Tag Archives: World Baseball Classic

Thinkin’ baseball… Koskie calls it quits. World Baseball Classic still great to watch. Can the Blue Jays lose 120 games? Who is Stephen Strasburg?

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

ORLANDO — Four more things rattling around in my cranium…

1) My friend Corey Koskie officially hung ‘em up on Saturday. No wonder.

 

After spending last Sunday in hospital getting treatment for his 6-year-old son Joshua, who had hit his head and suffered a concussion, Koskie was reminded of his own 2 1/2 years in a fog.

 

So on Saturday, three days after he pulled himself from a game complaining of lightheadedness, Koskie decided to call it quits.

 

“The risks just outweigh the rewards,” Koskie told me, not long after he ended his comeback attempt with the Chicago Cubs. “The way I felt on Wednesday, well, it just wasn’t worth it.”

Koskie, 35, dove for for a ground ball in a spring training game in Arizona on Wednesday and said “I felt really weird.” He knew, at that moment, that he couldn’t play big league baseball again.

“I kind of decided, do I really want to be looking over my shoulder and asking, ‘How do I feel? Is it OK?’ after every single play,” Koskie said. “After everything I’ve gone through over the past 2 1/2 years, I know I don’t want to go back into the fog again.”

Koskie finished his career as Manitoba’s greatest baseball player (no, Russell Ford was not really a Manitoban, but a Minnesotan), a .275 lifetime hitter with 124 home runs. His best year came with the Minnesota Twins in 2001 when he hit 26 homers, stole 27 bases and drove in 103 runs and became the first third baseman in baseball history to hit at least 25 homers, steal 25 bases and drive in 100 runs in one season. 

Officially, the record will say, his career ended as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers on July 5, 2006, when he fell backward and suffered a concussion while trying to catch a pop fly off the bat of Felipe Lopez.

2) I’ve watched every World Baseball Classic game that I can watch and I’ve loved every minute of it. This is a great event and should be played every two years, not every four as planned.

As a Canadian, nothing beats international sport, and this event has been so much fun to watch. It’s simply great to be watching baseball in March and have it mean something.

For me, spring training has lost its edge. To pay up to $40 to watch a Grapefruit League game in which the best players play no more than three innings is simply a rip-off. If you’re a fan of one particular team and you want to watch Single A players who could not make the Goldeyes but might make your favourite team someday, then spring training is for you. But frankly, I’ll take the World Baseball Classic every time.

Granted, it’s an event the mainstream media hates because the mainstream media hates being in Florida on the company’s ticket watching Single A players at spring training who won’t make the big team for five more years. And the mainstream media members who aren’t in Florida just like to follow the mob and rip things they know nothing about. It’s a bad habit, but like Barry Bonds, the hypocritical steroid issue and the Duke Lacrosse case, it’s something we’ve learned to live with.

Frankly, nothing beats a great international tournament at a time when baseball is charging $25-$40 a ticket to watch freakin’ practice.

Long live the WBC.

3) Here in sunny Florida, the outlook for the Toronto Blue Jays is not so sunny.

Insiders say that after Roy Halladay, the Jays have marginal pitching, at best, and the team’s hitting simply won’t be good enough to score the seven or eight runs a game they’ll need to win more often than they lose.

In fact, one highly respected seamhead down here in Florida has suggested that the Jays could lose 120 games this season.

Do you think that will get J.P. Ricciardi fired?

4) Remember the name Stephen Strasburg. Most major league scouts believe Strasburg will be, and I’m quoting here, “The greatest pitcher in baseball history.”

There are even seamheads here in Florida this spring who are drafting Strasburg in Fantasy Keeper Pools because they believe he is going to be great for a long, long time.

Strasburg is a junior at San Diego State who is 6-foot-4, 220-pounds and is the No. 1-ranked player in the upcoming Major League draft. He played on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team and is already called “flawless.” He has a 102-mile-per-hour fastball and an almost unhittable 80-mile-per-hour 12-6 hammer curveball  that he often throws after setting up a hitter with two straight unhittable fastballs. 

This season he is 10-0 at SDSU with 75 strikeouts in 34.1 innings, He has an 8-1 strikeout-walk ratio.

The last-place (2008) Washington Nationals have won the Strasburg Sweepstakes. If the kid stays healthy, he will be the next great big league ace.   

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NHL GMs Spend Hours Talking About Fighting in the NHL. Newspapers dying faster than we thought.

