RSN Alberta Watch Parties

Last year, the governor of Red Sox Nation Alberta hosted a total of 6 Red Sox watch parties right here in Calgary.   Below is a recap of these 6 games, to show you what you were missing if you didn't make it out to these.   This year's schedule has been posted, so please come on out and cheer our Red Sox on.

The first watch party was on April 16th against the Blue Jays, and this was the FIRST EVER INTERNATIONAL RED SOX NATION event!  That game came when we were still in the middle of a disastrous start, our record being 2-10 at the time.   In the first inning we scored 2 runs before the Blue Jays recorded an out, and that was all we would need as Josh Beckett pitched 7 strong innings, only giving up 3 hits, and we won 4-1.   This was the game that started our 81-42 run that lasted until the end of August.  (I've conveniently tried to forget what happened after Labour Day).

The next watch party was on May 14th in New York, against the always hated Yankees.

Albertans named to Junior National Team

Congratulations to Mike Belliveau, Wyle Cunningham and Logan Seifrit on being named to the 2012 Spring Training Roster for Canada's Junior National Team (JNT).  Along with pitching coach, Chris Reitsma, these athletes will be representing Alberta on the team, in a series of exhibition games in Florida from March 6th to 13th and again from April 14th to 21st.

The Junior National Team will also  be travelling to the Dominican Republic in late May, and in the summer and fall will compete in the World Junior Championships.

For Seifrit, a pitcher from Spruce Grove, this will be his second opportunity to play with the team, as he was also on last year's spring training roster, and travelled with the team to Cuba and the Dominican.  This will be a new experience for Belliveau, a catcher from Calgary, and Cunningham, a lefthanded Red Deer pitcher.  The full roster can be seen here.

We wish the best of luck to the Alberta participants, as well as the rest of the team.

5 Random Red Sox Questions

Ever year, C70 at the Bat which is an excellent baseball blog, mainly about the World Series champion St.Louis Cardinals, gets a feel for other teams around baseball by asking bloggers of those teams a few questions about their squad. This year, I was asked and answered the following questions about our Red Sox. Take a look at C70 at the Bat to see how other Baseball Bloggers Alliance members answered.



1) What was your opinion of the team’s offseason?
I may be the only Red Sox fan to say I was pleasantly surprised. They did not panic and overcommit money to players that they don't or won't need.  This year's team isn't vastly different from last year and they didn't mortgage the future with deals that would handcuff them in future years. After "THE COLLAPSE" it's easy to forget that for 4½ months this was by far the best team in all of baseball.

Blue Jays Super Camp coming to Alberta

For the second year in a row, the Toronto Blue Jays are partnering with Baseball Canada to give young players a chance to participate in camps with former MLB all star players.  This year they have expanded their tour from 7 cities to 13, adding Edmonton as a stop along with Calgary.  This camp is open to players aged 10 to 16.  The instructors in the Alberta camps are scheduled to be  Sandy Alomar, Homer Bush, Lloyd Moseby, Rance Mulliniks & Duane Ward.

Baseball is AWESOME! - Maligned Canadian pitcher closes out Series win

I haven't written a BASEBALL IS AWESOME post in a few weeks, and today's post was a bit of a stretch as I tried to keep some Canadian content in it. It's more of a "Baseball isn't as awful as it could be" type of post.  Read on....