Shane Zimmer is hoping to get an early start on his education over the next month.
The 18-year-old outfielder has returned to his hometown of St. Albert from the Vauxhall Baseball Academy in southern Alberta where he got an education in baseball and simply growing as a person. Now the young man who hopes to become a teacher is hoping to pass along some of what he’s learned to the other players on the midget AAA St. Albert Cardinals’ squad.
“I know we have a young team this year, so I’ll just teach them the little things that Vauxhall taught me that made me a better player and person,” he said.
Zimmer finished high school last week in Vauxhall and is now hoping to provide a spark to his hometown team along with his teammate in Vauxhall, Taylor Simmonds, who also hails from St. Albert.
At the elite baseball academy, while improving as a player, the pair got a great deal of exposure, playing in tournaments in Kamloops, B.C. and Las Vegas, Nev., where Major League Baseball and NCAA scouts were in attendance.
In the spring, Vauxhall coach Les MacTavish contacted Mike McRae, the coach of Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., who came to Alberta to check out Zimmer at a practice and a game and offered him a spot on his team. It’s quite the accomplishment, considering Canisius College is in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Division I of the NCAA, which is the highest level of college baseball in the United States and where many players are drafted to the major leagues every year.
“In high school, I was all swamped with diplomas, but now that those are done, it’s starting to sink in that I’m going to play at the highest level of college baseball that you can,” Zimmer said. “Just to hear from the experiences from other people, saying that there’s five, six or 10 thousand people in the stands just to watch college baseball, I don’t know. I just can’t comprehend that.”
Zimmer said he was helped by the high-quality coaches at Vauxhall and being assisted by the team’s strength and conditioning coach, as well as simply getting more experience, but moving away from his parents also spurred his maturity.
“Learning to do little things like clean out the dishwasher because you’re living with a new family, bringing dishes back up, clean your room, make sure your bed’s made, just little things that I didn’t really do when I was here at home and just took for granted that Mom and Dad did them,” he said.
“Out on my own, I had to man up and do it.”
Zimmer will play in the outfield at Canisius and he’s been told the starting left-field job is his to lose. Zimmer said the team has lost several players this year to graduation.
Meanwhile, Zimmer’s teammate Simmonds is happy to be back in St. Albert with the Cardinals.
“It’s going to be good. It’ll be nice to come home and be able to play for the home team again,” he said. “It’s been a long time away from home, so it’ll be good to be back.”
Besides the offence that both players will provide, Simmonds will be a big help to St. Albert’s pitching staff. When he joined the team on Tuesday, he became the team’s only left-handed pitcher.
“Being able to add a left-handed starter into the mix is huge for any baseball team, especially when you don’t have one to begin with,” said St. Albert coach Sean Erikson.
One thing Erikson will have to be wary of is that he’ll have to get Simmonds into at least 10 games by the end of the regular season on July 25. That’s because you can’t have players playing for your team in provincials, including any players who happened to be playing down in Vauxhall, unless they played 10 games for your team. Provincials run at Legion Memorial Ball Park from July 29 to Aug. 1. Because of that, Simmonds will start as the first-baseman in some games.
In the fall, Simmonds will be suiting up for the ball club at Wayne State College in Wayne, Neb. He’ll be going with his major undeclared, but plans on taking science classes.
But for the summer, he likes the Cardinals’ chances of doing well at provincials based on what he saw from them when he and Zimmer joined the team for a tournament in Medicine Hat earlier in the season.
