{"id":10259,"date":"2015-04-01T17:41:25","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T21:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10259"},"modified":"2015-04-22T17:35:19","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:35:19","slug":"baseball-season-around-the-corner-for-aurora-jays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/baseball-season-around-the-corner-for-aurora-jays\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball season around the corner for Aurora Jays"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte<\/p>\n

Spring has sprung (sort of), and with it comes talk of baseball once again.<\/p>\n

For the North Dufferin Baseball League, the talk never really stops.<\/p>\n

The league doled out its 2014 season awards in Lisle earlier this month, with a number of Aurora Jays picking up some hardware for their dominating regular season last year.<\/p>\n

Jays coaches Rob Wilson and Michael Keon shared the Coach of the Year award for the second season in a row. The pair led the Jays to a 21-4-1 record last season, good for tops in the league while also driving in the most runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike will mostly look after the lineups and the pitching, and I\u2019ll tend to look after third-base duties,\u201d said Wilson. \u201cBetween the two of us, we share the reigns and it\u2019s worked out pretty well for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fab Dolan also earned Catcher of the Year honours in a three-way tie, while Andrew Bukovec earned All-Star MVP.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boys are really the secret,\u201d said Wilson. \u201cWe\u2019ve got enough talent that it makes it easy on Keon and I to just come up with a plan and throw them on the field and we\u2019ve got a chance to win every single week\u2026it makes it easy to be coach of the year when you\u2019ve got the right talent and the right attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Junior Jays also had a number of recognitions, as Devon Wu took the honours for best pitcher while Chris Fafalios was part of a five-way tie for most home runs in the league.<\/p>\n

Wilson said he and the team have their eye on the young up-and-coming talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a few junior players that we\u2019re taking a real keen look at. We\u2019re looking forward to welcoming a few new faces that\u2019ll be aging up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the awards presentation was the league\u2019s annual general meeting, in which it was announced that the Bolton Brewers were taking a one-year leave of absence to join the AAA Greater Toronto Baseball League. Another Creemore senior team will take their spot within the league.<\/p>\n

Wilson doesn\u2019t rule out the Jays ever moving up to the Toronto league.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re potentially on the same track as Bolton in terms of our competition level. We\u2019re a few years younger than them. I think we could hold our own in the \u2018G\u2019, but right now we\u2019re a much more competitive team in the NDBL.\u201d<\/p>\n

With snow still melting, the schedule has been set for the 2015 season, set to kick off May 2. Team workouts are already going on throughout the league, with the Jays set to start training very soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be starting in the next couple weeks,\u201d said Wilson. \u201cWe\u2019re gearing up, hopefully we can bring home some other hardware this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jays fell to the Ivy Leafs in the Challenge Cup finals last season.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring has sprung (sort of), and with it comes talk of baseball once again.<\/p>\n

For the North Dufferin Baseball League, the talk never really stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/2015-04-02-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Ft","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-08 00:20:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}