A former Okotoks Dawgs batboy will swing the lumber down in Arizona.
Daniel Donnelly has accepted an offer to play for the Chandler Gilbert Community College Coyotes outside of Phoenix approximately six years after he was grabbing bats for the likes of former College Dawgs Drew Pettit, T. Rod and others.
“It was about 2010 or so and I was the batboy. It just really helped me to see how much fun baseball can be and how exciting it can be,” said Donnelly, a Grade 12 student at Holy Trinity Academy.
The Okotoks Dawgs will not only celebrate the achievements of their college team at its 10th annual banquet on Jan. 28 at the Foothills Centennial Centre, but also the efforts of their academy players, like Donnelly. Academy players from Peewee to Midget.
Donnelly has grown up with the Dawgs. If he had any more Dawgs’ blood flowing through his veins, he’d need to go for distemper shots.
He is an outfielder with the Midget Black Dawgs as well he has worked in the Dawgs press box keeping stats and explaining to over-50 years of age reporters that Wifi isn’t a new fangled sabermetrics stat.
He remembers watching the Dawgs win WMBL championships as a youngster while sitting in the berm back in 2008.
“When they were winning championships, they made playing baseball really cool,” Donnelly said. “My first memories were of sitting in the berm for one of the championship games and they ‘Dawgpiled’ after they won. I was really young and it was really cool. That experience made me really want to play baseball.”
Donnelly would join the Dawgs Academy as a Peewee player, but made the jump to Bantam as the Dawgs did not have a Peewee program at that time.
The academy made his dream of playing post-secondary baseball a reality.
“That’s the dream,” he said. “You’re playing with one of the best academies in Canada and the Dawgs give you really good opportunities to play somewhere else.”
Not only do the Dawgs offer the best in teaching baseball fundamentals, their staff has a Whitey Ford-Mickey Mantle like relationship with post-secondary programs in North America.
“Now I feel like I am a good baseball player, but I couldn’t be where I got a look without the Dawgs,” he said. “It is the best-coaching staff and you get so many opportunities to get scouted.
“The coaches have so many connections with colleges and universities.”
He got the chance to play at Chandler Gilbert thanks in large part to Tyler Hollick, Donnelly’s coach with the Red Dawgs last season.
Hollick played for the Arizona school prior to getting drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 2012.
“Danny has always been a notorious hard worker and in the past five or six months he got to a level that I thought he could play for Chandler,” Hollick said. “I gave a call to my ex-college coach who is still there and Dan got a workout. They really liked him and they are excited to have him.”
Donnelly joins a long list of academy players who have gone on to play at the next level. The Dawgs have had every academy graduate play at the next level if they chose to do so.
“Right from the time they are 12 years old to 18 we are preparing them for college baseball, the practice, getting them seen,” Hollick said. “Getting them to the next level is our goal.”
They also have to be ready to study. An academy player who slips academically, will find himself benched quicker than Reggie Jackson trying to show up Billy Martin.
Many of the Academy Dawgs going to the next level will be recognized at the banquet on Jan. 28. The awards for the College Dawgs will also be presented. The guest speaker at the banquet is Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez.
Martinez is also a former catcher with the Jays and managed the club in 2001 and 2002. For ticket information go to dawgsbaseball.ca or call 403-262-DAWG.
