The Victoria HarbourCats and Nanaimo NightOwls, their fellow Canadian teams, the Kamloops NorthPaws, Kelowna Falcons and Edmonton Riverhawks, along with the other 10 teams in the West Coast League (WCL), will now be spending a lot of time together in The Dugout.
No, this is not some huge rule change, or cost savings measure that the WCL is implementing, but rather, TheDugout.ca is a new and free, go-to website and social media news network to track grassroots and amateur baseball in Canada.
The site will provide information on all levels of the game, all amateur, from the very start of play in the game, to the elite summer collegiate leagues, including the West Coast League.
Led by talented feature writers, who love the game and telling the great stories around it, to contributed information from youth levels, TheDugout.ca will be Canada’s place to go for the latest important bulletins, for results from games and tournaments, and to see discussion of the key topics about this great game — which will emerge from the pandemic, stronger than ever.
TheDugout.ca is a free site, for content, to submit content, to share content. It’s a place for everyone, anyone, to tell their stories, to celebrate the kids and amateurs who literally play for the love of the game.
The site will be configured so as to draw information and content directly from participating organizations’ web feeds automatically, as well as to be able to accept direct contributions from individuals and authors.
For example, if you are a team with your own blog, website, etc. and simply don’t have the time to submit stories to multiple outlets, you can use The Dugout’s Wire Service to register your current website, so you only need to keep doing what you’re doing, and The Dugout can take care of the rest.
Individuals can also sign up as authors, submit stories and after a quick vetting by The Dugout editorial staff, have those articles posted under the appropriate category on the web site.
The categories of baseball related information on The Dugout will evolve over time, but the focus will be on amateur baseball in Canada.
Some of the initial categories on the site include the various Provincial baseball organizations, Baseball Canada, Canadian college baseball organizations, Summer Collegiate baseball leagues, elite high school baseball and of course local, grassroots baseball organizations.
That is not to say that TheDugout.ca will exclude professional baseball coverage from the mix. Certainly if there is a feature story about a Canadian player who signs with a pro team, or a Canadian with a strong linkage to some other aspect of professional baseball, it will be included, but the day-to-day coverage of MLB and MiLb will be left to other sites that already do that very well.
The grassroots of baseball in Canada is strong, and TheDugout.ca is new in place, and ready to grow, so we can all further develop the greatest game on earth.