Orloski adjusting to new life in Canada

It's been said that there's nothing more American than a baseball game on the Fourth of July.

That is, unless your name is Joe Orloski and you play for the Medicine Hat Blue Jays in Alberta, Canada.

Last Saturday, while most rookies celebrated Independence Day, the 1998 Green Valley High School graduate had a strange experience when his single-A Pioneer League club played in Lethbridge, Alberta.

"Both teams were from Canada, so they didn't play our national anthem," said Orloski, a right-handed pitcher selected by Toronto in the sixth round of last month's amateur draft. "It was a little bit strange."

For a 19-year-old born and raised amid the neon lights of Las Vegas, the same probably could be said of his first month in bucolic Medicine Hat, a town of about 45,000 residents.

"It's quiet and it ain't open 24 hours," Orloski said.

To make the transition easier, Orloski has been living with a local family that hosts a pair of rookies during each summer league season. When he comes home from the ballpark, he has friendly faces, along with a warm meal, waiting for him.

He also has been finding time for his hobby, fishing in a lake just 10 minutes from Medicine Hat's Athletic Park. His first time out, Orloski caught a 4-pound trout.

"The town is small, but it's beautiful here," he said.

So far, Orloski's new surroundings seem to agree with him. In three appearances, he already has his first professional victory, a solid 2.00 ERA and eight strikeouts in nine innings.

"Every time I go out there, I learn more and more about hitters," the hard-throwing 6-3, 175-pounder said.

"One through nine, these guys can hit the ball. It's not like high school, where each team had three or four guys who could really hit."

After opening the season as a reliever, Orloski has worked his way into the Blue Jays' starting rotation, albeit in a "tandem" situation with teammate Steve Murray. For now, the two pitchers are alternating starts every five games, with the non-starter coming out of the bullpen to relieve his teammate.

That's fine with Orloski, who said he's just trying to soak in everything he can learn from his coaches and the rest of the Medicine Hat pitching staff.

"We have a lot of guys on our team who are out of college, so I get a lot of feedback from the other pitchers who are more experienced," said Orloski, whose team is 2 1/2 games behind Great Falls in the Northern Division. "We have a great team chemistry, and our team is pretty tough."

As for the distance between his new home in Alberta and his family in Southern Nevada, Orloski has been working too hard in his new job to get homesick.

"Everyone misses your family when you go away," he said. "But I'm not really homesick. So far, everything's been great."

archive