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

TAMPA — I love all the angst over the National Hockey League’s fighting issue for a number of reasons. 

 

Those reasons include, but aren’t limited to, the old mainstream media’s attempt to deal with the issue on a “Letters to the Editor” basis. You know what that looks like: “Our readers have had it with fighting,” the headlines blare. 

 

Yeah, sure they have. The people who write letters to the editor are generally the people who haven’t paid for a hockey ticket in more than a decade. These are the people who haven’t watched a game and haven’t even looked at the standings since the Jets left Winnipeg. Of course they have an opinion on fighting.

 

It’s like that donkey host of The Reporters on ESPN (his name escapes me). He hasn’t paid any attention to hockey since the day Versus got the U.S. rights to live telecasts, but he sure had an opinion about fighting in the NHL on Sunday. He couldn’t tell the difference between a hockey puck and a curling stone but that didn’t deter him from telling the rest of us what’s best for the NHL. He’s a typical New York TV commentator and he’s the biggest problem the NHL has. That’s because he’s the guy the New York-based NHL is trying to tailor its game toward: A guy who has never been to an NHL game and will never go.

 

Fact: No hockey fan has ever left an arena when the fight started. 

 

Sure, it’s possible to find a way to get fighting out of the game, but why in heaven’s name would we want to do that?

 

One simply has to look at the numbers, to see why the general managers spent so much time discussing fighting at their winter meetings in Naples, Fla., last week. Coming out of the lockout, in 2005-06, there were fewer fights in the NHL than at any time in the previous 30 years. Then a year later, the Anaheim Ducks took part in the highest number of fights in the game and they won the Cup. Now, fights are growing at a pace not seen since the late 1980s when teams (in 1987-88) averaged 2.1 fights per game. 

 

Obviously, if games are called tightly and the officials stop allowing the weasels (not the goons, the weasels) to skate around elbowing people in the head (Todd Fedoruk, Darcy Tucker, Steve Ott, the old Sean Avery), then fights won’t be as necessary as they are today.

 

But because the media (and a few fans) whined about all the power-plays during that “New NHL” season (the one after the lockout), the league obviously told the officials to stop calling it so closely. With that, the weasels took over the game and the only way to stop the weasels is to send the goons out after ‘em.

 

The NHL could stop fighting with the same rule change instituted by college hockey: Fight and you’re suspended. But why take fighting out of the game when the fighters do more to maintain control than the officials? 

 

And also, despite all the stupid polls, dimwitted New York TV commentators and letter-writing campaigns, fighting sells tickets.

 

* * *

 

THE SLOW DEATH OF AN ICON 

 

ORLANDO — Along with the news that FP Newspapers Limited Partnership (publishers of the Winnipeg Free Press, the Brandon Sun and the Canstar papers) lost $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008 after making $4.6 million in 2007, comes word that more and more American newspapers are going under.

 

The San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer could go  down any day. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Chicago Tribune are in bankruptcy protection. The Rocky Mountain News has ceased to publish.

 

The death of printed newspapers will be a slow death, but it will still be a death. Sadly, the people who ran the business in the 90s and early 2000s didn’t see it coming. They were either dishonest (that would cover the ones I worked for), ignorant or just plain unaware. Newspapers have been treading water for years and now they’re about to sink. It’s sad, but inevitable. When the vast majority of your readers are over 60, death is as certain as taxes.

 

On Saturday in Lakeland, as the Detroit Tigers played host to the Toronto Blue Jays at Joker Marchant Stadium, the press box was about half full. There was a time when you couldn’t get a seat in the press box at Joker Marchant, especially if the Blue Jays were in town, but fewer and fewer sports journalists are traveling to spring training these days — mainly because there are fewer and fewer sports journalists around — so if you have a spring training media pass this year, you can sit anywhere you want. 

 

After Saturday’s game (a game that was pretty dull considering that the Blue Jays didn’t bring any big names to Lakeland while the five best Tigers are playing in the World Baseball Classic), we got back to the hotel in Orlando and as I stopped to get a coffee at the Starbucks in the lobby, I noticed that the old Orlando Sentinel racks were filled with scarves, on display with a hand-written note on top,  telling prospective buyers that the scarves were 30 per cent off. 

 

Like so many papers, the Sentinel no longer fills the hotel racks outside downtown Orlando. Way out here in Lake Buena Vista, the hotel gives away internet access, as well as about five different ESPNs, and as a result the newspaper has become obsolete.

