When you look down on the Nat Bailey playing surface from the press box, the areas of turf around the mound and home plate look decidedly odd – a different color, and a different texture to the rest of the infield. The reason for this is that a TV production crew rented out the stadium as a location before the season, and by the time they were done, they’d destroyed a large part of the infield. For most minor league teams, that would be a real pain in the backside, especially with a season looming. But for Vancouver, damaging the infield grass is considered heresy.

Satchel Paige threw from this mound at the age of (approximately) 50, and some twenty years earlier, Babe Ruth swung his bat and spat chewing tobacco on this very infield as part of a barnstorming all-star tour headed to Japan. The story goes that Ruth came to town on the train with his all-stars in tow, and decided they should have a game before they got on the ship for Tokyo. Then the rains came.

But Ruth being Ruth, when he heard that 3000 people had paid for a ticket anyway and were standing in the bleachers getting drenched, he decided they should get their money’s worth, and the all-stars played in torrential rain. Rumor goes that a young Vancouver pitcher was smoking the big guy with fastballs, leading one of the all-star coaches to wander out and announce to the pitcher, “they came to see him swing, not you pitch.”

When that stadium burned to the ground (as they tended to do a lot during the days of wooden stands), the infield grass was moved to a new downtown stadium. When that stadium went up in smoke, the grass was moved to Nat Bailey Stadium, and there it has stayed for sixty years since.

The pragmatists among us point out that grass does not stay alive for 60 years, and that really the infield we see at the C’s today is the great great great grandson of the original holy turf… but pragmatists suck. This infield is HOLY, damn it, and that’s why, on any given day during the season, you’ll find six or seven Winnebago’s parked out front, containing baseball freaks who have ventured long and far just for the chance to grab a handful of the grass that Babe Ruth once spat on.

I guess, over time, people will forget that a bunch of TV people destroyed some of Nat Bailey’s history this year. Over time, the story will simply revert back to “this is where Babe played” once more, and people will still come. Yes, Ray, people will most definitely come.

But for now, it burns the purists. Someone crapped on our history and dug up our field and that much loved tobacky juice is now just a collection of green muck gathered in the wheels of a Peewee Dolly.

Oh well, game time.

Coming in to this series, the Tri-City Dust Devils were hitting for a paltry .156 average as a team. Against the Vancouver Canadians they’ve hit .204, which still blows, but when the Canadians are hitting .203 as a team, it’s not like we have grounds to gloat.

One of the reasons for the slow start of the Vancouver line-up is the utter logjam of players the team has on hand right now. As of yesterday, the Canadians had 38 people on the roster. As of today, that number was reduced by three when Oakland opted to release a few players. Whether they were sent to Arizona, Kane County, or released altogether, I can’t yet say. Nor can I tell you who was sent away. All I know is there’s been some room made, and there’s likely to be more room made in the days to come.

“It’s a challenge,” says coach Juan Navarrete. “I’m having trouble just trying to get all the pitchers good innings, and there’s a lot of infielders to juggle as well. It’s not much fun, but you have to just handle it as best you can. They’re all great players, so I’m just trying to look after them all and get them all playing time.”

On the field, there are a number of players who have made their positions their own, regardless of competition. Haas Pratt, for instance, has a lock on the 1B spot, especially after cranking three dingers in the Yakima series that opened the season. Jose Garcia owns the right field spot, and Wilber Perez has been strong at second base – though he’ll have to be with something in the realm of eight infielders on staff.

Perez, in fact, presented the C’s fans with the first highlight reel moment of this game when he climbed the ladder to bring down a line drive rocket from Travis Becktel in the second inning. Perez wasn’t on hand, however, to prevent a beautiful moment of karmic vengeance on the NOW TV crew as a Tri-City foul tip careened of the NOW truck’s windscreen, leaving a team of production staff running for cover under a shower of broken glass. The Dust Devils bullpen buckled over with laughter as the Vancouver purists passed knowing glances around… it seems the ghost of Babe Ruth has a wicked sense of humor.

