Leitch Makes Most Of First JNT Appearance
April 2, 2019
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Leitch Makes Most Of First JNT Appearance
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Ryan Leitch C / 1B / Sinclair, ON / 2019Rankings StateRank: 11 / POS: 2
One of the highest honours a high school baseball player in Canada can receive comes in the middle of March each year when the Junior National Team takes on not only pro teams, but Canada’s only MLB team, the Toronto Blue Jays. This accomplishment feels even sweeter for the players who grew up around Toronto living out a dream playing against their hometown team. Ryan Leitch, a catcher on the Toronto Mets, in his final year of eligibility to play with the team, got the call from Greg Hamilton and had the opportunity of a lifetime to head down to Florida with Team Canada and take on minor leaguers from the Rays, Orioles, Astros, Phillies, Tigers and lastly, the Jays at Dunedin Stadium. “To begin with, it was really exciting to just first get the call from Greg. At first, it’s exciting and then the nerves kind of kick in but it kind of helped having a couple of my teammates like Keegan Pulford-Thorpe, Noah Hull, Noel McGary-Doyle and Mitch Bratt to already be on the team so they kind of settled me down and just let me play my game of baseball,” said Leitch, a Marshall University commit.
Not only did Leitch have some teammates from back home to turn to but also players he’s become familiar with over the years from his class of 2019. He says it was cool to finally play with guys like Owen Diodati and Eric Martin as well as Jaden and Dasan Brown all of whom he has competed against on several occasions. |