Entrepreneur promises to deliver quality baseball
Entrepreneur promises to deliver quality on the diamond in venture with Greggs
Before there was Booster Juice, there was baseball. And now baseball is about to experience a big boost in Edmonton, says the Booster Juice Man.
The best calibre of baseball Edmonton has experienced in years is being promised by Dale Wishewan.
First, there was the baseball crazy town of 400 of Waskatenau, an hour drive northeast of Edmonton where Wishewan grew up.
Then, there were his days playing shortstop and second base on a scholarship at Portland State, a then-division 1 NCAA college that had a combined 11 players drafted by Major League Baseball in his junior and senior seasons.
Wishewan put baseball behind him in 1999 when he decided to open his first Booster Juice store in Sherwood Park at 975 Broadmoor Blvd., where it remains today.
There are now 405 of them and another on the way in Nunavut, which will put Booster Juice in every province and territory in Canada.
While he has a passion for curling and owns a piece of the NHL Vegas Knights and an AHL farm club down the strip in Henderson, Nev., Wishewan’s ultimate passion has always been baseball.
While five-time Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup champion
Dr. Randy Gregg has been the frontman of the group that has taken over Re/max Field, he’s supported by brother Gary of Gregg Distributing, a key member of the Oilers ownership group, Wishewan and two other founding partners.
Wishewan is now willing to step out and identify himself as a member of the group, partially because he’s getting excited. It appears he’ll own a baseball entity in Edmonton of some significance before the end of the summer.
“We have some great things coming,” he said as I took advantage of the lull before the storm of NHL hockey’s return to try to push his buttons.
“There’s a pretty big announcement we want to make in the next few weeks. In a few weeks, we’ll have a good announcement to make — one that’s more than just good. It’ll be the best calibre of baseball that’s come to Edmonton in years.”
No, it won’t be a return of the Edmonton Trappers in triple-a baseball, who were forced to leave after a successful 25-year run in the Pacific Coast League because they were the only team left on this side of the border when 9/11 happened. The PCL presented legendary pitcher Nolan Ryan and his Texas-based group with a generous offer to buy the team from the Edmonton Eskimos, who had taken over ownership at the time.
“I think one of the best things about being in the position I’m blessed to be in, thanks to Booster Juice, is that it can provide an opportunity to get involved with something like this that is a passion for me, and will also present the opportunity to be able to give back,” Wishewan said.
“Since our group was given operating rights to Re/max
Field, we have been giving a ton of thought to how we can grow baseball in Canada, first and foremost.”
Wishewan isn’t giving anything away more than that.
While there’s no way, especially in the middle of the pandemic, that triple-aaa baseball is coming back, he suggested whatever is on the drawing board is expected to receive a positive reception when it’s announced.
In the meantime, being able to reveal Wishewan as a credible member of the group is not going to hurt the Gregg brothers and others involved.
“Baseball has always been the thing for me,” said Wishewan,
51. “I grew up in Waskatenau, which I think is the baseball heart of Alberta. I was fortunate as a boy that there wasn’t much to do in the summer there other than play baseball. From the time I started as a 10-year-old until I went out as a 32-year-old to focus on Booster Juice, I was fortunate enough to be a part of nine provincial championship teams, Western Canada championships and one bronze medal at a Canadian championship.”
Wishewan said while Gary Gregg has great credentials to bring from his years as a businessman in the community and being a member of the ownership group that saved the Oilers now owned by Daryl Katz, he said he believes Randy Gregg is a special person in local baseball annals that has somehow ended up as anonymous with the passage of time.
“Not many of today’s sports fans know about Randy beyond his five Stanley Cups with the Oilers. I believe he was a better baseball player than a hockey player,” said Wishewan.
“In hockey, he was a stay-athome defenceman who knew his role. In baseball, he was a game-changer. He could hit a two-run homer to win a ball game. He could win the big game as a pitcher. Ray Brown, the longtime Edmonton baseball man, said it; he said if Randy had grown up in California, he would have been a major-leaguer.
“Gary is passionate about baseball, too. It’s great to be working on a project with guys like that and our other partners. It’s working with principled people doing it for the right reasons.”
In a sports world where a lot of things are shutting down, it’s refreshing to know that there’s one that is about to be starting up.