![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/IMG_1199.jpg\" "\\"IMG_1199\\"")
<\/a>Earlier this month, the Montreal Canadiens\u2019 practice facility in Brossard was taken over by baseball pros and aspiring major-leaguers. Around 160 kids lined the halls of the Bell Sports Complex to learn tips from New York Yankees catcher Russell Martin, who played high-school baseball growing up in Montreal.<\/p>\n
The event was part of a camp hosted by Baseball Empire, a series of baseball camps directed at every type of player, which intends to aid players aged 7 to 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the beginning of something big that may come in the near future,\u201d says Josu\u00e9 Peley, one of the camp\u2019s instructors, who also plays for High-A Salem, the farm team for Major League Baseball\u2019s Boston Red Sox.<\/p>\n
The event, founded by Ivan Naccarata, formerly of the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball League\u2019s Quebec Capitals, is meant to help boost baseball\u2019s popularity in Montreal since the Expos\u2019 departure.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball Empire is there to make sure the sport doesn\u2019t die,\u201d says Naccarata. He came up with the idea for doing a camp while wondering what to do with his passion for coaching during a slow off-season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever you\u2019re playing professional baseball, there\u2019s a period when you\u2019re not playing, and sometimes you have to find jobs,\u201d says Naccarata. \u201cDuring the off-season, I\u2019ll be able to create work for these guys right here,\u201d he says, referring to Quebec stars Jonathan Malo and Jean-Luc Blaqui\u00e8re of the New York Mets affiliate AA Binghamton, as well as Peley and other pros.<\/p>\n
Naccarata happens to be good friends with ex-Concordia Stinger baseball player Vincent White; he called him up while planning the camp with Martin\u0143the de facto star of the camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just thought it would be a fun thing to do, to use a bit of my popularity, get some kids together, and teach them some of my knowledge,\u201d says Martin.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, at least, they got the spark they were looking for, as the camp sold out all of its spots. This is something that White, now communications manager of Baseball Empire, is ecstatic about.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a huge turnout and we\u2019re very happy about it,\u201d says White, who explained that the whole point of this camp is to give back to baseball\u2019s youth in Quebec.<\/p>\n
One of the campers, Anthony Alluisi, 14, hopes to bolster his baseball skills after attending the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that I\u2019m going to perform and learn something from Martin. He\u2019s one of my favorite players,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Taking on this camp is something that also pleased his mother, Nancy Crnich. \u201cI think this is a good idea, to apply to this camp, because taking on sports is a good way to stay active,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the camp\u2019s success, White hopes more events of its kind will follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole idea is to give a series of camps. We hope to have some in the summertime, and definitely some in the fall and the winter of next year,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MONTREAL (CUP) – On September 29, 2004, the Montreal Expos lost 9-1 at home to the Florida Marlins. It\u2019s been seven years and three months since the last pro baseball game was played in Montreal, but the sport received a shot in the arm recently, thanks to some homegrown talent. Earlier this month, the Montreal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-january-25-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2008,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions\/2008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}