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Wine Country Baseball: Desirable destination
Wine Country Baseball is a fledgling league that hopes to go from a place to play to a training ground for big-league prospects.
KENT PORTER / The Press DemocratPublished: Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 2:54 p.m.
SONOMA — Rob Tosti stood there along the third-base line Wednesday night at Arnold Field, representing so much of what Wine Country Baseball is now but also, if everything goes to plan, so much of what it will not be.
“I hope in a year or two I'm not good enough to be in this league,” Tosti said.
Tosti has no illusions. He is not thinking a major-league team will be sending a scout any day now to sign a 44-year old technology specialist who hadn't played organized baseball since he was 18.
Yes, he may be the starting catcher for the Healdsburg Owls, doesn't look like he needs a cane and knows his way around home plate, “but I padded my resume so I could get a tryout with the team,” said Tosti, who moved to Santa Rosa last year from Orange County. “I was scared to death coming out for the team. I was really terrified.”
That Tosti made the Owls is the good news for him but not the best news for the league. That anyone could expect anything differently, however, is watching too much daytime television. Wine Country Baseball is in its first year and as anyone who has run a start-up company will tell you, the first year is for laying the foundation, not for erecting monuments to last in perpetuity.
The San Francisco Giants, for example, like the idea of Wine Country Baseball becoming a top-flight developmental league for the big leagues. The Giants like the idea enough that they offered the league the use of AT&T Park in October for its championship series between winners of the North and South divisions.
Players like the idea enough that there's a waiting list of 225 of them to enter the league, many of them with NCAA Division I experience or time in the low minors.
Sonoma County communities like the idea enough that after the first month of play, $7,000 has been raised thus far through ticket sales, to be funneled into local charities.
Businessmen like it enough that two of them — yet unnamed — have begun discussions with league founder Howard Leonhardt about purchasing one of the 12 franchises.
Leonhardt's early estimate of a buy-in is $400,000.
MLB scouts like the idea enough that six of them have contacted Leonhardt, proposing that eventually the league should find a hotel in Sonoma County centrally located to games. MLB scouts go out of their way not to go out of their way. They travel so much, and if they can see prospects without having to change rooms every night, Wine Country Baseball becomes a more desirable destination.
Desirable destination, that's the buzzword of the day. It's at the core of Wine Country Baseball's fledgling existence. Wednesday night's game at Arnold Field between the Sonoma Crushers and the Healdsburg Owls offered hints of that.
No Hanley Ramirez failed to run out a groundball. No Carlos Zambrano attacked a teammate in a dugout. For those tired of the professional athlete showboating, whining or taking one hour to make a 30-second announcement, the game was a welcome relief from arrogance and all its tributaries.
Wine Country Baseball is baseball without attitude. That's not an insignificant statement.
As the talent level rises, that attitude won't change. An old common-sense axiom will be in place to govern behavior: A player wanting to attract a big-league team will turn all of them off with petulance. Those on the rise, typically, are perfect citizens, even if it's only for self-preservation.
The hundred or so fans who were in the stands for Wednesday's game appreciated that all the players knew a fastball from a plate of spaghetti, knew their way around the bases and, in general, busted hump to make plays. That went and will go a long way this first season into forgiveness for being less than Cooperstown-ready.
“I'd say (the talent-level) is more like a high school game,” said Josh Bahagiar, 29, a Sonoma outfielder and a Cardinal Newman and SRJC graduate who spent three years in ClassA in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization.
The talent level didn't discourage Bahagiar. He is with the Crushers because long ago the game crawled under his skin and never left.
“Try hitting a 95 mile-an-hour fastball,” Bahagiar said. “It's that competitive spirit. When that's all you did for 11 years of your life, it's hard to walk away.”
Yes, even if it's a 95 mph fastball in a Wine Country Baseball game, Bahagiar admitted, he can't get that kind of buzz where he works, at Home Depot.
It's hard to walk away when the guys want to get together and join the Crushers.
Jeremy Tayson, a 23-year old sophomore at SRJC, jumped at the chance to play with his buddies from his neighborhood.
“We have been playing Wiffle Ball together since we were kids,” said Tayson, a pitcher-outfielder. “It's been a great experience.”
Tayson knows, they all know, that one day if things fall in place, Wine Country Baseball will not have many Wiffle Ball buddies in it. It'll be the Cape Cod League of the West Coast. It'll be a desired destination for talent and a desired destination for those who want to see it because it's in wine country.
When NASCAR first started to think of then-Sears Point as a regular track on its schedule, it remained patient even though Sears Point then had all the ambience of a chicken coop.
Why? Northern California is one of the sweetest spots on God's green earth. People want to come here.
Wine Country Baseball has that going for it and the promise that one day all the grounders will be fielded, all the fly balls will be caught and someone in the stands will tell the guy next to him: Watch that third baseman, he's going to the big leagues.
In the meantime, Wine Country Baseball builds its foundation one slab of concrete at a time, with the guys pouring the slab today out there grinning like carefree kids on summer vacation.
“This makes me feel like I'm 18-years old again,” Rob Tosti said.
All things considered and remembered, there are a lot worse things than can happen on a baseball field.
For more on North Bay sports, go to Bob Padecky's blog at padecky.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.
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