Baseball is back in town

Way back in 1993, the Triple A Ottawa Lynx brought professional baseball to Ottawa. In the early years, the team set attendance records, with crowds of 10,000+ in the brand new stadium (I was one of the early season ticket holders!). Those were heady times, but for whatever reasons, the crowds stopped coming, and the team packed up and moved to Pennsylvania after the 2007 season. In 2008 the Can-Am League (semi-pro) placed a team in the park, but small crowds and bankruptcy ended that pretty quickly. Last year, the beautiful stadium stayed empty, with weeds and long grass taking over the diamond. It was a sad sight, for sure, especially for an avid baseball player and fan. I’ve played at the stadium numerous times, and it was certainly a shame to see it go to waste as politicians argued over what to do with it.

This spring the big news was that the Ottawa Stadium Group (OSG) was successful in a franchise bid for a team in the Intercounty Baseball League, and the Ottawa Fat Cats were born. Based in south western Ontario, the IBL has been in operation since 1919 – so this is its 92nd year of operation. It is not professional baseball, but it does provide a very high level of ball for ex-college players and the ones that almost made it to the “show”. Since we are a 4 hour drive from the nearest team, the schedule presented its own challenges – each team in the League will visit Ottawa for one weekend, and the Fat Cats will make a couple of tours into south western Ontario, knocking off a number of games in each trip. It makes for a lot of old style double-headers, but it promises to be an exciting summer with 18 home games in 11 dates.

And of course, the new team needs a photographer to record the highlights, so yours truly will be the official team photographer for the Fat Cats this summer. So watch for lots of exciting baseball shots, or even better still, head on down to the stadium and take in a game or two. Play ball!