Hamburgers sizzled on the grill as the sun slowly sunk below the western horizon. The crack of a bat echoed through Halliwell Park and fastball with some heat on it smacked into a catcher’s mitt.
All the familiar sounds of a baseball game.
There’s a buzz in Pocatello. It’s Gate City baseball.
Fans are filing in droves to Halliwell to watch the Grays, the town’s new semi-professional baseball team competing in the Northern Utah Baseball League.
On a summer night two weeks back, you couldn’t find place to park much less sit when the Grays hosted the Hyrum Hornets for their season home opener.
Then Wednesday, the Grays were back in town and not the threat of rain or 55-degree temperatures could dissuade baseball fans from showing up to cheer on the home team they defeated conference-rival Smithfield 9-3.
The Grays are 9-4 overall and 7-2 in the NUBL, a game behind first place.
I’m not sure Terry and Erica Fredrickson, co-owners of the Grays, have wrapped their minds around the initial support Gate City has garnered. Who would have guessed a semi-pro ball club in Pocatello would have fans gobbling up hats, T-shirts and baseball tickets?
The most popular baseball team in Pocatello isn’t the New York Yankees or the Colorado Rockies — it’s the Gate City Grays.
Frankly, I can’t believe it. In the two years I’ve covered high school and legion baseball in Pocatello the crowds have been sparse or nearly non-existent when it’s cold.
Yet the Grays, it seems, have enraptured Pocatello’s attention. It’s been a beautiful thing. We’re only two games into an 18-game Grays home schedule. There’s plenty of baseball left. And with guys like Diego and Fernando Robles — two brothers from Caldwell — anchoring a lineup with home run power scattered from top to bottom, it looks like Gate City has the stuff to contend for a championship.
With all the fanfare directed toward the Grays, though, I feel like it’s my duty to point out a few of the other ball clubs in Pocatello. They don’t have a semi-professional affiliation, but baseball fans in the Gate City should still appreciate their talents.
I’m talking about Pocatello American Legion Baseball.
Pocatello’s three Legion teams are split into two categories. There’s the oldest squad competing in “AA” — the Runnin’ Rebels. Then there are two teams playing Single-A baseball, the Razorbacks and the Rebels.
The Rebels are comprised of the youngest kids. Getting right to the point, the Rebels are usually lousy. Many years, they’re battling older teams and are simply overpowered. But there’s depth in Pocatello baseball right now, so the Rebels pack a counterpunch. Under first-year head coach Chris Kerns, they’re above .500 at 9-7 and they’ll only get better from here.
The Razorbacks are one of the premier Legion teams in the state. They’re 16-0 and bursting with an overflow of talent in the field defensively, on the mound with their arms and at the plate.
The Runnin’ Rebels are the oldest team, composed of 12 recent high school graduates and a couple underclassmen. These guys are the best of the best and they’re in the middle of a daunting schedule that started with a tournament in Reno, Nev., and includes stops in Billings, Mont., and Seattle.
The Runnin’ Rebels, Razorbacks and Rebels are a combined 44-12, a .786 winning percentage.
With the Legion program humming along and the Grays exploding onto the scene, it’s been a banner year for baseball in Pocatello.
Fans should take the time to check out Halliwell when any of them are playing. It’s not just the hamburgers on the grill that are sizzling.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Extra thoughts from ISU's Seton Sobolewski on the Big Sky exploring its postseason options
Check out this link out to learn more about the Big Sky exploring its postseason tournament format for men's and women's basketball.
And here are some added thoughts from Idaho State women's head coach Seton Sobolewski on the Big Sky postseason tournament possibly moving to Vegas (or other locations), how many teams he hopes will make the tourney moving forward and what some coaches argue is a recruiting disadvantage for the Big Sky.
Idaho State women's coach Seton Sobolewski on changing the Big Sky postseason format:
"I have mixed feelings about it. It’s nice when you win the conference and you host. That home-court advantage is awesome and I think you bring something really special to your community and your university when you get to host. I think when the champion hosts, you have a better chance to have good attendance than not, especially of Idaho State hosts, if Montana hosts, if North Dakota hosts. You’re actually going to play games in front of people.
“Neutral site, if it’s like in Vegas, I don’t think the attendance is going to be very good. I don’t think there’s going to be many people there to watch, but I think that it’s a special experience to take a team there toward the end of the year and go to Vegas or go somewhere. The neutral site is nice to have in the sense that no one has a real home-court advantage. It’s nice logistically to know where you’re going to end up going. When you plan ahead, your travel is a lot easier. Getting officials, especially if you hold it in Vegas, getting officials would be a lot easier. So there’s a lot of good and bad to it.”
