70 up. In the past six years, the AIA Fire have seen 30 players drafted and several of them are in the major leagues, said Chris Beck, general manager.

Oilers GM Shawn Maltby said there are “too many to count,” who have graduated from his team to the big leagues. Some of the more notable Oilers alumni include J.D. Drew, Rich Aurilla, John Olerud, Frank Viola and Dave Stie.

The Anchorage Bucs have seen about 20 players go on to play in the major leagues, including Jeff Kent, Calvin Murray, Geoff Jenkins, Jeff Francis, Jered Weaver and Wally Joyner.

Others who spent a summer or more playing ball in Alaska include pitchers Randy Johnson, David Bush, Tom Seaver and Floyd Bannister. Arizona Diamondbacks pitching coach Bryan Price threw for the North Pole Nicks in the 1980s.

Other sluggers and fielders they faced included the likes of Chase Utley, Adam Kennedy, Bret Boone, Graig Nettles and Terry Francona, now manager of the Boston Red Sox.

The history of the league is rich with names of former players, rivalries between the cities and traditions.

One such tradition is the annual Midnight Sun Game played on the longest day of the year. As near as Interior baseball historians can estimate, the tradition began in 1906 and the ‘Panners picked it up when the team formed in 1960.

The game begins at 10:30 p.m. and is played without electric lights. Play stops at the half-inning break nearest midnight for the singing of the Alaska Flag Song and a celebration of the midnight sun.

Since 1960, the Panners’ record in the Midnight Sun Game is 36-11, with several of the wins pulled out in late-inning come-from-behind situations. The visitors this year are the Oceanside (Calif.) Waves.

Todd Dennis, Goldpanners’ webmaster and member of the team’s board of directors, has been around the team his entire life. His father, Don, has been the general manager since 1967. Todd started working with the Goldpanners in 1981, and has held a number of jobs.

“We have a new head coach, 1978 Goldpanner Tim Gloyd. Tim is the head coach of Yuba College in Northern California. He is coming off of his best season since taking over coaching duties 10 years ago.” Dennis said. “The roster is filling with prospects, and returning players include Joey Dunn, Matt Fitts, and 2005 ABL Player of the Year Matt Vogel, who is returning as a player/coach.”

Zak Basch, assistant general manager for the Anchorage Bucs, said his 2007 team looks promising.

“Our team looks good,” Basch said. “We have players from baseball powerhouse schools such as Long Beach State, Stanford, Rice, Cal Poly (California Polytechnical State University), Santa Clara and Kansas, among others.”

Mike Garcia will return to his sixth year as the Bucs’ manager, having previously managed from 89-92 and in 2006. He coached for 25 years at Cañada College in California, where he is currently the athletic director.

Shawn Maltby is the general manager of the 2006 ABL champion Peninsula Oilers. He said the level of competition and sportsmanship in Alaska is unsurpassed.

“We are looking good this summer,” he said. “On paper you always may look good but coming to Alaska and swinging a wood bat is much different then an aluminum bat.”

Aric Thomas, who played for the Oilers on the 1992 and 1993 national championship teams, will manage the team this year.

The Fire is one of four teams nationally under the Athletes in Action umbrella. Beck is the national teams director and the Alaska general manager.

“The team is shaping up,” Beck said. “We, like all the teams, have to wait and see how the college season runs, as well as the draft – we all lose kids to the draft.”

Beck said what he finds memorable of summers in the ABL is the competition.

“The competition is so great that we have had 3-4 teams vying for first place all the way up to the last week of the season,” he said. “Just being in Alaska and having the opportunity to play baseball is great for our kids.”

Basch, a former Goldpanner who stayed in Alaska, said he enjoys the travel.

“I think it’s great that the kids get to see different parts of Alaska and stay in some unique places. In Fairbanks, the (visiting) team stays in a trailer park inside the stadium and in Kenai the visiting teams stay in the local bingo hall,” he said. “Also, I enjoy seeing players’ first impressions of Alaska when they arrive for the first time, because it reminds me of what a unique place it is that we live.”

“It’s great cheap entertainment with quality players and baseball,” Maltby said.

The Anchorage Bucs’ Opening Night is June 9, and is Military Appreciation Night, Basch said. All military and families get in free, and they get discounted tickets for the rest of the season.

For information on admission or game times, call the Goldpanners at 451-0095; the Glacier Pilots at 274-3627; the Bucs at 272-2827; AIA at 937-3527; the Oilers at 283-7133; and the Miners at 745-6401.

Sean Timmons, the Goldpanners all-time strikeout leader, pitches in the Midnight Sun game June 21, 2006.

Alaska Goldpanners infielder Derek Bruce takes a big swing at a pitched ball in June 2006.

Visit the teams at:

www.goldpanners.com

www.glacierpilots.com

www.anchoragebucs.com

www.oilersbaseball.com

www.matsuminers.org

www.aiabaseball.org/alaska

www.alaskabaseballleague.org