At camp with Jays heroes
Some star players from the glory years visit Ottawa to show young players how it’s done,
The more Lloyd Moseby chirps, the more the kids howl. Ever try to throw a baseball when you’re doubled over, laughing?
Ol’ “Shaker Mo” Moseby, the retired Toronto Blue Jays outfielder, kept players aged nine to 16 engaged and entertained during the Blue Jays Academy Super Camp at Kinsmen Field in Kanata. The baseball clinic opened Thursday morning and continues Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“Wow, oh my word,” Moseby enthuses after a boy of about 12 makes a catch of a high toss from Moseby, now full on into Meadowlark Lemon mode.
“That was beautiful, young fellow.”
“I love this kid, fundamentals!”
And then, “who is this kid?” to a slick lefty, who catches the pop up, steps and fires a strike with his relay throw. “He might be in the big leagues one day. … Give me five, young fellow.”
Across the way, Duane Ward, the brilliant Blue Jays closer of 1993 (a club record 45 saves that season), is giving pitching instruction. Near home plate, legendary coach Sandy Alomar Sr. is teaching hitting. Ward, Alomar, Moseby, Devon White, Canadian-born lefty Denis Boucher and Homer Bush give the camp a professional polish to benefit any level of player.
The best part of it is the involvement of kids who might not otherwise get the opportunity to be taught by World Series heroes like Ward and White. The Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa received more than just instruction plus a gift baseball bat from Ward (and a special visit to the Britannia Clubhouse on Friday afternoon). The Jays Care Foundation is investing $100,000 in an indoor athletic turf for the local boys and girls club, a philanthropic aspect of the clinic that is close to the heart of the 49-yearold Ward, a native of Park View, N.M.
‘I grew up in a boys and girls club about a halfmile from my home. We played basketball there, football. It was an open opportunity for everybody to go there and learn and play.’
DUANE WARD, former Blue Jays pitcher
“I grew up in a boys and girls club about a half-mile from my home,” Ward says. “We played basketball there, football. It was an open opportunity for everybody to go there and learn and play.”
Ward already gave at the office, of course. After years of setting up games for closer Tom Henke, Ward took on the pressure role as bullpen ace in the 1993 season, while the Jays won their second consecutive World Series. Ward threw so hard racking up those 45 saves that he was forced to sit out in 1994 with biceps tendinitis that essentially ended his career. Just 31, he appeared in four games for Toronto in 1995 and did not pitch in the big leagues again. I did see him playfully toss a water bottle some distance at Kinsmen, so he still has that much left in the great right arm.
“Giving back to those a little less fortunate was always a game plan from the start,” Ward says of this latest clinic stop; there are 17 in all, covering 10 provinces. “We’re not going to leave out the kids who have not. We’ve got to get those kids in.
“Will they all listen? No. But there are the ones that, if they just pick up one or two little tidbits, they’re going to get better. That’s what we all want them to do.”
How did the two World Series championships change Ward’s life?
“I don’t know if it changed my life. It fulfilled my life,” Ward says, “because it was something I wanted to do as a kid. I think every kid growing up playing baseball, they always pretended — ‘3-2 count, bases loaded’ — so to be able to actually live that, it’s an honour just to be part of a World Series because so many players don’t get the chance, and I was able to play in two of them.”
Winning them both. Fulfilling the dream was one aspect of it.
“What changed my life was all these fans in Canada,” Ward says. “I became recognizable — hey, there is a team north of the border — and we dominated everybody.”
Though he grew up about as far from the Canadian border as a kid can be in the United States, Ward considers it a privilege to have represented a nation of Blue Jays fans a couple of decades ago.
“All these other teams have cities they play for,” Ward says. “We had a country. Believe me, every guy that played on those two teams in ’92 and ’93 knew we were playing for a country. We felt that outside pressure.”
He can still remember all the “Oh Canada!” headlines during the first Series victory, against the Atlanta Braves (home of the upside-down Canadian flag), and the next season against the Philadelphia Phillies. “We were playing,” Ward recalls, “for 35, 40 million people.”
Twenty years is a long time. These young players scampering on the Kinsmen Field diamond weren’t born when White leaped up the centrefield wall to rob the Braves’ David Justice of extra bases with a spectacular catch in Game 3 of the ’92 series.
“The parents tell the kids,” White says, “and they look it up online and say, ‘Oh, that was him?’ Yeah, 21 years ago.”
“The Catch” is not quite as famous as the Joe Carter blast that won the 1993 World Series, launching a party inside and outside Toronto’s SkyDome. “I saw Joe at his golf tournament. He said he’s still living off the home run,” White says. “That’s what people remember.”
If they’re lucky, a few young ball players in the Ottawa area will remember rubbing shoulders with greatness this week. Just as they did 20 years ago, the Jays put on a clinic.