More from Sobolewski ... on how some coaches have said that not having a neutral postseason tournament hurts recruiting:
“I enjoy being unique and different. Some coaches complain about how not having a Vegas postseason tournament hurts them in recruiting. But I haven’t had one recruit who asked me where we’re playing the postseason tournament. I’ve never had a recruit tell me, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in going to your school because you guys don’t play in Vegas.’ So, yeah, I don’t know.”
“There’s been quite a few coaches in our conference who have mentioned that. They feel like it hurts them in recruiting sometimes because say you’re recruiting for a kid against a WCC school or a WAC school, which both have Vegas postseason tournaments, so a kid may not choose your school because of that. I don’t know if that’s true, like that’s really happening or is that coach just trying to leverage to influence people to have a neutral site conference tournament. I think that people like me and (Montana coach) Robin Selvig and (North Dakota coach) Travis Brewster, we’re always going to like the opportunity of hosting a postseason tournament because of our attendance.”
Is it important for a one-bid league like the Big Sky to protect its top seed?
“I think it is. I think it’s important to put your best foot forward. I think it reflects well on your conference if you can actually go into the NCAA tournament and win a game or two. I definitely feel like it reflects positively on your conference. But on the flip side of things, from a spectator standpoint, it’s kind of fun to have that what if? What if the seven seed could be a Cinderella? Those things are fun to watch and root for. So again, kind of the same situation there, there’s some mixed feelings.”
Fans would generally favor letting everybody in to the postseason tournament (in the 2014-15 season, eight out of 12 Big Sky teams will qualify for postseason play). ... Is that something you’d like to see? Or do you like the idea of only letting in eight and making it somewhat a competition to make the tournament field?
“I would like to see everybody go. ... The Pac-12 does it. Not that we’re the Pac-12 but we have 12 teams in our conference as well. I like the format of all 12 teams playing and there’s a couple byes involved. One and two seeds get one or two byes. The third and fourth seeds each gets one bye, you know, I like that. I like that format.”
Sobolewski discusses some numbers that have been thrown around in regards to hosting a postseason Big Sky tournament at a neutral location. All the numbers are preliminary:
“I think there’s also a money issue involved with the Big Sky. I don’t know about the dollar amount. I was told, I’m going to say this but I may be wrong, it may cost as much as $250,000 to put on a neutral site postseason tournament. So there’s also a cost involved. There’s also the issue, there was some profit sharing going on when you go to host a conference tournament. So say for example, Montana hosted the conference tournament. Well, their take would be split up amongst all the Big Sky schools. So there’s actually some money coming in when you would host the tournament. ... Where as if you play at a neutral site, you will lose money for sure. You’ve got to come up with money to cover your costs for hosting a neutral-site tournament. So I think that also plays into it.”
NOTE: The women's postseason tournament in the Big Sky does have revenue sharing. The men's tournament is set up slightly different. In its current format, the men's tournament generates revenue every year. Some of that money is siphoned off to a fund that the Big Sky uses to help teams in the league pay for things like hosting Division I nonconference opponents.
I think a thing about the neutral site people would argue is that ... you guys (Idaho State) had to bus (16 hours). So it’s kind of an advantage for the schools who can afford to fly. This might even the playing field (playing at a neutral site):
“I would think that it would help you save some money if you knew ahead of time where you were going to the postseason. But I think the figures are way different. I think you’re talking of savings of $12,000 to where the conference tournament costs a quarter of a million dollars. I don’t know. Maybe you save 10,000 to $12,000 dollars times 12, now you’re really saving some money. ... You’re still losing money at the end of it when you add up those two figures.”
“With us going to North Dakota, it wasn’t a money issue. It’s just a logistical issue. When it came to us buying plane tickets, we couldn’t get all of our team on the same flight. So we would have to have two different flights and two different groups of people to get them all the way to North Dakota. ... For us, it definitely wasn’t a money issue. We drove because we could actually get everybody there at the same time. We could take managers and we could take other people. I’ll you what, going out to North Dakota this year, Montana missed their connecting flight. Or they couldn’t get everybody on their connecting flight from Denver ... to Grand Forks. So they had some problems. They had to catch a later flight and we were able to avoid all that by busing. That was kind of our strategy with it.”
And here are some added thoughts from Idaho State women's head coach Seton Sobolewski on the Big Sky postseason tournament possibly moving to Vegas (or other locations), how many teams he hopes will make the tourney moving forward and what some coaches argue is a recruiting disadvantage for the Big Sky.
Idaho State women's coach Seton Sobolewski on changing the Big Sky postseason format:
"I have mixed feelings about it. It’s nice when you win the conference and you host. That home-court advantage is awesome and I think you bring something really special to your community and your university when you get to host. I think when the champion hosts, you have a better chance to have good attendance than not, especially of Idaho State hosts, if Montana hosts, if North Dakota hosts. You’re actually going to play games in front of people.
