Go west, young man, and take your bat with you
Niagara native Eric Marriott spent the summer playing baseball in Saskatchewan
This summer the Jolly Green Giants weren’t the biggest thing in sports coming out of the Canadian Prairies.
At least not for one family in Niagara.
Instead of following the fortunes of the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League, Kevin and Debbie Marriott of Niagara Falls cared a lot more about the Moose Jaw Miller Express.
Until the Express were eliminated from the opening round of the playoffs in a 9-2 loss to the Weyburn Beavers, Kevin livestreamed as many of the Western Major Baseball League’s games as he could. It wasn’t uncommon for him to stay up until 1:30 a.m. to receive a first-hand account of how the Express fared on ballfields as far flung as Swift Current and Yorkton is Saskatchewan and Lethridge and Fort McMurray in Alberta.
Neither Kevin or his wife regretted the late nights. As the No. 1 fans of Express outfielder Eric Marriott, it’s what you do when your son is pursuing his dream two times zones away from home.
“That’s dedication for you, that’s heart, that’s something you can’t teach,” Kevin said of his son. “Eric loves baseball so much, and we’re so proud of him.”
While the A.N. Myer Secondary School graduate spent the past three years playing baseball at the post-seconday level, he never considered taking a break before returning to Mitchell College in New London, Conn., for his senior year. The goal all along, he said, was to get at bats against the highest-quality pitching he could find.
“Essentially, I want to play baseball as long as I can, that’s why I’m out here,” he said in a telephone interview from Moose Jaw.
The offer to spend the summer in Saskatchewan came out of left field for the outfielder. Marriott was in class when he received a call from Express head coach Michael Hunt inviting him to play in the wood-bat league.
“I would have been playing,
probably somewhere up in New York in the NYCL, the collegiate league.”
The time between packing his suitcases at Mitchell College and unpacking them in Moose Jaw was a whirlwind for Marriott and his family.
“He just gets home and it seems the next day I’m driving him to the airport,” the elder Marriott recalled with a laugh.
Fourth-seeded Moose Jaw’s hopes for an Eastern Division championship were dashed in a loss to No. 1 seed Weyburn in the semifinals, but Marriott didn’t leave the prairie province emptyhanded.
In addition to valuable playing experience, the 22-year-old Niagara Falls native won a Gold Glove after seeing action in 41 of the team’s 48 regular-season games.
He was also selected as the fan favourite on an Express team that went 23-25 in league play before falling to 37-11 to Weyburn in the opening round of the playoffs three games to one.
He described the WMBL as a high-calibre league.
“It’s very good, a lot of D1 guys, a lot of D2 guys, a lot of highcalibre players,” Marriott said.
“A couple of guys have already signed to go pro.”
He likened the level of play in the league to what he saw at NCAA tournaments competing for Mitchell College.
“Everyone is just very good.” There weren’t any specific skills Marriott wanted to sharpen when he went west to Saskatchewan.
“I just want to continue to be able to drive the ball from gap to gap and use the whole field, just like my coach at Mitchell College wants me to work on all summer,” he said.
“I want to try to lift the ball out of the park a little bit more.”
He is pleased with how he played in the WMBL.
“Absolutely, coming off a season at Mitchell where I hit .377 and I was first-team All-Conference and second-team All-New England and we won a championship,” Marriott said.
“I wanted to come here and kind of just grow as a player and maybe kind of challenge myself a little bit, go out of my comfort zone and swing at pitches that I maybe wouldn’t have swung at during the school year.”
Marriott finished the regular season third in batting with a .288 average. He led the Express in runs scored, with 33; as well as stolen bases, 18.
He missed his parents — “They’re my biggest supporters, but luckily they were able to come out here” — but knew he couldn’t take the summer off if he wants to pursue a baseball career.
“This is all part of the grind, baseball is my life, so I choose to come out here,” he said. “I made some great friendships out here, and my host parents have been phenomenal.”
It took him a “good couple of weeks” to get used to the twohour time difference between Saskatchewan and Niagara Falls.
“I like to call my dad after every game, so that was throwing him off a little bit, too,” Marriott said. “Our games would end about 10, 10:30, and it would be midnight, one o’clock back home.”
He found that the dry prairie weather favoured batters.
“The ball seems to fly out of the ballpark at some of the fields for sure,” he said with a chuckle.
The WMBL is a wood-bat league, while his D3 college league in New England uses an alloy bat.
“It’s tougher to hit with a wood bat, there’s not as much jump off the bat,” he said. “I love it because you really get to see your true swing with a wood bat.
“At school, the ball seems to jump a little bit more.”
Marriott was not getting paid to play baseball in Moose Jaw, but the team provided round-trip flights and placed players with host families.
The league has six teams in Alberta and six in Saskatchewan. Road trips range from 45 minutes one way to six hours when they travel to play games in Alberta.
Marriott spent two years at Erie Community College in western New York before attending Mitchell on an academic scholarship.
He is majoring in sport and fitness management and minoring in business.
Ultimately, he would like to remain in the sport. “I want to do something so I can give back to the game, something to do with baseball, a front office role or something like that.”
Mitchell’s baseball season will begin the end of February in Florida.
“It’s tougher to hit with a wood bat, there’s not as much jump off the bat. I love it because you really get to see your true swing
with a wood bat.
ERIC MARRIOTT
Moose Jaw Miller Express outfielder