Congratulations, Gregorio Petit!

From the official release:

OAKLAND — The Oakland A’s today recalled infielder Gregorio Petit from Triple-A Sacramento and placed right-handed pitcher Santiago Casilla on the 15-day disabled list with soreness in his right elbow.

Petit was batting .304 with no home runs and 15 RBI in 37 games with Sacramento this year, all at shortstop. He was leading the River Cats in hits (45) and doubles (12) and his batting average was sixth best in the A’s farm system. The 23-year old native of Venezuela had a .448 (13 for 29) batting average with runners in scoring position and made 19 starts in the leadoff spot. Petit was signed by the A’s as a non-drafted free agent on July 17, 2001 and will be making his Major League debut.

Petit was a defensive superstar during his 2004 season in Vancouver, and though he wasn’t a bad hitter, his tendency to slug away at anything within reach wasn’t exactly what you want from a guy with a 16-year-old’s body frame.

But Petit’s defensive athleticism kept him climbing the ladder long enough for it to sink in to his head that it was okay to take a walk, or stroke a fastball into shallow right, or chip away a foul tip to avoid going down on strikes.

He’s paid attention, he’s learned, and now little Greg is a major leaguer.

Well done, sir.

And in case you’re wondering, Santiago Casilla is another former Canadian, though he was known as Jairo Garcia when he played in Van City. And his date of birth was a little more recent.
 

Vancouver Canadians roll out the new uniforms on Tuesday

The C’s have a great little media stunt lined up Tuesday, when the new team uniforms will be unleashed on the Vancouver sporting press.

But for most teams, the issue for events like these is ‘how do we get the cameras to spend more than 4 seconds filming them?’

Answer: Go retro.

I’m not going to give away the details, but suffice to say, if you know anyone who played for the Vancouver Beavers, and they’re still alive and have the old uniform, call the front office… QUICK!

Whitecaps ditch new stadium, taxpayer spends $200m to make up for the delay.

Yes, you heard right. We’re going to pay for what the ‘Caps wanted to pay for initially. Actually, it’ll be closer to $236m in the end, as I have it on good authority that the owner of the ‘Caps got a nice $36m tax credit when he bought the rights to build over the Gastown railyards, which he now won’t be doing - at least for another eight years.

As eight years is the length of time it’ll take for the Whitecaps’ new lease at BC Place to expire.

See, as we’ve discussed before (see below), the city’s USL soccer club really wanted to build a new stadium, with their own coin, on land that could be used for nothing else, that they’d already purchased.

And the city, morons that they are, spent YEARS dilly-dallying over whether or not to let him.

"Would it ruin the character of Gastown?" (what possibly could?)
"Would it be too dangerous with all those trains around?" (You mean more dangerous than having six major tourist hotels and a cruise ship terminal around them?)
"Will there be soccer hooligans?" (what year are you in, 1983?)

Ultimately, the team volunteered to move the stadium over the water, again at their own expense, but then the Ports Authority decided to hold things up and try to make $50m or so in land swaps (read: extortion) off the team.

So, with the MLS tapping their fingers on their desks waiting for Vancouver to get its act together so they could grant the team a franchise, the club owners finally just said, to hell with it, we’ll cheap out - and the taxpayer can deal with the cost.

Thus, BC Place, which had been popularly considered to be ready for demolition, will be getting a new $200m retractable roof - after the Olympics (because before would have taken forethought) - and the Whitecaps will play there for at least five years once that’s taken care of. 

Does any of that make sense to you? The more I hear of it, the more I appreciate Nat Bailey Stadium. After all, having watched what the Whitecaps have gone through, who in their right mind would EVER try to build anything in this city again?

Crackhead hotels? No problem. Heroin shooting sites? Sure. But a stadium built entirely with private money over a freaking railyard?

NEVER!

Oh, and the kicker of this brand new plan for BC Place is a $200m site for the Vancouver Art Gallery, right alongside the stadium.

You know, because when you’ve just watched the B.C. Lions put the stomp to the Edmonton Eskimos, you really want to kick back in front of an early Emily Carr.