“Neutral site, if it’s like in Vegas, I don’t think the attendance is going to be very good. I don’t think there’s going to be many people there to watch, but I think that it’s a special experience to take a team there toward the end of the year and go to Vegas or go somewhere. The neutral site is nice to have in the sense that no one has a real home-court advantage. It’s nice logistically to know where you’re going to end up going. When you plan ahead, your travel is a lot easier. Getting officials, especially if you hold it in Vegas, getting officials would be a lot easier. So there’s a lot of good and bad to it.”
More from Sobolewski ... on how some coaches have said that not having a neutral postseason tournament hurts recruiting:
“I enjoy being unique and different. Some coaches complain about how not having a Vegas postseason tournament hurts them in recruiting. But I haven’t had one recruit who asked me where we’re playing the postseason tournament. I’ve never had a recruit tell me, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in going to your school because you guys don’t play in Vegas.’ So, yeah, I don’t know.”
“There’s been quite a few coaches in our conference who have mentioned that. They feel like it hurts them in recruiting sometimes because say you’re recruiting for a kid against a WCC school or a WAC school, which both have Vegas postseason tournaments, so a kid may not choose your school because of that. I don’t know if that’s true, like that’s really happening or is that coach just trying to leverage to influence people to have a neutral site conference tournament. I think that people like me and (Montana coach) Robin Selvig and (North Dakota coach) Travis Brewster, we’re always going to like the opportunity of hosting a postseason tournament because of our attendance.”
Is it important for a one-bid league like the Big Sky to protect its top seed?
“I think it is. I think it’s important to put your best foot forward. I think it reflects well on your conference if you can actually go into the NCAA tournament and win a game or two. I definitely feel like it reflects positively on your conference. But on the flip side of things, from a spectator standpoint, it’s kind of fun to have that what if? What if the seven seed could be a Cinderella? Those things are fun to watch and root for. So again, kind of the same situation there, there’s some mixed feelings.”
Fans would generally favor letting everybody in to the postseason tournament (in the 2014-15 season, eight out of 12 Big Sky teams will qualify for postseason play). ... Is that something you’d like to see? Or do you like the idea of only letting in eight and making it somewhat a competition to make the tournament field?
“I would like to see everybody go. ... The Pac-12 does it. Not that we’re the Pac-12 but we have 12 teams in our conference as well. I like the format of all 12 teams playing and there’s a couple byes involved. One and two seeds get one or two byes. The third and fourth seeds each gets one bye, you know, I like that. I like that format.”
Sobolewski discusses some numbers that have been thrown around in regards to hosting a postseason Big Sky tournament at a neutral location. All the numbers are preliminary:
“I think there’s also a money issue involved with the Big Sky. I don’t know about the dollar amount. I was told, I’m going to say this but I may be wrong, it may cost as much as $250,000 to put on a neutral site postseason tournament. So there’s also a cost involved. There’s also the issue, there was some profit sharing going on when you go to host a conference tournament. So say for example, Montana hosted the conference tournament. Well, their take would be split up amongst all the Big Sky schools. So there’s actually some money coming in when you would host the tournament. ... Where as if you play at a neutral site, you will lose money for sure. You’ve got to come up with money to cover your costs for hosting a neutral-site tournament. So I think that also plays into it.”
NOTE: The women's postseason tournament in the Big Sky does have revenue sharing. The men's tournament is set up slightly different. In its current format, the men's tournament generates revenue every year. Some of that money is siphoned off to a fund that the Big Sky uses to help teams in the league pay for things like hosting Division I nonconference opponents.
I think a thing about the neutral site people would argue is that ... you guys (Idaho State) had to bus (16 hours). So it’s kind of an advantage for the schools who can afford to fly. This might even the playing field (playing at a neutral site):
“I would think that it would help you save some money if you knew ahead of time where you were going to the postseason. But I think the figures are way different. I think you’re talking of savings of $12,000 to where the conference tournament costs a quarter of a million dollars. I don’t know. Maybe you save 10,000 to $12,000 dollars times 12, now you’re really saving some money. ... You’re still losing money at the end of it when you add up those two figures.”
“With us going to North Dakota, it wasn’t a money issue. It’s just a logistical issue. When it came to us buying plane tickets, we couldn’t get all of our team on the same flight. So we would have to have two different flights and two different groups of people to get them all the way to North Dakota. ... For us, it definitely wasn’t a money issue. We drove because we could actually get everybody there at the same time. We could take managers and we could take other people. I’ll you what, going out to North Dakota this year, Montana missed their connecting flight. Or they couldn’t get everybody on their connecting flight from Denver ... to Grand Forks. So they had some problems. They had to catch a later flight and we were able to avoid all that by busing. That was kind of our strategy with it.”
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