Tons of stuff to report today, folks, so let’s get to it.

‘GLENN MAGIC’ GETS CALLED UP TO A’S SPRING TRAINING
Seriously. According to the latest edition of the C’s online newsletter, Between The Lines, Glenn Hall, the Nat Bailey Stadium clubhouse manager who has developed such a rep for being A) an awesome cook, and B) a great guy, that former Vancouver hitting coach, Benny ‘The Jet’ Winslow, dubbed him ‘Glenn Magic’, has been tapped to go to spring training and serve as clubby for the entire Oakland A’s spring training squad.

Hall will handle cleaning duties, equipment organization, uniform preparation, and the all important snack time. Will his spectacular lasagna help Bobby Crosby avoid swinging at the slider outside? Will his chili spark hitherto unknown power in Eric Chavez?

This caps a meteoric rise for Magic Man of the Maritimes, who wandered into the Vancouver Canadians gig in 2006, fresh from previous jobs cooking for logging camps in parts of Canada that tourists just don’t go. He enjoyed his time at the stadium so much that he came back for a second season last year, and was set to come back for a third in 2008 before he got the call up to the big time.

Will this be a temporary gig, or will Glenn Magic impress enough to turn his Major League ‘cup of coffee’ into a career pouring cups of coffee to Major Leaguers? Only time will tell.

HOW DO THE CANUCKS DO IT?
Was listening to Dave Pratt and Don Taylor on TEAM1040 the other day (a very rare thing, as there’s only so much I can hear about Taylor’s vasectomy and Pratt’s Hawaiian real estate scam before I lose interest and turn off), when Pratt revealed that the Vancouver Canucks have the second highest ticket prices in the NHL, and the most expensive beer, parking, and soda… and yet they’ve sold out 200+ straight games.

How do they do it? Pratt says ‘marketing’. Oz says Pratt is well named.

If you want to know why the Canucks keep selling out games, even at times when they suck, you need to look at two things:

1) The onslaught of media they get - Every. Freaking. Day.
2) It’s the only game in town.

Just open The Province on any given weekday and you’ll see at least eight pages of hockey, seven of which are to do with the Canucks. The Province doesn’t allow their sports writers to travel to cover any other sport - at all. They ONLY have travel budgets for the Canucks, and their writers crank out so much content about the team that it gets redundant very fast. Oh, and they also ensure front page coverage of the team at every opportunity - yesterday it was a front page strip that announced the coach was angry. There’s a newsworthy story for you…

Sportsnet is another example of this - you can barely find ten seconds of Oakland A’s highlights on Sportsnet’s nightly sports round-up, Connected, but if Daniel Sedin has nachos for lunch, you’ll see footage.

Of course, the Prov would tell you they’re just giving people what they want. I’d argue that the people want what they can get, and the only thing on offer in this town is hockey coverage.

As for it being the only game in town… Yes, I know the Whitecaps exist, but they’re not in the MLS, they’re in the USL, so who cares? The Vancouver Giants are out there, but their players are even younger than the Canadians’ rookies, so the G-Men are basically overflow for those that can’t afford the Canucks, or can’t find a ticket. There’s no lacrosse team in Vancouver, even though just about every kid plays the sport, the C’s get short shrift because they’re ‘only’ playing Low-A baseball, and though the CFL’s BC Lions get  much coverage during their season, it’s only when there’s no Canucks game on that it gets serious.

In short - if the Oakland A’s were to ever look for a place where there’s three million people to draw from and competition from only one other sporting team (that ends its season just as baseball is starting), they could do a lot worse than wave good-bye to Fremont and come sniff around Van City.

UBC’S NUMBER ONE FAN HEADS FOR NICARAGUA
If you follow the other team that plays in Nat Bailey Stadium - the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds - you’ve probably come across Bob Broughton’s most excellent UBC Tbird Fanpage before. Bob does for the Squawkers what we do for the C’s, offering detailed game reports and in-depth analysis of Vancouver’s only college ball team, and has long been at the leading edge of reporting on the possible move by UBC (and now SFU) to join the NCAA.

So what’s new in Bob’s world? He’s in Nicaragua, watching baseball that rarely gets reported on back here, and by all reports, having a blast. Check out his pictures and updates on the TBirds Baseball Fanpage, and don’t forget that the Thunderbirds start their 2008 NAIA campaign on February 9 at 3pm against the University of Concordia-Portland Cavaliers.

Home opener is March 15th at The Nat against Oregon Tech. Go Birds.

NEW UNIFORMS ANNOUNCED SHORTLY
I’m not going to spoil the surprise by giving you the full rundown on the new uniforms, but let’s just say that cleats won’t be the only thing white at The Nat this summer…

WHERE’S JEREMY?
If you’re wondering where Boy Wonder is, he’s in Arizona at spring training. Yes, that’s right - Jeremy the Wunderkind gets to go to spring training, while I’m stuck here crunching code and fighting Armenian domain squatters. No justice in this damn world.