The end of my basketball season has come and gone, which means a week of utter collapse, and then getting back to work.
We’ll start the process of returning to work by taking a quick look at a couple stories that have come across my desk in one way or another in the past couple week…
- Back in June, Tony Thomas (Harrisonburg 2005) was inducted into the Florida State Athletics Hall of Fame. The article included this writeup about Tony’s time at FSU:
[In 2007], He was the ACC Player of the Year, first team All-ACC and was a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, Dick Howser Trophy and Brooks Wallace Award the same season.
During his career, Thomas became the first Seminole to register 30 doubles, 100 hits and 30 stolen bases in a single season. He finished that junior campaign with 33 doubles, which tied for the second most in a single-season at FSU.
Thomas led the ACC in batting average with a.430 mark while ranking first in six other offensive categories as junior. He also finished among the Top 10 in four other categories enroute to earning consensus All-America honors.
Thomas’ 14 career triples are still the fourth most in school history.
Tony was drafted by the Cubs in the third round in 2007, spent 9 years in the minors in affiliated baseball, and now two years in Independent ball. Tony appears in the all-time minor league record book in the categories of doubles (tied for 13th), triples (3rd), and stolen bases (18th).
While Tony fell just a little bit short of the major leagues (he played in 164 Triple-A games), he has made a career for himself while playing baseball, which is much more than most of us can claim.
- ATVL friend Taylor Cockerille has been named the Assistant General Manager of the Burlington Royals of the Appalachian League! Taylor, who is from Strasburg, has worked in pro baseball at a couple other spots before this one- namely, Potomac,
Frederick, Lake Erie, and even the (gulp) Washington Redskins. And, of course, helped the Strasburg Express!
Taylor has also done what probably seemed like an internship with ATVL; a few years ago (when she was still a college student, I believe) she helped me with the statistics for park factors for a past Valley League season. Maybe 2012? She very cheerfully saved me dozens of hours of work.
Congratulations, Taylor!
- Thanks to Turk broadcaster Dave Norman, we have our first information about those minor league free agents. Clint Robinson (Harrisonburg 2005-06) has retired, and has already joined the Miami Marlins as a scout.
Clint has had an illustrious minor league career- he’s on the all-time minors record book list for runs (12th), hits (7th), doubles (4th), home runs (3rd), RBIs (5th), and walks (13th). He has played in 1,053 minor league games since he was drafted in 2007, and appeared in 243 major league games as well.
- The Express are also doing something fun in the offseason- reports uploaded to youtube! Kyle Gutshall, the broadcaster extraordinaire, posted the first one on November 18th. Good stuff!
All Things Valley League 