Appreciation for the Completion of a 10 Year Project and Recognition for Service

For the last 10 years, I have served on the Dunedin Stadium Advisory Committee. This committee worked as a liaison between the Toronto Blue Jays, the City of Dunedin and the local neighborhoods that are impacted by the stadium since it is located in the middle of the city. 

It was a long, hard road. There were rough times like the time where the local “crazy” guy who hates the Blue Jays cornered me at the Phillies minor league complex and screamed at me about this and that. (It was enough he has been permanently banned from Phillies property.) There were long days “fighting the good fight” on neighborhood Facebook pages where I dispelled rumors and provided correct data as opposed to all the crazy fake news that was floating around Facebook.

In the end, the hard work of the City and the Blue Jays resulted in a more than 25 year deal and kept them here with a renovated stadium and a state of the art training and rehabilitation facility.

Today, the Mayor and the city commission gave me a standing ovation and recognition for all my work.

It was unexpected. I have always been “a sheep not a Bo-Peep”, someone who works in the background making sure the task at hand gets done and done correctly. I’ve never been someone who looked for recognition, I’ve just done my work and was proud of it just because it was good work.

So to be sitting there in the commission meeting as we closed out the committee, it’s called “sunsetting” in legal terms, I had come to see the project to the end. To be called out, given a standing ovation and being given high praise by our wonderful Mayor was one of the proudest moments of my life.

I’ve included a clip from the meeting. Since so many of you have followed me on this journey, I thought I’d share the conclusion and my moment in the sun.

Day 2 of Phillies Spring Training 2017

The clouds started rolling in this morning but we were able to get a full day of spring training in before the rain came.

It was an eventful day. We saw the pitchers warming up then went to the stadium to watch batting practice. Then we returned to the Carpenter Complex in time to catch the catchers take BP then do pop-up drills.

Baseball Ross and I put together a rather extensive video of today’s activities, you can watch it HERE.

The best picture of the day is when Logan Moore ran into the fence right in front of me during pop-up practice. You can see it in the video above and of course, I keep shooting when he did. This is what I got:

Logan Moore

Below you will find some more stills from the day:

Dylan Cozens

Andrew Pullin

Brock Stassi

Roman Quinn

Odubel Hererra

Tommy Joseph

Cameron Perkins

Rhys Hoskins and Scott Kingery

Ryan Hanigan almost runs into the pitching machine.

Andrew Knapp

Cameron Rupp

Jorge Alfaro

Chace Numata

Hamels to the Rangers….I Kinda Knew That Would Happen–AND–Here’s How

Sometimes, the surreal happens. Sometimes, when it happens, you have to keep it quiet to respect someone’s privacy until the event is over.

This is one of those times.

Earlier this week, I received an email from a scout from the Texas Rangers. He had viewed my Youtube Channel and liked what he saw. He wanted to know if I had additional video on three other minor league players as well.

I was lucky enough to get to meet him this week and was blown away when he introduced me to another scout (this one from the Braves) with the introduction, “If you ever need video on these guys, you have to look at her Youtube channel.” I was so flattered. Baseball Ross and I have worked really hard to build up our library of video of the young guys and to know it was appreciated on a “professional” level was rather cool.

So when I heard that the Rangers were going to get Hamels, I was floored. For once, I was on the “inside” looking out, not the other way around…and the view was amazing.

Updating Website

I’ve been working hard to update my website.

You can check it out HERE

Baseball Betsy Profiled as a “Superfan”

This week I was featured in the Philly Daily News as the Superfan of the week! I’m posting a copy of the article so that those of you who are out of the circulation area can see it since it only appeared in the print edition.