Baseball Memories from Sarnia Ontario
Episode Stats
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168.56317
Summary
In this episode, John Bolton talks about a photo he holds of a baseball team he played on in the late 80s and early 90s. He also talks about some of the other players he played with on that team.
Transcript
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Hi, it's John Bolton in Calgary, and I understand that there was some interest in a photo posted
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of one of my baseball teams from way back when, and it was interesting, my sister texted
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that photo to me, and I texted back to her, I don't know why you're wasting my time with
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this, and I sent a picture of me holding that exact photo from this little book right here,
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and this photo album that I've got, and I'm going to go through some of the names, not
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a lot of them because it'll take too long, but it might bring back some memories for
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So first up, this is the team that went to Puerto Rico, and there were some other players
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that went along with us, we brought some other players to play as Team Canada, one of which
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was Mike Gardner, of course he went on to play in Major League Baseball, but let me go through
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the names real quick here, that's me right there, then you've got Mohamed Rabi, you've
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got Mike Hinchberger, Glenn Harding, then this is Mark Bryan, moving along to the second row
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we've got Andy Schott, Jeff Panik, just some quick thoughts on the Panik family, I often
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think of Jeff and Joe and Jamie and Irene and the whole family, I didn't know the older
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brother, I believe it was Joe Jr. as well, but I think of them often, just tragic circumstances
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My dad, when he went to Puerto Rico with this team, along with Mark McGugan's father, they
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stayed in the same room and they had a bar set up there, and there's some great photos somewhere
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in a box of Irene Panik, my dad, Mr. McGugan, and all the parents partying in my dad's room
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You've got Dave Dot, you've got Don Dabonovich, then you've got Tim Lannan up here, we've
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got coach Len Cook, you've got Steve Rand, Mark McGugan, Jack Rand in the back row who helped
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out coaching, and then you've got Dave Crombine and my favorite coach of all time, Gary Gallant.
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Now, I understand Mike Paggio had posted a comment under that original photo, Mike's
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not in this picture, it says right down here, absent is Mike Paggio, so Mike, you might pop
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Just some of the clippings, remember Dave Brody from the Sarnia Observer, I don't know
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what ever happened to Dave, I haven't lived in Sarnia for more than 30 years.
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Over here, we came fourth in Puerto Rico, and I even have the airline ticket.
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Doesn't even say the date on there, isn't that something?
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Just some of the other clippings from the newspapers.
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Remember this guy, anybody who may have played on this team?
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Perry Mader, who played for Chatham, they called him Chatham Fireballer, and I think he
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was the hardest pitcher we went up against when we played on these teams, way back when.
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Guys who are on the team, remember this, we won the OBA title.
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This is Kelly Kindersmaugh right here and Randy Petrie, and we went to Kingston in one
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Maybe somebody who was there can tell me what the score was.
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It was a low-scoring game because you could hardly see because the lights were so bad.
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A couple of more pictures from the championship-winning team.
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And down at the bottom, you can see we've got Ed Fiorini, who was the coach of that team
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as well, with Kelly Kindersmaugh and Randy Petrie.
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I'll go through the names really, really quick for you.
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We're going to start at the front and go left to right.
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So you've got Daryl Fader, Rick Shansky, Dave Mercurio, Doug Wheeler, Andy Shaw.
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Lynn Armstrong, Ted Hewitt, Carl Shaw, and you've got Kelly Kindersmaugh, Randy Petrie,
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got Brad Collier, Todd Lindsey, Jeff Panik, Mike Dabonovich, Tim Miracle, and me, along with
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There's a picture of me and Jeff Panik both working out the next season at the Sarnia Township
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Arena with Frank Keane, who was one of the coaches.
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He was a Montreal Expo scout, and he was a bit of a poet as well.
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Now, what I remember about Harry is he was always down at the ballpark, at Errol Russell
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Park, talking to the players about how to get the barrel of the bat around to hit the ball.
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He was a poet, and he did up a couple of poets for our teams.
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One of these is from the 1979 SMAA, Ontario Champions, and the other one from just out
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of his amazing imagination, and it mentions all of the players on the team in these poems.
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I hope you can see the text on these, but if you're on the team and you'd like me to send
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you the actual poem in text, I'd be happy to do that for you.
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And finally, some of the patches that were kept over the years from some of the baseball teams
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It seems like yesterday, but it also seems like oh so long ago.