NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks catcher Dominic VanDoorne holds back his swing on a ball in the dirt in the first inning of the Mavericks 9-4 loss Monday at Athletic Park against the Fort McMurray Giants.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
It didn’t take long for Dominic VanDoorne to become accustomed to the Hat.
The catcher with the Medicine Hat Mavericks says he quickly fell in love with the city and organization and has shaken off any questions he had moving across the border for the summer.
“Just the whole organization, the Mavericks, everyone here has been beyond cool,” VanDoorne said. “I was a little bit nervous coming up here, just moving far away and spending my summer playing summer ball in a different country, but it’s been everything I wanted it to be plus more. The awesome people, an awesome experience, everything’s going great so far.”
The Gross Pointe Woods, Mich. product had travelled to Windsor, Ont. a couple of times but this summer in the Gas City marks his first time staying in Canada for an extended period of time. He’s becoming accustomed to the heat and extra sunlight in Canada’s sunniest city and is enjoying his first taste of the Western Canadian Baseball League.
“There’s a lot of good ballplayers through every level,” VanDoorne said. “The difference in the levels is important because you got some good DI guys, there’s some good DII, DIII guys and just good ballplayers all around. Everybody has a different journey of how they got to their school, how they got here in the summer and it’s been great to collaborate and see everybody’s success and their journeys.”
VanDoorne has found some early success in the Mavericks’ lineup, with a .302 batting average and seven RBIs while playing in 13 of Medicine Hat’s first 15 games. He drew a walk and had a hit in the 10th-inning, 7-5 win Tuesday night in Swift Current against the 57’s. He says the key to maintaining that success is keeping the same routine of hitting and he follows a message from a former coach.
“Hitting is like showering, you go a couple days without it and you stink,” VanDoorne said. “You have to keep working at it, keep working hard like I’ve been doing and hopefully I just stay on the right path.”
Maintaining his hitting stroke and getting reps both at the plate and behind it are his goals for the summer in Medicine Hat, on top of helping the Mavs get their first WCBL title since 2018. He enjoys catching because he gets to be part of every play and doesn’t have the distractions of everyone else at the game, his only focuses are his eight teammates in front of him and the batter.
“I see the field from a different perspective than everybody else, everybody’s facing me and my back’s to the crowd,” VanDoorne said. “I don’t have to be worried about what everybody’s doing behind me, the crowds of fans, coaches, anyone. I’m just focused on my team, my guys and just getting that batter out. It’s a great feeling every play.”
He enjoys ‘taking shop’ and has already started using downtime in hotel rooms to hangout with pitchers and get to know them while also talking about game plans, pitch sequences and how they can work well together as a battery.
“If you don’t love that part of the game, you can’t be a catcher, it’s easily the best part,” VanDoorne said.
He says the Mavericks group as a whole has made his job easier with how connected they are and how well they work together. VanDoorne says it’s not a room of individuals but a group all working toward that one goal.
“Every guy has something about them in their own way that just gels well with the team as a unit,” VanDoorne said. “I’ve played on so many different teams, where these 10 guys are cool, but these five are just jerks and they mess it up. But it feels like everybody in this locker room is pulling together in the right direction. It’s only a matter of time before we really take off and just start doing nothing but winning.”
The Mavericks and VanDoorne are back in action at Athletic Park tonight when they host Swift Current before the Okotoks Dawgs come to town on Friday.
Whenever the Mavericks get their next day off, VanDoorne says they’re planning on getting out on a boat and taking on the South Saskatchewan River. Being on the water is his favourite hobby as is fishing. He’s been lucky enough to almost catch a shark and still have all the fingers he needs to call pitches behind the plate.
“I was out on the water with bait in my mouth in Sebastian, Florida, I dropped the bait off and came back in about 20 yards to send the surfboard in and I’m just swimming around in the water and thought I saw a dolphin,” VanDoorne said. “I thought, ‘oh cool, it’s dolphin,’ and then very quickly I realized it was a shark. I started chasing it down the beach trying to jump for it. It took off a little bit but I almost caught it with my hands, it slipped right through my hands.
“It was a reef shark, small, about five feet long, but it’s freaky. I’m terrified of them but I just saw it and I wasn’t scared at all in the moment, it’s just a funny little situation.”
