[ BASEBALL ]
Players from Hawaii
keep busy
In the offseason Hawaii's professional baseball players work out on their own while working non-baseball-related jobs, go to instructional league or play winter ball in Arizona, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Mexico or the Dominican Republic.
Occasionally a player shows up in the daily transactions list or decides to retire.
Darren Blakely's contract was sold to the Chicago White Sox on Oct. 27 by the Brockton Rox, champions of the independent Northeast League.
The former Hawaii outfielder, released by the San Diego Padres last spring, started the season with New Jersey Jackals, but was traded to Brockton in August and helped the Rox win the league title.
Blakely led the Northeast League in extra base hits with 49. For the season, he hit .304 with 15 home runs and 66 runs batted in. He tied for the league lead in doubles with 29 and had five triples.
He then played for Team USA, which finished fifth with a 7-2 record in the IBAF Baseball World Cup at Havana, Cuba.
Justin Wayne leaves for Puerto Rico after Thanksgiving to pitch for a month. The right-hander delayed starting winter ball because of the number of innings he threw last summer and to have laser eye surgery.
"I'm loving the fact I can fall asleep seeing things and wake up and see my alarm clock," said Wayne, the former Punahou and Stanford ace who is working out in Florida.
"Going to Puerto Rico will allow me to work with Dean Treanor, my Albuquerque manager last summer, and a great pitching coach. I'll be able to play baseball and get past last year that wasn't very good."
Dane Sardinha (Scottsdale Scorpions), Rodney Choy Foo (Mesa Desert Dogs) and Chad Santos (Peoria Javelinas) spent six weeks refining their skills in the Arizona Fall League, which is for players who big-league teams consider prospects.
With one game left in the season, Sardinha (Kamehameha and Pepperdine) is hitting .346 with seven doubles and three home runs to lead the Scorpions with a .654 slugging percentage. Choy Foo, a Kailua grad, has a .243 batting average and Santos, who prepped at Saint Louis, is hitting .219.
Mark Johnson, a former Hawaii Rainbow and a free agent, is playing for Caracas Leones in the Venezuelan Winter League. The right-hander is 1-2 with a 2.82 earned run average through Wednesday's games.
Benny Agbayani (Saint Louis and Hawaii Pacific) was hitting .282 for the Los Mochis Sugarcane Growers in the Mexican Pacific League before cutting his season short for a tryout with Japan's Chiba Lotte Marines of the Pacific League. Agbayani signed a $460,000 contract with the Japanese team managed by former New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine.
Jay Spurgeon has retired and is working on his degree in sociology at Fresno State.
The former Hawaii Rainbow right-hander will graduate next December. He then plans to enter a one-year program that leads to a California credential in physical education so he can pursue a teaching career.
Spurgeon asked for his release when the Baltimore Orioles wanted to ship him to their Class AA team at Bowie, Md., during spring training.
"I didn't see any future with Baltimore. I had a couple of offers, but the major leagues weren't in the future," the 26-year-old Spurgeon said. "I didn't want to still be playing in the minor leagues when I was 32, so I decided to finish school."
Selected in the eighth round of the 1997 First-Year Player Draft after his junior season at UH, Spurgeon spent six years in the Baltimore organization. He appeared in seven games for the Orioles at the end of the 2000 season compiling a 1-1 record.