On the mound, Michael Madsen (no, not the guy on the right) – who had retired 13 of 14 batters faced in Yakima – was looking ferocious for Vancouver. The 6’0” stringbean from Ohio State, picked up in the 21st round by Oakland in the most recent draft, simply blew through the Dust Devils over the first five innings, racking up six K’s against four hits, and though he managed to let two Devils on base in the 5th after striking out the first two hitters faced, Madsen knuckled down and worked his way out of the jam.

On the hill for the “Dirty Satans” was a guy who left this level long ago and made it all the way to the big show - Aaron Cook, starting pitcher of the Colorado Rockies. Slumming it in the bush leagues while he rehabs from surgery to remove blood clots in his shoulder and lungs. Now throwing with one less rib than he started life with, courtesy of a procedure to remove pressure from his sub-clavian vein, Cook was in fine form, allowing only one hit over four innings. What impressed many in this outing is that his opposite number, Mike Madsen, matched him throw for throw for much of their time on the mound.

When your team is pitching this well, it helps if your hitters get their act together at least once a game, and when Cook reached the end of his pitch count and was replaced by Buzz “The Buzzard” Vargas, the Canadians did just that in the bottom of the 5th, as Jeff Baisley wore a fastball on the shoulder, Ty Bubalo singled, Justin Sellers sac’ed the runners along, and then Mike Massaro drove in a run on a fielder’s choice to short. The fans were elated to see a little small ball after days of watching deep fly balls amounting to nothing. And no sooner had the cheers died down than Chalon Tietje rocketed a fastball from “The Buzzard” off the left field wall, driving in a second run before he was thrown out stretching his single to second.

With the C’s up by two, the Dust Devils needed to respond, and respond they did with a quick single from slugger Brian Kirby. Looking sloppy enough behind the plate to become the subject of intense discussion on the Vancouver radio call, Ty Bubalo lost a wild pitch from Madsen, allowing the runner to scoot along to second, and when Daniel Carte singled to left for only his second hit of the season, the Devils had done exactly what was required of them – manufactured something from nothing.

Bubalo, for mine, has looked decent behind the plate this season, but he’s no superstar when it comes to mobility. The guy has power to burn, and he can sure throw to second, but when you watch him running the bases, it almost looks like he’s got hip or knee issues, as he takes tiny steps and looks most uncomfortable on the move. I could be mistaken, but if he’s backhanding inside pitches, he’s either forgetting his fundamentals or he’s not moving freely behind the plate. Either option will be worrying if it continues.

When the C’s came out in the 6th, Wilber Perez continued where he’d left off earlier this week, by belting a ball down the left field line into the corner and ripping around to second with time to spare. With Pratt on the bases behind him and only one out, Juan Navarrete followed through on his pre-season claim that he would be calling for “running, running, running” by signaling to Perez to steal third. It took a great throw from Tri-City’s non-hitting catcher Ramon Rodriguez to make the tag even a possibility, but the throw was not only great, but Pedro Strop’s tag was money.

The threat was over, and the inning followed.

James Shull came out to handle the sixth inning for Vancouver, causing a murmur from the crowd, anxious to see what a fourth round draft pick was capable of on the mound. Bottom line… he looks good. On 2.2 innings, he did concede 5 hits and an earned run, but he also threw 4 K’s before room was made for Stephen-Ryder Carter.

As the 8th rolled around, Carter was finding his groove. Rob Hosgood, on the other hand, the Tri-City DH, could not have been further from his groove if he caught a plane to Afghanistan while his groove was catching sun in Boca. Coming in to the game, he was hitting a rough .143. Coming out of the 8th, he’d struck out four times in four at bats, earning himself the Golden Sombrero. Carter, at the same time, was blazing, striking out the side swinging in the 8th to protect the Canadians’ one run advantage with style.

With the Vancouver hitters once again failing to bother the scorekeeper, Carter came out in the top of the 9th looking for something special. Carter’s horror story from last season was the sort of thing that kills careers. In 2004, with no US work visas available by the time the draft came around (thanks to some boneheaded post-9/11 legislation that capped the number allowed), Carter was drafted, later than he should have been, by the only team that had a minor league affiliate that could house a Canadian – the Oakland Athletics.

