Any news on if The Score will still show the games?

If they do, it could really help the league.

Why go to the West Coast? Is it because of the Blue Jays? I would have assumed that the bigger markets is in the East?

I think the Ontario market is dominated by the Blue Jays, with the Inter-County League and the AAA club in Ottawa filling in the margins. This league doesn't sound like it'll be much stronger than the ICL (if they are using mostly Canadian players). B.C. and Alberta is probably a better market for baseball than Quebec/Maritimes.

This idea has exponentially more potential than the CBL and with the minimum number of Canadian talent, the home grown talent should drive better ticket sales since most elite Canadian baseball talent is from out west (remember most of the players in the CBL were from the States or Central/South America).

Out west there's also gotta be more baseball infrastructure or it can't be any worse than what's in the east since the Montreal CBL team didn't have a stadium in Montreal (doesn't that defeat the purpose of a Montreal team??).

This is also better than the east because of the weather factors. Teams can get on to the diamonds closer to Feburary/March rather than March/April.

In the end, this is either going to turn into another disasterous attempt into the Canadian minor league market or it'll give 18-20 year old Canadian boys a second chance at impressing a scout. Lets hope for the latter but I'm not terribly optimistic.

Just a quick question (as someone who has never seen an Intercounty Game).

How does the level of play between the Inter-County League and the Canadian Baseball League compare? I know that Inter-County is non-professional, but everything I read about it states that the quality of play is quite good!

The fact that the Inter-County league is well-organized and well-run must result, at least in part, in a competitive brand of baseball.

Please forgive my lack of knowledge on this matter, but I am quite interested.

Many of the IC's star players jumped ship to the CBL this past year (mostly to the Ontario teams), but when you look at their CBL numbers, they mostly weren't anything to write home about.

For example, Jeff Pietraszko of Kitchener was the best hitter in the IC in 2002, but was relatively pedestrian (.294 EqA) in the CBL. Luke Baker had the same thing; a very fine hitter in the IC (.422 average) and MVP of the league in 2002, but had an EqA of just .218 in the CBL. Raul Borjas was an awesome hitter in the IC in 2002 for Brantford, but had an EqA of just .206 for Niagara in the CBL in 2003.

Rich Butler played well for Niagara, though, with a .306 EqA... not that far off what he'd done in the IC in 2002. Same as Jeremy Walker, who had a .276 EqA in Niagara... not great, but not ridiculously bad compared to his terrific season in the IC for Hamilton in 2002.

The IC is probably equivalent to two rungs below what the CBL put on. IC baseball is great, it's nicely run... but the level of talent isn't there because it relies on homegrown players who live in the area, as opposed to the mostly imported talent that headlined the CBL.

Thank you, Craig B--your explanation was exactly what I was looking for!