Minor Baseball News

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by the Minor Baseball News. They'd heard about all the excitement that is going on with baseball out here in Devon and asked me to write an article for their magazine as well as submit pictures.
This is what is being published in next month's edition:

Baseball sees major up-swing in Devon

Great things are happening in Devon this season, and baseball fans have taken notice. The Devon Minor Baseball Association has experienced a dramatic increase in its registration numbers this year, to numbers beyond their expectations.

“We have more than doubled our registrations over last year,” says Devon Minor Baseball President, Mark Tinis. “There is a renewed interest in baseball here and everyone is very excited for this upcoming season. Devon’s baseball program is currently playing at a community house league level. We hope to enter both a Mosquito and a Pee Wee team into provincial play in July this season. Our long range goal is to provide both community and competitive team options to our players in all divisions.”

Tinis, a second term president and sixth year coach, attributes the rise in players to having a full and dedicated executive committee, one that has worked very hard to build up the image of Devon Minor Baseball Association since the group formed in February at the AGM.

In an effort to increase their previously dwindling registration numbers, the Devon Minor Baseball Executive has been continuously working on a communications blitz that included advertising, press releases and articles printed in the in the Devon Dispatch, placing monthly notices in each of the Devon and surrounding areas school newsletters and using the community message boards at the entrances to town along the highway to promote the AGM and early bird registration. They even formed their own Facebook group (Devon Minor Baseball) and update it constantly with recent news, registration event dates and information on the indoor clinics. They have been spreading the good word of baseball and it has definitely paid off with a huge increase of players and parental involvement.

Devon Minor Baseball was also busy during the pre-season bringing in much needed sponsorship dollars, an initiative also played out by the executive committee. Thanks to the generous donations of many local businesses, most of Devon Minor Baseball’s teams will be sporting brand new uniforms this year.

“Finally, we can now retire our old, worn and torn uniforms. They had to be at least 10-15 years old and had definitely played their last game. By this time next year, we hope to have the remaining teams in new uniforms as well so we can have a cohesive look for Devon Minor Baseball.” notes Tinis.

For the first year ever, Devon Minor Baseball T-ball players will also get to play in corporate sponsored team t-shirts. As an added bonus, they will get to keep the t-shirts as a memento of their season.

Thanks to additional donations from local businesses, Devon Minor Baseball has been able to start purchasing much needed equipment for the teams. Some of the old equipment was broken or missing parts or just simply worn out. Also, with the rise in player numbers, they needed more equipment like helmets, pitching machines and tees to accommodate the additional players.

Because of the short, nine week baseball season, Devon Minor Baseball decided to expand their community program by hosting three indoor pitching camps and three indoor fielding and hitting camps. By utilizing indoor facilities like the hockey arena and the school gymnasiums, the coaches were able to hold practices indoors, even while there is still snow on the ground.

“The turn out and response we got to these indoor clinics was outstanding,” said Tinis. “A huge number of players came to each event that we held. The coaches, many of the parents and even a couple of my former college baseball teammates helped run the stations so that every player could get a significant amount of practice in. Both the players and coaches now feel confident and prepared for when we can finally get out on the field.”

Devon Minor Baseball is looking forward to an exciting season ahead. All home games for every division are played at the Field of Dreams at the corner of Highway 60 and Highway 19. The two Mosquito division teams will even be hosting their league’s tournament this year out at the diamonds on the weekend of June 6^th and 7^th.

“We invite the whole community to come out, not just to the tournament but to regular evening games as well,” encourages Tinis. “We have a lot of ideas and plans for the Field of Dreams and our ultimate goal is to make game night in Devon a family and community event.”

Did you like all the baseball cliches in there?? haha! I feel I went a little overboard but they like that so I had to provide it.

Here are a few of the pictures I submitted with the article:

The issue will be published May 15 and I am told we will have 100 copies sent to Devon Minor Baseball by early to mid July?? July or June? Wonder if that was a typo on the editor's behalf? We will see!

Our house

Just a few pictures of our little house. This is looking into the main entrance. It has an open foyer up to the second level:




Looking up!



Office:



Looking down the hallway from the entrance into the kitchen (left side), nook (at the back and left) and living room (at the back and right):


Kitchen:

Kitchen from other direction:


Into the kitchen/nook area from the living room:


Living room:


Master bedroom:



Oldest son's room:


This is our youngest son's bedroom. We just put up the bunkbed and bin/toybox last weekend (as pictured 2 posts below):


Basement in one direction:


Basement other direction:

The Birthday Girl

It's Frankie's 17th Birthday today! On Earth Day no less. Yes, I celebrate it.

Zander's new bunk bed

We had been promising our youngest a bunk bed for years but told him he had to be 6 years old before he could have one. He turned 6 at the end of January so we were just waiting for the snow to melt for easier transport. Yesterday was the day. Off we all went to Ikea first thing in the morning and we let him pick out his bunk bed. It's really a loft bed, no bed on the bottom, which was what we insisted on really. His room is so small, we wanted the space underneath for storage. After we got home we had to tear down his old bed, clean out all the toys from under it, clear out the bookshelf and move that out, take all the pictures and wall torch lights down off the wall, the start building the new bed and new toy bin thingy. It took all afternoon but it was so worth it! What an amazing kid's room he has.
The walls were all painted 2 years (I think?) ago to look like a knight's castle walls, there are dragons swooping down from the ceiling, the wall lights are shaped like torches, there is a dragon hanger storage thingy on the walls, knight pictures everywhere and cute castle wall shelves. It's so cool. Anyway, here is the new bed and toy bin.

The animals are having a rough week!

Poor animals! It's been a rough (ruff?) week in our household for them.
On Saturday night Peter and Frankie were playing (I guess? I didn't see it but have been assured this was accidental) and Peter accidentally yanked out a patch of hair from the back of Frankie's neck! We didn't see it happened, just heard a commotion and came running to see what was up. Peter was standing there with a beard and mustache made out of cat hair, looking all surprised. Frankie was in the kitchen by this point but she wasn't upset or scared or anything. We figure the dog was sniffing around at the cat as usual and she probably gave him the Frank-a-whapper which in turn gets Peter all riled up to play. He probably reached out with open mouth to gum her like usual and somehow nipped a chunk of fur out.
She has since scratched it with her back paw (it's itchy now that the fur is growing back in), that's where the red scratch came from.



Then yesterday happened. I was at work and the babysitter took the kids and Peter to the park. Within 10 minutes of them being there, the babysitter looks down and sees all this blood under Peter. It took her a bit to figure out that it was coming from his foot. He didn't yelp or cry or anything to indicate what had happened. So they walk back home from the park, it's a good 3 blocks away, the whole time Peter is leaking blood. You can see paw prints all the way from the park to our house! They get him to the backyard and get some towels and clean him up and that's when they see one of his back nails is missing.
I had called home to check in on them just after this happened and the babysitter tells me to be assured that while it looks like an axe murder happened in my backyard, that blood all came from his nail. And it certainly did, there was blood spots everywhere!
He somehow snapped that nail completely off. I cannot see any trace of nail left at all. He doesn't want me to touch it and it seems sore today. How does that happen? His nail is as thick as my pinky finger. We just had them trimmed 3 weeks ago, they are not overly long or anything. He must have just stepped on a rock at the park (the park has little river rocks instead of sand) and off it went. Yikes!



He's on antibiotics for a week now, just to be safe. Poor guy!