But the devil was in the details – because he had no US visa, Carter could only pitch in home games. He couldn’t train during, travel to, or watch road games because of US immigration rules, so whenever the team was on the road, Carter was at Nat Bailey, throwing a ball against a wall.

And because the A’s pitching rules state that a pitcher must throw off the mound five times before they can pitch in a game, Carter could only qualify for an inning of action at the very end of a long C’s homestand. The result: 2 innings pitched over an entire season for an ERA of 22+. Yikes.

“I took the entire winter off from throwing, to be honest,” Carter told me before today’s game. “After last season I just needed to take a break. At spring training, they were a little late getting my visa confirmed, and I was like, ‘okay, I’m not doing this again’, but it all worked out and now I’m raring to go. I just have to give it a shot and see where it all ends up.” Carter’s winter break meant he came into spring training with a bit of a rusty action and a few less miles per hour of velocity than he was used to. “I was pretty rough coming back, but through extended spring training it came back and I feel like I’m back where I was when I was drafted now.”

Coming in to the ninth, the Canadians were protecting a slender one-run lead, and the job of ensuring that turned into a win was entirely Carter’s. Thankfully, it’s one he attacked with relish.

After a fly out down the right field line that was ably gathered in by Jose Garcia, the big Canadian pitcher snared a filthy comebacker to get the second out, before striking out the final hitter swinging to close out the game, leaving him with a line of 2.1 innings pitched with no hits, 4 K’s, no walks and no runs conceded. SOLID.

C’s win 2-1, and take the series 3-2, despite managing just four hits in three of those games.

Game notes:
* 6th rounder Justin Sellers managed his first professional hit tonight, bringing his average to .143 after three games. Nothing to write home about just yet, but have a think back to what YOU did your first year out of high school… did you hit .143 in single-A ball? Huh? Did you? Didn’t think so…

* Only four of tonight’s Vancouver starting line-up ended the game with a batting average over the Mendoza line – Perez (.333), Long (.242), Pratt (.333) and Garcia (.226). Of those only Perez and Pratt look confident at the plate. Thank god the pitching is near unhittable right now… And thank god Tri-City has four starting players hitting .130 or less.

* Tri-City are in trouble at the moment, and they’re not looking like they’re going to get better any time soon. When your opponents can take two games off you in a series while managing just four hits in each game, you’re getting something fundamentally wrong. Tonight they conceded 12 K’s across the board, and the C’s? Just 2.

* Aaron Cook, who must have loved coming from the thin air, pinball machine-like home run factory at Coors Field to the “don’t even think about going long” pitchers park of Nat Bailey, looked solid in his first rehab outing. He told the Vancouver Sun after the game, “I felt good. It’s just a matter of taking ti slow and getting my arm strength back.” He’s not expecting any further complications from his health woes of the last year, and is due to return to the show around July 26, if all goes to plan.

* Joe Scott wore a hard hit liner off his thigh on Tuesday night, but the team has announced that he suffered no more than a deep bruise from the hit. He’ll take a few days to heal and be back in action soon enough.

* Chris Tritle, who was drafted all the way back in 2000, and played 56 games for the C’s two years later, has been enjoying his return to the short-season stuff. He’s managed a decent .300 average over his first 9 games with the club, after a slow start to the year hitting .216 at Kane County. Tritle is 23, which puts him in the ‘old man of the team’ category in Vancouver, but any thoughts he might have had that his career was in doubt must be close to being put to rest about now. Tritle is second in the NWL for RBIs at the moment, with eight runs batted in, and his plate discipline has been much better since he took the drop in level. If the roster logjam isn’t soon abated, expect Tritle (and possibly Haas Pratt) to get another shot at high-A relatively shortly.

The Canadians are boarding a bus for Everett Washington as I write this, to do battle with the 5-5 Aquasox for three games before returning Wednesday for the homestand against the last-placed Yakima Bears. We’ll be keeping an eye on the games from home, and the reports, as always, will continue right here.