 

There is simply no need to read the sports page anymore. Almost all the news in it has already been telecast on ESPN (TSN in Canada) — more than 12 hours earlier — and anything else a reader would need, is on the internet, often days in advance.

 

Daily newspapers got old, tired, dull and pretentious. News was replaced with inanity. A newspaper mob formed and that led to horrible journalistic decisions such as the U.S. rush to war in Iraq, the Duke lacrosse case and the Barry Bonds witch hunt. Most of the people who wrote about these issues had no first hand knowledge of any of it, but they kept plugging away at it anyway. 

 

Small, local magazines and weekly or bi-weekly niche newspapers will survive and prosper. Big dailies with huge buildings, hundreds of employees, fleets of cars and trucks and overpaid editors are just about toast.

 

It’s sad, but in recent years, all newspapers have been able to do well is hurt people. That’s another reason why there won’t be that many people missing newspaper when they go.  

 

In the meantime, someone still has to figure out a way to turn a profit off an internet information site. If that ever happens, the recession will be over.

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Canada goes down in Flames. Whitt and Hamilton should go, too.

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It was one of the saddest performances ever staged by a Canadian baseball team — at least, in the past decade.

 

Italy 6, Canada 2. Canada is eliminated in two games from the World baseball Classic.

 

Come on. How does that happen? Italy? That team would struggle against a decent Double A club. 

 

Worse yet, how does Canada lose a game with that much importance attached to it at home? Somebody explain that.

 

Obviously, it happens because alleged “big time” players, who seem to be the favoured belled cows of Baseball Canada’s expert hired staff, laid an egg right when they needed to play like champions. As they often do.

 

Let’s take a look at these stats:

 

Shortstop Chris Barnwell, 0-for-4 against the U.S., 0-for-3 against Italy

Third baseman Mark Teahen, 1-for-4 against the U.S., 0-for-2 against Italy

Leftfielder Nick Weglarz, 0-for-2 against the U.S., 0-for-3 against Italy (he hit two balls in fair territory in two games)

Second baseman Peter Orr, 0-for-4 against the U.S., 0-for-3 against Italy (plus two strikeouts and a horrible play at second base).

Rightfielder Matt Stairs, 0-for-3 against the U.S., 0-for-3 against Italy

 

Weglarz, only 21 and a lifetime .270 hitter at the Single A level, was completely overmatched. Stairs looked done. Orr was just downright horrible in every possibly way.

 

How do those guys play while a nine-year major league veteran like Corey Koskie sits on the bench?

 

Koskie was the best hitter on the team leaving Dunedin. In two games, he went five-for-six with a walk and was hit. He scored four runs and drove in two. Everything he hit, he hit right on the nose.

 

And he didn’t even get to pinch hit in the WBC. That’s ridiculous.

 

Ernie Whitt promised Koskie “You’ll be the first bat off the bench,” and so he chose Team Canada ahead of the Chicago Cubs. Obviously a bad decision.

 

In fairness, it’s unlikely Whitt lied. It’s likely that when Koskie got to Toronto, Greg Hamilton took over. For years, Max Poulin has claimed that Hamilton only plays his buddies. I always questioned that, but now I’ve seen it for myself. Hamilton’s pal Stubby Clapp, who hasn’t done anything at the plate in three years, got to pinch hit while the best hitter in Dunedin didn’t get a sniff.

 

Nick Weglarz? Peter Orr? Matt Stairs? All of them awful.

 

In fact, this is how badly handled this team was managed: The Kansas City Royals wanted Mark Teahen to play second base. Whitt put Teahen at third and Orr at second. Why? How about Koskie at third and Teahen at second? Peter Orr — and Weglarz and Stairs — were nothing more than automatic outs. And defensive liabilities.

 

At lot of people wanted to blame Whitt’s Northern League pitching staff, but the fact remains, if you can’t score seven runs against a semi-pro staff like Italy’s, you should PLAY in the Northern League. It’s interesting that, historically, Hamilton has put down the Northern League. If it wasn’t for the N.L., he would not have had a pitching staff (Mike Johnson, Vince Perkins, Scott Richmond and Chris Begg are all Northern Leaguers or ex-Northern Leaguers). That’s because far too many big leaguers won’t play for Canada.

 

People in this country are saying that this team put the nation’s baseball program back 10 years. I believe it put the program back three decades. 

 

And the only way to fix it is to fire Greg Hamilton right now.

