C’S BOSS PICKS MARINERS GREAT, PRO WRESTLER
Dunn tosses out names he would most like to bring to Superstar, writes Steve Ewen.
Andy Dunn’s bucket list for the Vancouver Canadians Superstar Series includes a 400-homer man with the Seattle Mariners and the leader of pro wrestling ’s Four Horsemen.
Ken Griffey Jr., who manned the outfield in Seattle for 13 of his 22 seasons in the big leagues, and Ric Flair, who was the focal point in one of the ultimate heel stables in his business in the 1980s, were named almost instantly by Dunn when the C’s president was asked about who remained as his dream gets for the Superstar.
It certainly suggests he’s given the question some thought.
The Superstar Series, which is sponsored by Vancouver-based law firm Blakes, is one of the C’s main promotions every summer, and it generally features the club bringing in four or five different former major-leaguers for a night at Nat Bailey Stadium to meet with fans, sign autographs and pose for selfies.
Dunn happens to be a massive pro-wrestling fan, and he says the C’s received positive feedback from fans in their inaugural Superstar try in 2008 when they brought in Bret (The Hitman) Hart, a former standout, like Flair, in both World Wrestling Entertainment and World Championship Wrestling.
“I think Ric Flair would be fantastic. Absolutely,” Dunn said.
What a Griffey, 48, who hit 417 of his career 630 home runs in Mariner colours, or a Flair, 69, who had a very public health scare last year, would charge for such an appearance is hard to guess, and Dunn wouldn’t talk budget for the Superstar.
There are some pro-wrestling websites who suggest that Flair demands at least $15,000 for a two-hour autograph signing.
The C’s, who are a Toronto Blue Jays farm club. have brought in some former big leaguers with cachet in the past.
Andre Dawson (Superstar 2010), Joe Carter (2013), Johnny Bench (2014), Larry Walker (2013), Steve Garvey (2014), Dale Murphy (2015), John Olerud (2012), and Bill Buckner (2009) all had at least 1,200 runs batted in during their careers, putting them among the top 150 players all-time in the majors in that category.
New Westminster native Justin Morneau, who visits the Nat on Tuesday during the C’s matchup with the Tri-City Dust Devils as part of this year’s Superstar, is just outside that RBI group, the longtime Minnesota Twins slugger driving in 985 runs in his 14-year career.
Morneau, 37, announced his retirement in January. The first baseman was the 2006 American League most valuable player with the Twins and 2014 National League batting title with the Colorado Rockies,
“There are a couple of people we deal with, a couple of people with services that we feel we have good relationships with. We’ll ask about somebody, then we’ll get a number next to the name, and sometimes the number does not work for us and we have to say no,” Dunn explained when questioned about the process. “Generally, we’ve been pretty lucky.”
It starts very basic every year, Dunn contends.
“We, as a group, will sit around and throw out some names,” Dunn explained. “We’ll bring up guys that maybe somebody knows, guys that we think will have outgoing, engaging personalities. We bounce some names back and forth, and then we check for availability.”
He also admits there’s not universal agreement on every selection. Dunn says that at least one C’s staffer wondered if fans would be overly interested this summer in meeting Mookie Wilson, the former New York Mets centre-fielder who’s probably best known for hitting the grounder that infamously handcuffed Buckner at first base and helped the Mets rally to beat the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series.
“We had Buckner before and I wanted Mookie so that we had both guys from that play,” said Dunn, whose team had Wilson, now 62, at the July 30 game at the Nat against the Eugene Emeralds. “I was told ‘I don’t know if he’s going to resonate with people up here.’ Well, sure enough we had huge lineups for Mookie Wilson. I went and found the guy questioning it and said, ‘How is Mookie resonating ? I think he resonates just fine.’”
Some of the more notable Superstar visits over the years have included Dawson coming to the Nat two weeks after he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Carter’s trip receiving national attention after he spoke out in a conference call to promote the event about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
Among other things, he said then: “I hope it all comes out. What it has done is take away from the guys who played the game the correct way. A 50-game suspension to these guys is really nothing. It’s really not.”
Minor-league teams’ desire or wherewithal to bring in former major-leaguers and other celebrity types varies. The SalemKeizer Volcanoes are a C’s rival in the eight-team Northwest League, a short-season, single-A loop. They are scheduled to have visits from five former majorleague pitchers this summer to meet with fans; 89-year-old former New York Yankees hurler Don Larsen was there Saturday when Vancouver was in town.
Another Northwest League team, the Boise Hawks, lists just one autograph signing on its promotion list for this season: actor Dennis Haskins, who played Principal Richard Belding on the 1990s sitcom Saved by the Bell, appeared June 22.
Other teams in the league don’t list a single such event.
The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees, are one of the teams keen on these promotions. Their Legends Series for this year includes Dawson, Raines, Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco and John Flaherty. Flaherty, who was a backup catcher for the majority of his career, has particular regional interest since he’s been an analyst on the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) since 2006.
The C’s attendance is so consistent that it’s hard to distinguish any spike on Superstar nights. Going into Tuesday, the C’s announced attendance per game is 6,221. Capacity at the Nat is listed at 6,413, meaning the team is selling 97 per cent of the tickets every game.
The C’s averaged 6,303 from last season.
The team has increased its average attendance every year since Vancouver businessmen Jake Kerr and Jeff Mooney purchased it in 2007. They brought on Dunn,
a former executive with the Washington Nationals, Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins, as an adviser initially before naming him president. He also has an ownership stake in the team.
Vancouver’s final Superstar appearance this season comes Aug. 29, when one-time Montreal Expos first-round draft pick Cliff Floyd is on hand for a matchup with the Everett AquaSox that’s part of the C’s final homestand of league play this season.
Floyd was picked 14th overall by Montreal in the 1991 draft, one selection after the Cleveland Indians chose Manny Ramirez. Floyd, 45, played parts of five seasons at first base and the outfield with the Expos as part of a 17-year career in the bigs that concluded in 2009.