I often find myself wondering if I want to become a “real” journalist. The upsides are about as high as can be: covering Parliament Hill for the Globe and Mail, or even the White House for the New York Times. But the downside can be pretty far down: town hall resolutions for the Mississauga News, or some random group’s annual barbeque for the Brampton Centennial.
Sports journalism, though, is a beast of a different breed. The downside of sports journalism, or, to be more accurate, the lower rungs of the proverbial career ladder, are never that bad: the minor leagues, with unglamorous press boxes. Besides, any league that could reasonably have room for a journalist must put on games that are bearable to watch, especially under the guise of career development, right?
That was the logic that led me to practically jump out of my chair last spring when I was watching a Jays’ game on TV and they cut to the executive of the Intercounty Baseball League’s newest team, my very own hometown Mississauga Twins, sitting comfortably in a luxury box at the Rogers Centre. See, a baseball team would need a beat writer, and writing is what I do.
The IBL has been around southern Ontario since 1919 and currently consists of nine teams: Brantford, Barrie, Kitchener, Guelph, Toronto, London, Hamilton, Oshawa, and Mississauga (the Mississauga franchise, purchased by Landmark Sports Group last November, was relocated from Stratford for the 2009 season). Players are usually from the general area of their team (although they do move from team to team surprisingly often) and are often home for the summer from playing college ball in the States, making the IBL a sort of watered-down hot-stove league.
That is not to say that players who have had their “cup of coffee” in the major leagues are automatically high above the IBL. A slew of former major leaguers, particularly Canadians, have graced the IBL after their shot in the bigs. Paul Spoljaric regularly dazzled fans by posting double-digit strikeouts at Christie Pits in Toronto before moving on to toe the rubber at Medals Stadium in Barrie. The Butler brothers, Rich and Rob, have also spent time in the IBL.
Each team plays 36 games between the first week of May and the last week in July or first week of August. After that, the top eight teams move on to play best-of-seven playoff series, with the winner ultimately crowned sometime in late August or early September.
The older franchises are local icons of sorts, with deep, rich histories, and crowds whose loyalty is paralleled only by their partisanship. The Brantford Red Sox, which have existed for nearly as long as the Boston Red Sox, regularly draw crowds that push a thousand. One shouldn’t attend a game at Arnold Anderson Stadium if unprepared to hear disparaging remarks about everything from the umpires’ mothers to the opposing players’ batting stances. The Toronto Maple Leafs are famed for their weekly Sunday afternoon games, starting a 2 p.m. on the dot at Christie Pits, a park full of so much baseball history it could well have been a textbook in some other lifetime.
My summer on the Mississauga Twins beat wasn’t as glorious as a student journalist living in Brantford or Barrie (or any other IBL town with an actual stadium in lieu of a city diamond) may have enjoyed. The Twins played at Meadowvale North Sports Park, a diamond I could have easily played on myself back in my days of house league and select hardball. Our media facility consisted of a single chair beside the official scorer’s folding table behind home plate. Unless the Mississauga News either wasn’t covering the game or had sent a junior reporter, I was in the bleachers more likely than not .
The team itself was at times tortuous to watch: they limped to a 9-27 record, finishing tied with Kitchener for last. The Twins got the seventh seed by virtue of a tiebreaker that was never quite explained to anybody, and the defending and eventual-repeating champion Brantford Red Sox unceremoniously swept them out of the playoffs. One of the more exciting stories of the year was when the head coach was fired in mid-July, putting an end to nearly incessant betting amongst the media and game-day volunteers as to when the axe would fall. In fairness, they were very close in the playoffs, dropping game one by a single run in ten innings, game two by only four runs, and they were within two runs of Brantford in game three until a ten-run eighth inning implosion. Game four need not be mentioned.
Kitchener, as fate absolutely had to have it, gave first-place Barrie a very good first round series, despite being the final seed. They stole a game and were within two runs in three of their four losses, and you could easily argue that the greatest theoretical mismatch could have gone to six or seven games had a few bounces gone the other way.
Still, the experience was invaluable. I met an array of characters—game day staff, friendly general managers, players, and fans—that were, shall we say, memorable.
The verdict? Yeah, I’ll be a journalist—as long as the lower rungs of the career ladder are as fun as this one!
