Chesapeake gets winter visit from boys of summer

CHESAPEAKE

Hoping for the entire roster, the Chesapeake Sports Club instead got three of the six Major League Baseball players raised in this city to attend its first winter jamboree Thursday night.

Considering the baseball-centric theme of the event, the .500 batting average delighted club President John Henry Martin, who mingled with David Wright of the New York Mets, Scott Sizemore of the Oakland Athletics and Clay Rapada of the Baltimore Orioles.

Those also advertised as "expected" to be at the Chesapeake Conference Center - Michael Cuddyer of the Colorado Rockies and brothers B.J. (Tampa Bay Rays)

and Justin Upton (Arizona Diamondbacks) - canceled within the past week, Martin said.

"Things come up; we know that," Martin said. "David Wright made a heroic effort to be here; he already has another engagement later on. They've got busy schedules. If I had schedules like them, you probably wouldn't see me hanging around."

At a VIP social before the banquet, which was headlined by former Los Angeles Dodgers great Steve Garvey, guests approached the local celebrities for autographs, hovered for small talk and - in the case of Wright and club photographer Linda Clifton - literally tugged at their arms for pictures.

"No, I've never met David," Clifton said later with a sheepish smile, "but I feel like I know him."

That sense of familiarity, of hometown pride and joy, was prevalent at the meet-and-greet, which was precisely the point, according to Chesapeake Sports Club board member Linwood Nelms.

"Chesapeake is a baseball town," Nelms said, "so we said, 'Let's invite all of our baseball guys.' "

Sizemore, like Wright a third baseman out of Hickory High, drove in from Richmond. Rapada, a pitcher from Deep Creek who spends offseasons in Chesapeake, said the timing worked between visits to his fiancée's home in Ohio.

And Wright, who has a condo in downtown Norfolk, squeezed in the reception before departing for a planning meeting for the "Vegas Night" he'll host tonight in Virginia Beach for Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.

"When you stop being invited to these things, you know you've done something wrong," Wright joked. "I get invited to a lot of things, being in New York, but to come here, it's just an extra-special meaning.

"This is home. There are so many familiar faces. And we all wouldn't be where we are without a lot of special people here who helped raise us the right way."

Like other neighboring sports clubs, Martin said, the mission of his club is to raise money for scholarships for Chesapeake students. Garvey, who said he does a lot of "Fortune 500 speaking" and a handful of "sports nights" each year, said he was impressed to be the organization's first jamboree headliner.

Garvey said that through previous visits to the area, he had picked up on Chesapeake's reputation as a hotbed for baseball talent.

"And why not?" he said, citing the city's rapid growth. "If you get dedicated people and leagues and coaches, you're going to develop some kids."

What's funny, though, is what happens when those kids turn into big-leaguers and come back home, Virginia Beach's Bob Grymes said.

"We turn into 10-year-olds again," Grymes, 73, said as he waited to get Wright's signature on a ball and a poster. "It brings us right back to our childhood."

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com