Sports

Comms’ Catcher Canham Is A Keeper

 25 July 2006


 

 
     In a few days there will be a new name listed among the league’s leading hitters. Once he’s gotten enough at-bats to qualify, Falmouth catcher Mitch Canham will be one of the first names that you read when browsing through the list.

     If he were on there today, he’d be leading the Cape Cod Baseball League in hitting. Entering this evening’s game at Harwich, Canham has simply owned Cape League pitching, hitting at a .375 clip since arriving from Oregon a few weeks back. To qualify a hitter needs 75 plate appearances, and so far Canham has been to the dish 59 times, so it’s just a matter of time before he catches up and makes the list.

     His successes in the Cape League have not caught the backstop by surprise at all. The unassuming member of the 2006 College World Series champions—a team on which he served as one of the co-captains—thought that he’d continue to hit once he got here, partly because the pressure of playing in the Cape League is far less than what he experienced a few weeks back at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.

     “I just keep thinking about the same stuff. After being through the World Series, and all the great pitching we’ve seen, it’s easier now, it’s more relaxed. We’ve won a national championship now. Playing in front of 26,000 people, and on national television, it’s like practice used to be. It’s relaxed, and just reacting,” he explained.

     “I’m having a real good time. Everybody on the team is a real good guy, it’s one of the more fun teams that I’ve played on, and all of the other teams have real nice guys on it. I like the players, and I like being over on the East Coast. I’ve been wanting to come out here for forever.”

     The World Series was an experience that Canham will never forget. He played an integral role in helping his team rally from losing the first game of the double-elimination tournament to coming all the way back to win the CWS. In the championship series the Beavers lost the first game, but rallied to win the next two in exciting fashion, and in the process brought home only the second national championship, in any sport, for Oregon State.

     “That whole experience showed everybody what we already knew about our character and what kind of players our team had. It started in the fall with everyone showing up at the field working hard and if you have a bad practice, you come back the next day and play hard. I’ve never seen a team that came out and worked hard the way our team did at Oregon State,” Canham said. “It was intense. Everything started clicking and the intensity level went through the roof; it was crazy.”

     The reaction to the title has been outstanding, the catcher relayed. Life in Corvalis has changed since the national title. “From the day we beat Stanford until, well it’s still going on right now, it’s been a crazy ride. Sitting down to eat for lunch and dinner and having everyone in the restaurant come up and congratulate you, having little kids ask for your autograph, it’s been unreal,” he said.

     Of course the final game of the national championship series was decided in thrilling fashion, with the Beavers scoring the winning run in the eighth inning, thanks to a throwing error by North Carolina’s Bryan Steed. Canham said he felt no remorse for the Tar Heel, but also said that no one player or play wins or loses a game.

     “In the first game (against Carolina) I had a passed ball that let in the lead run, so I don’t feel any pity. There’s a lot of opportunities in the first game, where we could have scored more runs. I never attribute a game to one play. A passed ball is not the game. A ground ball that is thrown away is not the game. There’s a lot of other stuff that can happen throughout the game that can totally turn things around. I’ll never look back on any one game and think if I had just made one play, it would have been different.”

     With one ring already taken care of in 2006, Canham certainly would like to see himself, OSU, and Falmouth teammates Ed Kunz and Joe Paterson earn another title here on Cape Cod. “We were talking about that the other day. It doesn’t happen all the time, and it’s great to be able to call yourself a champion.”


 


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