Friday, July 09, 2010

The $2,500 mystery is solved

GREGG DRINNAN Daily News Sports Editor July 9,2010 Kamloops

Seals were involved with bylaw officers, not RCMP

The mystery involving the San Francisco Seals and what they have said was an involvement with police officers in Vernon a week ago appears to have been solved. The Seals, a senior baseball team, were in Kelowna last week for the Canada Day Blast. While there, at least some of the players travelled to Vernon to visit Moe Joe’s, a local bar. Abel Alcantar, the Seals’ manager, told The Daily News on Tuesday that those players ended up in an altercation. “Our guys were getting picked up . . . I had to get them out of the tank . . . I ended up paying about $2,500,” he said. Alcantar also referred to “bouncers” and “police” being in attendance. However, The Daily News checked with the Vernon and Kelowna RCMP detachments, neither of which had any record of being called to a bar fight or having had any of the Seals in their cells. Nor were there receipts on hand indicating anyone from the Seals had handed over any money for any reason. On Wednesday night, Alcantar told The Daily News that he had copies of “warrants” — “three for $500 each and another for $100-something.” He said he would email copies of those “warrants” to The Daily News; they arrived Thursday evening. It turns out those “warrants” are tickets that were written by bylaw enforcement officers for the City of Vernon and the North Okanagan Regional District. The first ticket, No. A000622, was given to David Ramirez of Cotati, Calif. The other, No. A002578, was given to James Jacob Gans of Alameda, Calif. Cotati and Alameda are near San Francisco. Gans was ticketed July 2 at 12:33 a.m., while Ramirez got his 17 minutes later. Both players were written up under Good Neighbour Bylaw No. 4980 for “disturbing peace — highway or public property.” Both tickets were written by different officers, both of whose signatures are illegible. One thing that is quite legible on both tickets is that each player was fined $500.

The Seals were to have traveled from Kelowna to Trail for a Tuesday doubleheader with the Orioles and then gone on to play in the Kamloops International Baseball Tournament.Instead, the Seals piled into their vans Sunday, drove to Seattle and flew home to the San Francisco area.

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