BASEBALL ▶ Canadian team to play Valleycats on Sunday as part of long road trip.
Equipe Quebec to meet Valleycats in pair of exhibition games
Matt Rusch knows Bleecker Stadium well. The Mohonasen graduate pitched at the old ballpark in the amateur Albany Twilight League in 2005 on his way to a professional baseball career that reached as high as Triple-a.
“Honestly, I owe a lot to the Twilight League,” Rusch said. “This is where I pitched and where I got scouted by Detroit and got picked up out of the Albany Twilight League … Bleecker brings back good memories for me.”
Rusch returned there Saturday as a coach with Equipe Quebec, a Canadian team that plays in the Frontier League. Equipe Quebec will face the Tri-city Valleycats in exhibition games at 3 p.m. Sunday and 6 p.m. Monday at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
After holding their first practice at Bleecker Stadium, more than 30 Equipe Quebec players and coaches boarded a bus that will log thousands of miles this season. Equipe Quebec — “equipe” is French for “team” — is playing at least its first 50
regular-season games on the road in the United States because of COVID -19 restrictions at the Canadian border.
If the border hasn’t reopened to non-essential travel by July 23, Equipe Quebec will play the entire 96-game schedule as a road team.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” said Rusch, who lives with his wife and two children in Quebec. “There’s still a lot of optimism that the border will open up in some capacity. Whether it’s later or sooner, we’ll find out. But, yeah, it’s a situation where the guys understand what we’re getting into, a little bit more challenging for us. But they have a great opportunity in
front of them to play in front of all these scouts in an Mlbpartner league.”
Equipe Quebec is a one-season experiment, a combination of players from the Frontier League’s three Canadian teams — the Quebec Capitales, the Trois-rivieres Aigles and the Ottawa Titans.
Equipe Quebec manager Pat Scalabrine, who is the manager of the Quebec Capitales, said shutting down completely could have meant the end of some of his players’ careers because they would have missed a second straight year of baseball. Last season was canceled by COVID -19.
Scalabrine said the Frontier
League also needed a Canadian team to bring the league to an even 14 teams this season for scheduling purposes. They’ll open the season at the Gateway Grizzlies in Illinois on May 27.
“We’re just waiting,” Scalabrine said. “We’re houseless, homeless for a while until we get home soon. That’s the plan. But I think we’ve got to communicate quite a bit and make sure everybody’s happy and on the same page kind of deal. Because if things start going the wrong way in the clubhouse, then we’re going to have a long season.”
Equipe Quebec owner Jean Tremblay is paying for the team travel and hotels with some assistance from the other Frontier League franchises, Scalabrine said. The team also hopes to bring in revenue from live-streaming the road games.
Equipe Quebec player-coach Gift Ngoepe, the first Africanborn player to reach the major leagues, will have his wife and son with him for the extended road trip. Ngoepe and his family will drive from city to city in their Hyundai Santa Fe.
“We’re blessed to be on the field and getting to play the game,” said Ngoepe, an infielder who played for the Pirates and Blue Jays. “We’re going out there to beat every team.
There’s no shame or any pity or anything like that. We’re going to show everybody that we can play under the circumstances that we’re in. Doesn’t matter for us.”
How does one pack for at least a 21⁄2-month road trip? Pitcher Andrew Case, who’s from New Brunswick, suggested packing lightly and stopping at Walmart when necessary.
“Couple hoodies, underwear, couple of pairs of pants and a couple of pairs of T-shirts,” he said. “It’s a pain up and down the stairs with a suitcase, ball gear and everything else as the season goes on.”
Case said the players are grateful to be playing after missing a season and going through the restrictive COVID -19 guidelines, especially in Canada.
“It’s always good to leave the homestand and head out on the road,” Case said. “We don’t care. Just put us between the lines and we’ll do what we’ve got to do.”