Port Moody baseball player Michael Crouse, whose career has taken him to diamonds as far away as Australia and Mexico, will help Canada try to earn a spot in the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile.
Crouse has been named to Baseball Canada's 24-man roster that will play in the WBSC Americas Pan-Am Qualifier in Buenos Aires, Argentina, starting June 16.
The 32-year-old outfielder and the rest of Canada's players are at a training camp beginning tomorrow (June 10) at the Toronto Blue Jays player development complex in Dunedin, Fla.
Crouse, a grad of Centennial Secondary in Coquitlam, was selected by the Blue Jays in the 16th round of the 2008 Major League Baseball (MLB) amateur draft.
Since then, he's wandered the sport's hinterlands including four stints in the Australia Baseball League where he played for teams in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, and the better part of three seasons for an independent team in Chicago that's named after hot dogs.
Crouse was most recently on the roster of the Winnipeg Goldeyes, that compete in the independent American Association.
Crouse has also done some acting and modelling, appearing in episodes of Showtime's Yellowjackets, Charmed on CW, as well as commercials for Dairy Queen and print ads for McDonalds and Metrotown Mall.
This won't be the first time Crouse has played for Canada. He was named to the all-star team at the 2008 World Junior Baseball Championship, and, in 2011, he helped Canada win bronze at the World Cup and gold at the Pan Am Games.
In 2021, Crouse was part of Canada's team that fell just short of qualifying for a berth in the Tokyo Summer Olympics.
The five-team Pan-Am qualifier will be played June 16 to 21 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the top team qualifying for Santiago.
