R-C Sports Notebook: Aces a fine experience

The Reno Aces Triple-A baseball team has been a bit of a condrum for the papers within the Sierra Nevada Media Group. The club presents professional baseball within 40 to 60 miles of each of our seven newspapers, but it still, obviously, plays well out of our direct coverage area.

So since we first learned that the team would be moving to Reno, the big question has been what do we do in terms of coverage?

Obviously, given the community-centric nature of our paper, we don't want something occuring an hour's drive away to trump anything going on in our backyard - so we've basically done nothing during these early months of the season while the high school sports were still going.

At the same time, though, we didn't want to just ignore it because at the end of the day, it's still professional baseball being played less than an hour away.

So basically, our group set up a coverage rotation for the summer so that reporters at each of our seven papers would take turns covering the Aces' home stands until high school sports kick up again in the fall.

My plan is to post the majority of those stories online after the games are over (so feel free to check for them there). Since we only print the paper three times a week, and all of our deadlines are before most of the games actually start, I'll probably only be running standings, box scores and possibly a roundup of how the team is doing on the scoreboard page. I may do team statistics as well, depending on space and availabilty, but we'll see what the response is.

All that being said, my first game was Thursday evening and I have to say the everything about the experience was positive. The club's ownership and management have gone to great pains, and spent a lot of money, toward providing a great baseball atmosphere.

The ballpark is large enough for Triple-A baseball but laid out so that even the "nose-bleed" seats are right on top of the action.

It's affordable entertainment and overall very enjoyable. From what I've heard, most people who haven't been yet are worried about where to park. I paid $5 for my spot at one of the casino garages and had less than a five-minute walk to the park. I had a much longer hike from the BART station to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum two years ago when we went to see the A's (not to mention the drive to the Bay area).

Overall, I recommend it highly. It's good baseball (all of these guys are just a step away from the majors - where you'll have to pay much more to see them) in a great setting.

It's tough to tell, just one week removed, what the MLB draft really means. And that goes for everyone involved - the front offices, the players, the fans - you get the idea.

Boatloads of 18- to 24-year-old kids are going to be signing contracts for boatloads of money over the next few weeks. Odds are only a handful of them will ever set foot on a major league diamond.

It's hit and miss, at best. But former Douglas pitcher Chris Balcom-Miller's selection in the sixth round by the Colorado Rockies last week is still pretty big news - and not even so much because of when he was selected. I'm more impressed by who was chomping at the bit to pick him up next.

The Boston Red Sox, who had been his most-interested suitor throughout the spring, called to tell him he would've been their next pick the same round he went to Colorado.

Now, Boston has among the most meticulous scouting practices to go along with one of the best farm systems in all of baseball. They do their research and they won't invest their time (and money) in someone they don't feel has an honest shot to play some good baseball along the way.

So the fact the Balcom-Miller was on their short-list for the draft speaks volumes to the potential they see in him.

I haven't seen him pitch in over four years. He was the No. 3 starter for the Tigers as a sophomore in 2005 and showed a lot of promise even then. His fastball has since risen into the low 90s and he's developed a number of offspeed pitches that helped his strikeouts-to-nine-innings ratio sky-rocket for West Valley college this season.

Looking at pictures he sent over from this season, he's filled out what was a lanky frame in high school to the point where he looks like a bonafide, prototypical front-line starter.

He's got the size, he has the velocity and he has the array of pitches that all scouts look for. It'll be fun to see what he ends up doing. He could end up being a great one when it's all said and done. We'll just have to wait to see how it plays out.