Stephen Roberts
The West Coast Wire
Greg Whelan has been a big influence in helping minor league baseball grow in Pasadena during the past several years.
Promoting baseball in Pasadena has very much been a family endeavour for the Whelan family.
Whelan’s father, Paul, started Pasadena’s minor baseball program in 1991. He remained president until 2003.
Whelan was about four or five years old, still only playing T-Ball at the time.
But he eventually followed the same path as his father and his older siblings.
“I was always up to the field even though my group wasn’t playing,” Whelan recalled. “I had two older brothers who were playing, and I’d be up watching them or being the bat boy for their teams.”
As his brothers got older, they started coaching and Whelan was around helping them coach and playing in his own division.
When he was 16, he started coaching minor league baseball. He did that for about four or five years before moving away. But Whelan decided to get involved with the program again after returning home.
He says he wanted to help grow the league, give kids the opportunity to get outside more and participate in outdoor activities and sports.
“When I was younger, it seemed like kids were outside a lot more,” he told The West Coast Wire. “It was easier to get kids outside to participate in organized sports. I’ve noticed a lot of kids, when I moved back, needed some kind of motivation to get outside to play sports.”
He’s been helping run the program for the last five or six years now, he says.
Since returning, he’s been involved in coaching all minor levels, from T-Ball to Under-18.
He also started a spring league for the youth.
“My idea is, as long as you get the kids out having fun, no matter what sport or what activity it is, they’ll enjoy and as long as they’re moving around and being social with friends and teammates,” said Whelan. “It doesn’t matter what skill level they are as long as they have a smile on their face and want to play baseball.”
During the past few years, this approach to outdoor athletics has proven successful.
Pasadena’s minor baseball program has seen its membership grow from 80 youths to more than 150.
He attributes that success, in part, to an increasing number of girls who are playing baseball in the province. He says interest in the sport increased amongst girls in the province after a girls team travelled to Cuba for a competition. Before, the girls had to play in the boys’ division but now they have enough players for their own divisions in Pasadena.
Whelan says it’s been great teaching the girls and he hopes the sport continues to grow with them.
More boys have also become interested in the sport in the past few years as the program has also been able to attract players from different places, with a big influx from Deer Lake this past year, Whelan says.
The Pasadena teams now regularly play against squads from Corner Brook and Stephenville and travel across the island for tournaments.
Whelan takes pride in being able to continue and grow something his father started 30 years ago.
Important lessons
Whelan is teaching the youth about their play on the field and imparting life lessons off the field.
Whelan also plays baseball for the Aces in the Corner Brook Senior Baseball League.
He believes he’s able to take what he’s learned from his coach Rob Myrden and apply it to teaching the kids.
“I started to use that to bring to Pasadena – teaching about hitting mechanics, pitching mechanics and fielding mechanics,” he said.
As for imparting life lessons, Whelan, who is also a school teacher, stresses good sportsmanship, showing support for one another and not putting each other down, as well as be respectful and not trash talking opponents.
“One of my biggest things is just making sure they’re having fun on the field, keeping active and keeping moving,” he added.
Whelan says baseball provides the youth a great opportunity to be social and make friends.
He also believes one of the great things about baseball is that it teaches you how to fail.
“Not everyone is going to be perfect,” he said. “If you can learn your lesson from that failure and turn it into a positive, that’s a huge life lesson.”
