Pitcher perfect

PROSPECTIVE baseballers will be under the gun in Berwick this Saturday.
The Berwick City Cougars are hosting a ‘Golden Arm’ day that will see locals test their pitching skills against a radar gun.
Cougars’ junior co-ordinator Richard Silva, whose son Adam is one of the state’s brightest baseball talents, hopes the event will unearth some new players for the club.
“We’re appealing to all kids to come down and basically put their arm against a pitching machine,” he said.
“The kid will come up, have a throw against the machine and we’ve got a certificate that will have his name and the speed he’s thrown.
“We’ve also then got a record of these kids who’ve gone through and that gives us a database of kids who are at least half-interested in baseball.”
Australian Baseball Federation officials developed the Golden Arm concept this year to attract more athletes to the sport.
Silva has the same hope, but said the aim was also just to make children more active.
“If we see any child with any sort of potential we’ll be talking to him and his parents – and not necessarily just for baseball,” he said.
“We just want to make sure all these kids are playing sport because a lot of talent gets wasted in front of computers these days.”
Berwick City players and officials will be in attendance and will take participants through the correct warm-up procedures before their throw.
There is no age restriction on who can have a throwing attempt, but Silva said club officials were keen to attract juniors.
ABF officials even have dreams that the concept could lead to the discovery of the next Peter Moylan, Grant Balfour or Ryan Roland-Smith – all of who are pitching in the Major Leagues.
The Cougars’ Golden Arm day is scheduled to run from 10am to noon on Saturday, but Silva said he was “happy to stay there all afternoon” if the interest was there.
Meanwhile, Berwick City’s sister club the Berwick Dodgers lost their grand finals in Cheltenham on Sunday.
Cheltenham defeated the Dodgers’ A1 team 3-2, while Berwick was also on the wrong side of a 7-2 result to Cheltenham in the A2 decider.