Roswell beaming in for WBC
They may, or may not be, little green men in baseball uniforms.
At this point, Rick Pattie doesn’t care what they look like. The chairman of the World Baseball Challenge is just happy the Roswell Invaders have accepted an invitation to compete in the Aug. 12-20 event at Citizen Field.
The Invaders, based in the New Mexico city synonymous with UFOs and alien abductions, will take the spot of the Bahamas, which dropped out of the WBC on late notice. Pattie was informed this past weekend that the Bahamas, for financial reasons, would not be sending a team. Word quickly went out that the tournament – which was suddenly down to four entries – needed a replacement and the Invaders climbed on board.
“I’m very excited,” Pattie said on Tuesday afternoon. “They’re a high-calibre team, very well known in their region, very well known throughout the States actually.”
The other four teams in the tournament are Calgary Sidearm Nation, Japan, the Thurston County Generals of Olympia, Wash., and the Kamloops Sun Devils. Geoff Freeborn, manager of Calgary Sidearm Nation, helped bring the Invaders into the WBC fold when he reached out to some of his contacts in the baseball world.
The Invaders play in the independent Pecos League, which also has teams in Texas, Arizona, Kansas and Colorado. As of Tuesday, Roswell sat second in the five-team South division with a 42-22 record.
The Roswell lineup features players with limited professional experience (two years or fewer) who fit into the 25-and-under age category. At the WBC, they will be managed by Bryan Kloppe.
Pattie said the addition of the Invaders will increase the level of competition at the WBC. He added that the club from Japan should now be breathing a little easier about the long trip to Prince George.
“They were a little concerned but I think this will alleviate their fears,” he said.
Pattie said he was “blindsided” by the dropout of the Bahamas.
“All my correspondence with them had been positive,” he said. “It just came out of left field.
“We had made arrangements to have Northern Spirit (Transportation) pick them up in Kamloops because their cheapest airfare was into Kamloops. I’m assuming they were connecting out of Calgary. So they were going to have a short bus ride to Prince George. That led me to believe that they had already arranged their air transportation, only to get blindsided to find out they hadn’t. It was very disappointing.”
For most of the tournament, the WBC will feature two games per day – one at 4 p.m. and the other at 8 p.m. On the final Saturday, the bronze-medal contest is planned for 2 p.m. and the game for gold is scheduled for 6 p.m.
Tournament passes are available through Ticketmaster. Single-game tickets will go on sale Aug. 2 and will be available at Citizen Field from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.