Lavallee’s managing shot sits in COVID limbo
A recent picture on Twitter taken through a small hole in the outfield fence of an empty Nat Bailey Stadium landed like a punch in the gut for Brent Lavallee.
“It’s how I feel. It’s right there but we can’t quite get to it,” said Lavallee, a 33-year-old from North Delta whose first job in pro baseball is supposed to be managing the Vancouver Canadians this summer.
The C’s campaign hasn’t been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic but it certainly appears to be headed that way. The short-season, Class-A farm club of the Toronto Blue Jays was slated to open their 2020 campaign at the Nat on Wednesday, but over the weekend the Northwest League announced that the start of the season was being “delayed indefinitely.”
Major League Baseball teams and its players have been quarrelling over how to get their season going, and the speculation has been that big-league clubs will have small taxi squads of extra players rather than starting up the entire minor leagues.
C’s president Andy Dunn did his best to clarify proceedings in an open letter to Vancouver fans posted on the team’s website, explaining that Minor League Baseball will call the shots and we all will continue to hear “postponed” until there’s an official decision on calling off the campaign.
If things had gone ahead as originally scheduled, Lavallee would have been leading the C’s through practice on Sunday morning at the Nat. Instead, he was taking the family dog for a walk in Shreveport, La., where he lives with his wife Katie, their seven-year-old son Griffin and their 16-monthold daughter Paige.
He’s lived in the northwestern Louisiana city for more than 15 years, moving the 3,800 kilometres after high school to play catcher for the Louisiana State University-Shreveport Pilots, an NAIA team. He joined the Pilots coaching staff after his eligibility was completed and moved up to head coach in August, 2016.
His abilities caught the eye of several big league teams, and he opted in December for a position with the Blue Jays, who talked about the chance to manage the C’s during the courting process.
Lavallee routinely went to games at the Nat as a kid. He rose through the local ranks as a player, eventually suiting up for the North Delta Blue Jays, who have become a staple of the B.C. Premier Baseball League. He was with them just after Justin Morneau and Jeff Francis wore North Delta gear, and just before James Paxton was part of their squad.
The odds of a B.C. product getting to start his pro coaching career at the Nat are difficult to guess, although they are obviously better than the ones of receiving that opportunity and then having it run head first into a global pandemic.
“There is that secondary piece to it. It hits you on the personal side,” said Lavallee, who still has family in the Lower Mainland.
“I’d be lying if I told you that I haven’t thought about what’s the next step in this and when is the next time we’re going to get on a field. We’re all just waiting for the day when the news scrolls across the TV screen that we’re all supposed to go back to work.”
The Jays could well assign Lavallee to the C’s again next season, but there’s also the chance that Vancouver won’t be a Toronto affiliate in 2021 and will be connected with another big-league team.
The agreement between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball is up in September, and it’s been reported that MLB is pushing to cut affiliate status from as many as 42 teams.
Vancouver isn’t in jeopardy of being chopped. They’ve drawn large crowds for several seasons. The MLB plan is to cut the short-season, Class-A level, meaning that the C’s would have to play in a new, 140-game Class-A loop from April to September rather than the traditional 76-game schedule from the June to September that fans here are accustomed to seeing.
The plan would also mean that the Blue Jays could only have four full-season minor league teams, and they’d presumably have to decide between the C’s and the Lansing Lugnuts of the Midwest League at Class-A.