When our Canadian Olympic baseball team takes the field in Athens, there will be a few familiar faces to Blue Jay fans. Paul Spoljaric and Rob Ducey are on the squad and both used to suit up for the Jays. Peer into the dugout and you'll see we're managed by former Blue Jay Ernie Whitt. There are some potential future Jays on the team as well. John Ogiltree, Simon Pond, Stubby Clapp and Jeff Guiel all play for Toronto farm teams.
I mentioned Ernie Whitt. That gives me an excuse to take a stroll down memory lane and return to the decade of my youth, the 80s. My brothers and I were die hard Blue Jay fans and we followed each and every pitch of each and every game. We each had a favourite player, and Ryan's favourite player was #12 Ernie Whitt. Every once in a while we were lucky enough to attend games at Exhibition Stadium and a popular bit on the crappy scoreboard in right field was the chant "We want a hit! We want a hit!" My dear brother Ryan was certain the crowd was yelling "We want Whitt! We want Whitt!" We still kid him about it. How could we not?
For the record, Steve's favourite player was #29 Jesse Barfield and mine was #11 George Bell. I wear #11 on my slo-pitch uniform today in his honour.
