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Hartley Miller's Slap Shots July 15th Edition

By Hartley Miller

How do sports leagues attract out of town teams for special events? This is a question that has haunted the Prince George Sports’ scene for decades, and it won't be answered anytime soon. 

The Provincial Cal Ripken 10 and under baseball championship was held last  weekend at Gyro Park. It's the latest example of frustration for local organizers. Although tournament officials were anticipating many competing teams, they were disappointed when only three registered, including two local clubs, the LTN 9 year olds, and the tournament champions, the Cap-abilities 10 year olds; The only visiting team was Nanaimo. There were many reasons that other cities chose not to participate in this tournament. Langley, for instance, cancelled at the “last minute” citing, among other things, extensive travel. As if they weren't aware of the nine-hour drive before agreeing to attend. 

One does not require a master's degree to realize that the main issue facing local sports leagues is Prince George’s geographic location. Many local sports teams haven't been able to host major tournaments because other BC regions will not travel this far north. 

So, what's the answer? In short, there is no simple solution. However, I would like to offer a couple of suggestions. 

First, league organizers need support at the Provincial level. BC bodies could impose a suspension of up to one year to any team that is scheduled to travel to PG, but cancels. 

Second, each team should post a performance bond which they will get back as soon as they play in their first game of the tournament. 

In addition, the host committee should work hard at providing other “fun” events for out of town teams. 

Prince George sports teams, for the most part, don't think twice about putting in long hours on the road to seek out of town tournament competition. And when visiting teams do travel to PG, they generally go away, whether they won or lost, with a feeling that they were treated first class. 

Prince George is “geographically challenged”. This is not going to change. But attitudes can. At least, that's something to strive for.

[If you have further suggestions on how to tackle this issue, I encourage you to write them down and share with the rest of us by posting your comments at the end of this article. If you haven’t registered on the opinion250 website, just click on the home page and then click again on register. You are then free to post any comments.] 


The major league baseball all-star break was this week. Here are some obscure stats from the first half of the season.

ESPN radio reported that Ervin Santana of the LA Angels is the first pitcher in the history of baseball to give up a single, double, triple and home-run to the first four batters he faced in his career. 

Boston Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek homered on May 20th, the fifth straight season in which he has gone deep on that date. A record? No. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Lou Gerig homered on June 8th in seven straight seasons, starting in 1932 …

The Angels and the Chicago White Sox are 315-315-1 in their all-time series, according to the San Jose Mercury News, but one team holds an edge in runs scored, 2,627 to 2,626.

And big league players went through 150,000 packages of sunflower seeds in the first half. 

Now that this info has been “spit out”, just think about how much time and money was wasted with the aforementioned facts. 


From Randy Youngman of the Orange County Register. Two women were having lunch before their weekly game at the country club. ‘I just got a great set of golf clubs for my husband,’ said one. ‘No kidding?’ her friend said incredulously. ‘That's a great trade!’

And, how is your week? 


--Hartley Miller is the sports director for radio stations 94X and the Wolf@97FM. He
also writes for the PG Free Press

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