{"id":103,"date":"2011-08-12T20:40:48","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T20:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/?p=103"},"modified":"2011-08-12T20:40:48","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T20:40:48","slug":"canadian-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2011\/08\/12\/canadian-baseball\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I saw the news that <a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/HClbC\">Wayne Gretzky&#8217;s son had signed with the Chicago Cubs<\/a> my first thought was &#8220;I bet he hits left-handed and throws right-handed.&#8221;  And sure enough:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gretzky, 18, finished his senior season with a .393 batting average (42-for-107), 10 doubles, four triples, a home run and 27 RBI in 31 games for Oaks Christian in 2011. The 6-foot-4, 190-pounder recorded a .450 on-base percentage and was nine-for-10 in stolen base attempts. <strong>A left-handed hitter and right-handed fielder<\/strong>, Gretzky played first base and the outfield last season. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why did I assume this?  Because it seems like all Canadians do this.  Now, just like with almost any vast generalization, there are exceptions &#8212; Russell Martin and Jason Bay come to mind &#8212; but consider some <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2009_World_Baseball_Classic_rosters#Canada\">of the best Canadian baseballers<\/a> &#8212; Joey Votto, Matt Stairs, Pete Orr, Justin Morneau, Adam Stern, Mark Teahen, Corey Koskie &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Is there any reason for this or is it just coincidence?  Most people&#8217;s immediate reaction is that hockey has something to do with it, but I don&#8217;t see the connection.  Any theories?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I saw the news that Wayne Gretzky&#8217;s son had signed with the Chicago Cubs my first thought was &#8220;I bet he hits left-handed and throws right-handed.&#8221; And sure enough: Gretzky, 18, finished his senior season with a .393 batting &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2011\/08\/12\/canadian-baseball\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}