 

And let Ernie Whitt carry the boxes on moving day.

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World Baseball Classic tremendous. Then there are the TV announcers.

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I’ll admit it, I’m a fan. I watched 12 hours of the World Baseball Classic on Saturday and another 11 hours yesterday (in between the Rangers-Bruins game, the UNC-Duke basketball game and the final 22 laps of the NASCAR race).

 

The baseball is remarkable. Even the blowouts. When you watch baseball based on 162 game schedules every year, you know you’ll get a handful of dogs in August and injuries or fatigue (or boredom) will keep the best players out of the lineup 20-30 times a year — where have you gone Cal Ripken Jr.? Even teams getting killed like Panama and South Africa were interesting to watch. It was emotional and different.

 

In fact, the Canada-USA game on Saturday might have been one of the greatest games ever played. When Canada gave itself a chance to come back from a 6-4 deficit in the ninth, it was as riveting as any sport can get.

 

It’s just too bad that the play-by-play announcers and colour commentators have absolutely no idea what they’ve been watching.

 

It’s bad enough that not one of them has done any homework at all on any of the more obscure players involved (although Sam Cosentino’s old story about Ryan Braun being a “Milwaukee” Brewer and his mother, an Anheuser-Busch employee in Southern California, being a REAL brewer, never gets tired), in the tournament, but it’s downright sad listening to these high-paid donkeys spend three hours talking about nothing other than the American big leaguers.

 

In fact, last night, the inanity reached an all-time low. The two clowns calling last night’s U.S.-Venezuela game went on and on during the pre-game chatfest talking about the U.S. “power display” against Canada in Game 1. They justified their fawning jingoism by creating a deep discussion about how pitchers are usually ahead of hitters at this time of year.

 

Not surprisingly, there wasn’t one mention of homers by Canadians Joey Votto or Russell Martin (both doubled, as well), but that’s the clear, undeniable proof that those two guys on Sunday night were unadulterated morons. 

 

Martin (off Scot Shields) and Votto (off Jake Peavy) homered off major league pitchers. The Americans??? Kevin Youkilis and Brian McCann homered off Northern League castoff Mike Johnson while Adam Dunn hit an oppo off former Northern League — now unemployed — righthander Chris Begg. 

 

Oh yeah, it was an awesome display of power. Good gawd! The Goldeyes used to pound the crap out of Mike Johnson, before the Edmonton Cracker-cats released him. And yes, that’s the Northern League Winnipeg Goldeyes, not the National League Philadelphia Phillies. 

 

Do just a little homework. Please. And by the way, what the hell is “pitchability?”

 

That’s why I watch most sporting events with the mute button on.

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Koskie signs with the Chicago Cubs

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie is a member of the Chicago Cubs.  This weekend, the latest member of Canada’s national baseball team in the World Baseball Classic, signed a minor league deal with the Cubs. He’ll join the Cubs at spring training in Arizona after the World Baseball Classic. If he doesn’t make the Cubs opening day roster, he has agreed to go to Triple A Iowa.  

This is a story that gets better all the time. Koskie, 35, who suffered post-concussion syndrome in 2006 and hasn’t played a game of baseball in 2 1/2 years, wasn’t even on Team Canada’s provisional roster in January. Although he’d been working out at the Minnesota Twins spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla., he didn’t face live pitching until last week.

 

Now, he’s in Dunedin, Fla., playing with Team Canada and when the tournament is over, he has a contract with the Cubs.

 

“As you know, back in early January, I wanted to play with Team Canada and then finish my career,” said, who played nine years in the majors with Minnesota, Toronto and Milwaukee. “My wife and I thought it would be a great way to finish up.

 

“Now I have a chance to play again. I even had a choice of teams to sign with. I’m excited about this.”

 

He has every right to be excited. If he just makes the Cubs, he’s comeback player of the year. 

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Koskie on Team Canada. Now has offers from two big league teams.

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It has been February’s good news story. After more than 2 1/2 years away from baseball because of the effects of post-concussion syndrome, Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie, once a third baseman for the Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, had returned to the game.

But he did more than just return to the game. He went out and won a spot on Canada’s national team, the one that will compete in the World Baseball Classic that begins next week. He’ll wear his old No. 47 and while he’s listed as a backup third baseman right now, he still believes that if he’s given a chance, he could give Mark Teahen a run for the starting job.

 

He also as two offers to play professionally this summer.

 

But first, to his chances with Team Canada. 

