Bring Good Baseball To Ottawa, Your Worship
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe might have felt that doing the traditional bet with with Ottawa Senators playoff opponent’s mayor too cringeworthy.
But opening Sens Mile on Elgin Street wasn’t too photo-op for him.
The release from the City of Ottawa is below:
Join Mayor Mark Sutcliffe for the installation of the first Sens Mile street sign.
Date: Friday, April 11
Time: 2:15 pm
Place: The intersection at Lisgar and Elgin Streets (northeast corner)
Media are requested to confirm attendance at medias@ottawa.ca.
And isn’t interesting that the media was asked to confirm attendance at a public street corner in Ottawa. The media department might be over-orchestrating this. One wonders if members of the public walking down Elgin Street at the time of this news-shattering event had to register with media relations.
For those of you worried that the event might not have taken place this afternoon, media (no doubt confirmed with city media relations) covered this earth-shattering event. They might not have covered the proposed new shelter bylaw but they’re all over this grip-and-grin photo.
If Sutcliffe really wanted to do a favour for the sports community, he could have tried to bring Double-A Blue Jays baseball to the city-owned Coventry Road baseball stadium. Council approved that, then suddenly, under the tutelage of former mayor Jim Watson, the Double-A franchise (baseball’s very rough equivalent to hockey’s major junior leagues — think Ottawa 67’s) became independent ball populated by players who never were and were no-hopers in the future.
Give the people of this city baseball they want to watch instead of what they got.
A valuable city asset in the ballpark is wasting.
Had Watson followed through with Jays Double-A, fans would have had an opportunity to see then-prospects Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, now stars with the Toronto Blue Jays. Watson justified getting independent ball because Ottawa couldn’t afford the World Series. Guerrero just signed a $500-million contract with the Jays.
Who knew that the Double-A Akron Rubber Ducks and the Richmond Flying Squirrels played for the World Series?
No one is baseball knew that except former mayor Jim Watson.
Ken Gray
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Another occasion when Jimbo let his personal animosity for someone get in the way of Ottawa sports! Had it not been championed by a Chiarelli, we probably would have seen real baseball down on Coventry Road. Watson wasn’t about to lose the glory of bringing a ‘great’ team to Ottawa to a campaign involving a member of the hated Chiarelli Clan so he ensured that initiative was kibboshed in favour of the league of wanna-be/has-beens that we ended up with.
Besides, don’t you know that the development community is licking their chops while they wait in the wings for baseball to fail completely and that very nicely-positioned and extremely valuable piece of land the stadium sits on to become available to them? They will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to bring legitimate baseball into that stadium.
Double A baseball team names tend to be very creative, Toledo Mudhens, Albuquerque Isotopes, Amarillo Sod Poodles, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, and on and on. At one time Ottawa had what was likely the most appropriate of all minor league baseball monikers, the Ottawa Fat Cats. Them were the days.