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| Photo by houseofhouston.com |
On a cold and wintery day this
past February, I was shoveling out my driveway, cursing winter and longing for
the spring and the beginning of baseball. I had just finished cleaning out my
dad’s driveway and was starting to feel the sting in my muscles of too much exercise.
A young man was using a snow
blower to help some of my neigbours clean out their driveways and I was praying
that he would help me with mine. He stopped at the end of the drive and asked if I
needed help. I said yes, even though I was about three quarters completed. As I
waited for him to finish so I could thank him, I noticed he was wearing a
Houston Astros sweatshirt and ball cap. I began to wonder how someone in this
area could become a fan of the Astros.
When he finished, I walked over
and thanked him and asked him where he lived (I had just moved into my house
the previous autumn and was still getting to know everyone). He pointed to the
house across the street from mine and said that’s where his parents lived.
“I have to ask you,” I spoke. “How
did you become a fan of the Astros?”
He said that he wasn’t a fan, he
played for them. He had been drafted the previous June and had pitched in the
Astros minor league system for several months in 2014. Having been invited to
attend Houston’s Spring Training, he said he was looking forward to heading
down to Florida and away from the wintery weather.
It clicked in my mind who he
was, as I had been reading about him in the local newspaper. His name is Brock
Dykxhoorn and he is currently playing with the Quad City River Bandits, a Class
A team in the Midwest League.
Now, before I go on, I have to
mention that I don’t get star struck. I worked in a four-diamond hotel in
Toronto for more than eleven years and during that time we had the New York
Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Angels stay with us
every time they were in town to play the Blue Jays. I pretty much spoke with
every superstar those teams had between 2003 and 2013, including Derek Jeter,
David Ortiz, Ichiro and Mike Trout. I’m not trying to name drop, I’m just
stating facts.
However, the fact that a
professional ballplayer is a neighbour of mine is actually quite cool.
I’ve been following his season
since that moment in the snow and the rest of this story will be a brief
history of his career and a review of the River Bandits’ season so far.
Brock Dykxhoorn was born in
Goderich, Ontario. He is twenty-one years old, stands six feet eight inches
tall and weighs 250 pounds. He’s a right-handed pitcher and was drafted in the
sixth round of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft (166 pick overall) out of
Central Arizona College in 2014.
After he signed with the Astros,
he pitched for the Astros farm team in Greenville, Tennessee, which plays in
the Appalachian League, a Rookie-level minor league. Brock pitched in twelve
games, starting four, and finished with a 3-3 win/loss record, and a 4.31
Earned Run Average (ERA). He struck out 36 batters in 31 1/3 innings pitched.
For the 2015 season, the Astros
assigned Brock to the Quad City River Bandits. Heading into Tuesday night’s
action, he had pitched in nineteen games, starting fifteen, has a 7-4 win/loss
record and a 3.42 ERA. He has struck out 124 batters in 123 1/3 innings. He
last pitched on Sunday and picked up the win after giving up two earned runs in five
and a third innings while striking out three in a 6-2 River Bandits victory
over the Lake County Captains.
In July, he pitched for Canada’s
gold-medal winning baseball team at the Pan-Am Games, held in Toronto. He saw
action in two games, allowing only one run in this two innings pitched.
Now for those of you wondering where
the Quad Cities River Bandits play, here you go. They play in Davenport, Iowa,
which is one of four counties known as the Quad Cities (the others are
Bettendorf, Iowa, Rock Island, Illinois and Moline Illinois). They play in
Modern Woodmen Park, which has beautiful scenery around it, including the
Centennial Bridge that can be seen behind the first base stands and extends far past right field. The bridge crosses the Mississippi River.
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| Photo by bostonsportscounsel.com |
The River Bandits have had a
successful season thus far in 2015. The Midwest League divides its season into
two halves, with two division winners and two wild cards for each half making the
playoffs. Quad Cities finished the first half in first place in the Western
Division with a record of 45 wins and 23 loses, five games ahead of the Cedar
Rapids Kernels. In the second half, the Bandits are in third place, six games
behind division leaders Kane County Cougars but already have their playoffs
spot locked up.
There are three weeks left in
the regular season before the playoffs being on September 9. The Bandits will
play Cedar Rapids in the first round, a best-of-three series.
Top Of The Third will keep you
updated on the progress of the River Bandits in the playoffs, and will give
more updates on Brock Dykxhoorn’s first full season in professional baseball as
the season winds down.
For more information on the Quad
Cities club, check out their website.
Follow us on Twitter at @topofthethird
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