 

“I really believe that I’m given a chance to win the job in the exhibition games, then I’ll win the job,” Koskie said, via telephone from Fort Myers, Fla., on Friday afternoon.

 

“I feel really good. No more concussion problems, no more nausea. I’m about 10 pounds heavier than I was when I played in Milwaukee so I find that I’m sore every day. I haven’t played 2 1/2 years and while I feel like I’m shape, I’m going very hard every day. Two years ago, if I was sore in the spring, I would take a day off, say, from infield practice or running or whatever. But right now, I can’t do that. I’m trying to come back in order to be ready for the tournament. I can’t afford to take a day off.

 

“And it’s great to be playing again. I’m just happy being out there again.”

 

Koskie, now 35, played nine years in the majors, but he hasn’t played a game since July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, then with the Brewers, was involved in a terrific play with Milwaukee shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

Since that day, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Twins third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head (despite what a number of lazy newspaper reporters and news services wrote), but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. However, in early January he started feeling better and said he’d like to end his career with Team Canada at the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

 

Well, he might not be ending his career at all.

“I have offers on the table from two teams,” he said. “As you know, I’ve been working out at the Twins complex in Fort Myers so because they were good to me, I went to them first and asked if they wanted me. They weren’t interested, but my agent talked to a number of teams and there are two offers out there. I will agree to terms soon, maybe even this weekend. They’re minor league deals, but they are deals and I will play baseball this summer.”

Granted, the comeback of Corey Koskie pales beside the comeback of Tiger Woods, but it’s still a wonderful story. At age 35, after two and a half years out of the game, Manitoba’s greatest baseball player is getting a chance to play again.

Call me a homer. Call me whatever you like. I’m going to spend the summer cheering for him.  

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Renney gone, Koskie on Team Canada, New CFL Rules… the banging in my head goes on unabated…

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

What’s that clanging around in my noggin? 

 

Must admit, can’t think that anyone was surprised when Tom Renney was fired as head coach of the New York Rangers. Great guy, excellent coach, wrong team, wrong time.

 

At the start of the season it appeared as if the Rangers were going to run away and hide, but as the playoffs approach and the Blueshirts have lost 10 of 12 and fallen to within two points of ninth place in the East. Losing to the Leafs on Sunday night was the end of the road for Renney.

 

It’s been clear for awhile that Glen Sather was going to make a change and the move to John Tortorella, a hard-ass, native New Yorker, was so painfully obvious, it bordered on cliche.

 

Tortorella won a Cup in Tampa and also finished last. Of course, he won the Cup with Nikolai Khabibulin in goal and finished last without his Russian netminder, In the end, it always comes down to goaltending and if the Rangers intend to turn this swoon around, Henri Lundqvist had better be ready to carry the load.  

 

2) On the baseball front, Team Canada manager Ernie Whitt confirmed yesterday that Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie, who hasn’t played a game in anger since July 5, 2006, would indeed be one of the 28 players named Tuesday to Team Canada’s preliminary roster for the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Team Canada opens camp March 2 in Dunedin.

 

We first reported this story here at rivercitysportsblog.com at 10:03 a.m. CDT on Sunday, Feb. 22. Later in the day, a story on Koskie’s good fortune appeared on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s website and the next day the story appeared at cbc.ca. Of course, cbc.ca — which only occasionally gets things right — wouldn’t credit rivercitysportsblog.com. 

 

The mainstream media continues to act despicably. One can only hope the Harper government one day shuts down the CBC, a $1 billion-plus waste of taxpayers money. We live in a time when private broadcasters — the people in this country who pay their own way — are struggling to survive and yet we toss public money down that big CBC toilet.

 

That has to stop. And soon.

 

3) Meanwhile, in the CFL, for the first time, Canadian Football League fans are being asked to propose rule changes that can “make our great game even better,” according to commissioner Mark Cohon’s comments on cfl.ca. 

 

Fans are asked to send their ideas by visiting CFL.ca/rules or by e-mailing rules@cfl.ca by this coming Friday.

 

My suggestion was simple. If a CFL team employs a Canadian as its No. 3 quarterback, then that team should get to use an import starter at another position. It’s time CIS quarterbacks got some training at the pro level in their own country.

 

Interestingly, I’ve heard from a number of 92-CITI-FM listeners who suggested we simply play NFL football in Canada. “One game on one continent,” said our friend Fort Rouge Ted.

 

It’s certainly not patriotic, but it does make sense. 

