Seahawks’ Wilson never played ball at Nat Bailey
Tall tale: Super Bowl QB wasn’t with Dust Devils when they visited Vancouver in 2010
SCENE & HEARD: Due to a scheduling quirk, local baseball fans missed by a week seeing an upstart second baseman by the name of Russell Wilson play at Nat Bailey Stadium in 2010.
Wilson was with the Tri-City Dust Devils from June 25 through July 30 before returning to the University of Wisconsin to prepare for another season of college football. The Dust Devils’ Northwest League baseball schedule didn’t have them coming to Vancouver until the first week of August.
“To this day I have to clarify to people that Wilson did not play at Nat Bailey, even though some of them swear that he did,” says Rob Fai, the Canadians’ director of communications and broadcasting. “Of the seven teams he could have played against during his time in the Pacific Northwest, the C’s were the only team he didn’t face. Vancouver wasn’t a stop on the Dust Devils schedule during Wilson’s time with them.”
Fai then rattles off statistics, as baseball play-by-play announcers are wont to do: Russell appeared in 32 games for Tri-Cities, hitting .230 with a pair of home runs and 11 runs batted in. “He also attempted 10 stolen bases and was only successful four of those times,” says Fai. “But let me make it clear: the legend of the now-famous Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback versus the Vancouver Canadians at Nat Bailey Stadium was close, but actually never came to be.”
HERE ‘N’ THERE: Al Michaels will be broadcasting his ninth Super Bowl game Sunday, and in his new book, You Can’t Make This Up, he credits former Vancouver Canadians general manager Jack Quinn (1979-82) for giving him his start in the business. Quinn was GM of the Pacific Coast League Hawaii Islanders in 1968 when he hired the unknown Michaels.
“Here’s a guy who’s been on national television with the major networks for 40 years and a winner of the Walter Cronkite Award,” says Quinn, who now resides in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Last December he was in Arizona to call a Cardinals’ NFL game and he insisted we have dinner. He hadn’t changed since the day he walked into my office at Honolulu Stadium 45 years ago. It tells you about the character of the man.”
SHORT HOPS: The South Delta Minor Hockey Association folks are anxiously preparing for Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada on Feb. 14 when they will be included in the all- day national telecast on CBC. The agenda at the reopening of the Ladner Leisure Centre includes the Canucks Alumni playing the Delta Police under the watchful coaching eye of their recently retired chief, Jim Cessford.
END ZONE: His Excellency the Right Honourable Governor-General of Canada David Johnston was the keynote speaker at the Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon on Wednesday. I knew him simply as ‘Davey’ while growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., where we were juvenile and junior hockey rivals. He went on to be a two-time all-American at Harvard. My goaltending career went nowhere. At first meeting in almost 55 years Wednesday, His Excellency quipped: “Can you still stop a puck?” My lame reply: “Can you still shoot one?” His everpresent entourage wondered what the laughter was all about.