Ask any baseball fan and he will provide you with a full supply of adjectives to describe the game–from enthralling to exasperating, from beautiful to ugly, from intense to absurd, from serious to funny. It all depends when you ask the question.
And while the game may be most associated with our neighbours to the south, baseball has long fostered a wide-spread love across Canada. Likely no more so than in the nation’s capital, Ottawa.
The Capital Region is home to the largest amateur baseball league in Canada–a wooden bat league with 37 teams in four tiers. Kids learn the game early–from Little League on up.
High-level professional baseball goes back over 60 years in Ottawa, a long-time home for AAA teams. But the last AAA team, the Lynx, left town in 2007 when baseball in eastern Canada hit a downturn after the Expos abandoned Montreal in 2005.
But all of a sudden, baseball is in the air again in the Capital Region with no little thanks to a banking executive and dynamo named David Gourlay and a 10-year-old boy with Cerebral Palsy named Bryce Desrochers.
Both adore baseball, and as the Beatles once noted, “It’s getting better all the time.”
Professional baseball will return to Ottawa when the Can-AM League Ottawa Champions take the field to play in Ottawa’s beautiful east-end ballpark. The Can-Am is an independent–not developmental–league where the teams compete extremely hard to win–mostly for its own sake..
It is serious baseball for serious fans with serious players looking for a shot.
But so is another of Mr. Gourlay’s projects: The Miracle League, of which he is the president.
And this is where Bryce Durochers comes in. Bryce had a dream to play baseball, but life kept getting in the way until his parents approached Mr. Gourlay asking for help.
After some investigation, Mr. Gourlay went into action, fund-raising and cajoling, drumming up support–just as he did with Champions.
The Miracle League of Ottawa believes in the credo: “Every Child Deserves to Play the Game of Baseball”
By next spring, special needs kids who can get to Ottawa will be able to do just that.
Mr. Gourlay and other Miracle League supporters are now 75 per cent of the way finding the funds to build first Miracle League field in Canada.
Bryce Desrochers will get his chance to play baseball–on a safe and custom-designed field with a cushioned rubberized surface to help prevent injuries. On a Miracle League diamond with funds partly raised by the Ottawa Champions Baseball Club.
That will be at just about the same time the Champions begin their quest to win the Can-Am League title.
RCI’s Terry Haig spoke by phone with Mr. GListenourlay at his home in Ottawa.
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