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Koskie could be going to the World Baseball Classic.

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Our old friend Corey Koskie might just have taken a very big step toward returning to Major League Baseball. Saturday night, Koskie — who was not listed on Canada’s provisional roster for the World Baseball Classic roster — was told he will be named to Team Canada’s roster for the 2009 WBC. 

Koskie, now 35, played nine years in the majors with Minnesota, Toronto and Milwaukee, but he hasn’t played a game since July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, then with the Brewers,, was involved in a terrific play with Milwaukee shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

Since that day, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Twins third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head, but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. In fact, for more than two years, Koskie couldn’t watch much TV without getting sick. He couldn’t sit at  his computer without getting dizzy. Walking into a big venue like Rogers Centre or the Metrodome in Minneapolis would leave him disoriented and prone to panic attacks.

 

However, in early January he started feeling better and told me he’d like to end his career with Team Canada at the 2009 World Baseball Classic. 

“I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to play for Canada. It would be a great way to end my career,” Koskie said, from the living room of his home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities last month. “I’ve talked with the Twins and they said they’d let me use the facilities in Fort Myers in early February. Nobody has given me any indication they’d look at me in terms of a contract or anything like that and I haven’t asked. I just want to see if I can still play. I mean, I’ve been out of the game for 2 ½ years. That’s a long time. I’ve just been hanging out with my kids for two years. I might not even want to play again. But I want to see how it feels.” 

 

It must be feeling pretty damn good. 

 

Koskie, who lives year round just outside Minneapolis, did ask the Twins if he could work out with the club at its spring training facility in Fort Myers and it looks like the best ask he ever made. On Saturday, during a workout with the big club, he faced live pitching for the first time in more than two years and looked comfortable. Doctors had already given him the green light to play again and he now believes Team Canada GM Greg Hamilton will put him on the club’s final roster, a roster that must be submitted this Tuesday. 

 

Team Canada will begin its formal training camp at the Toronto Blue Jays’ facility in Dunedin, Fla., on March 2.

 

If the dream does come true tomorrow, what a wonderful, wonderful story. 

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Manitoba’s Koskie thinking about a comeback.

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Corey Koskie has been roughhousing with his kids again. He no longer becomes nauseated when he sends out an e-mail. He can now watch entire movies on his giant HD TV without getting a splitting headache.

In fact, Koskie feels so good, he’s starting to get the itch. He’s going back into the gym this month and maybe, just maybe, he’s going to go to Fort Myers and work out with the Minnesota Twins. 

 

“I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to play for Canada in the World Baseball Classic,” Koskie said, from the living room of his home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities last week. “I’m going back into the gym next week to see if I can go through a full workout. If, by the end of the month, I’m comfortable there, I’ll go to Florida just to see if I still have my bat speed, can still throw.

 

“I’ve talked with the Twins and they said they’d let me use the facilities in Fort Myers in early February. Nobody has given me any indication they’d look at me in terms of a contract or anything like that and I haven’t asked. I just want to see if I can still play. I mean, I’ve been out of the game for 2 ½ years. That’s a long time. I’ve just been hanging out with my kids for two years. I might not even want to play again. But I want to see how it feels.” 

 

Manitoba’s greatest baseball player, the young hockey goalie from Anola who grew up and made it to baseball’s big leagues, has not played a game with his last team, the Milwaukee Brewers, since way back on July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, now 35, was involved in a terrific play with Brewers shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

 

Since then, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Blue Jays third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head, but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. In fact, for more than two years, Koskie couldn’t watch much TV without getting sick. He couldn’t sit at  his computer without getting dizzy. Walking into a big venue like Rogers Centre or the Metrodome in Minneapolis would leave him disoriented and prone to panic attacks.

 

“It was so frustrating,” Koskie said. “I’d feel good and then my head would start to spin. There was no explanation.”

 

It was kind of a sad, unfortunate way to end a career. Especially when one considers that at the time, his eighth season in the majors, he was playing his best baseball in two years. The Brewers formally released in 2007. It appeared as if he was done.

 

But in the last couple of months Koskie seems to have staggered out of the fog. The nausea doesn’t dog him. There are no more anxiety attacks.

 

“I’m going to find out if I can play again,” he said. “But if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. 

 

“And I’m not even sure I want to play again. I’m not sure I’m ready for the pressure of two-out, two-on bottom of the ninth. But I’m going into this giving everything I have, but expecting nothing in return.”

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