It's an annual event that brings baseball fans flocking to St. Marys, and this year's Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductions were no different. Five inductees made the cut to receive the highest recognition a Canadian in baseball can receive, including two legends from Columbia and Puerto Rico.
A larger than usual class of five members were inducted this year including acclaimed sports writer Bob Elliot, Toronto Blue Jays legend Carlos Delgado, longtime Montreal Expos manager Felipe Alou, and Canadian-born players Corey Koskie and Matt Stairs.
Delgado is best known for playing in Toronto for nearly decade and is widely regarded as the greatest slugger to ever call Rogers Centre home. He spoke with reporters at St. Mary's town hall about some of the pressures of being in the big leagues.
“If you look from the outside, and if you look at it with your head not with your heart, the business is very competitive, but at the end of the day at 7:05 you go out and play the game. You prepare yourself and you understood that any other extra pressure you put on yourself wasn't going to help.”
Delgado had almost five-hundred career home runs and continues to hold a hefty number of franchise records with the Jays after spending 12 years in the Blue Jays organization.
At the press conference, Delgado spoke about the determination it takes to play your way up from triple-a. “I think the most important thing is kind of like, stay positive and trust yourself. Its a learning process, you never stop learning. I guess baseball is like any other job you continue to learn, people make adjustments, you make adjustments. If you can make the adjustment quicker than the opposition you're going to be better off and there's times you do need a little bit more seasoning but you can't get down on yourself.”
