about the Horizon Air Summer Series from an article in Horizon Air

The Region
GREAT FALLS, MT
MARYSVILLE, CA
Harvest homes
Unique baseball competition
Johnson is one of 100
rural residents and volunteers participating in Hands
of Harvest, a collective of
people working to create,
market and distribute Montana crafts and goods.
These artisans and craftspeople, who live and work in
north-central Montana, celebrate their cultural heritage
and create sustainable communities by opening their
studios to the public and
making their goods available
for sale.
Hands of Harvest: The Craft
Heritage Trails of North Central
Montana, a guidebook published in May 2004, provides
a listing of sites—including
restaurants, lodgings, studios
and shops—located along
five loop routes that originate
in or near Great Falls.
While snowy weather in
the winter may make some
parts of the loops difficult to
reach, the sites are open yearround.
For more information or
to order a copy of the book,
call 406-454-6980 or visit
www.handsofharvest.org.
—Katherine Ellis
Horizon Air Summer Series will feature the best of the best
I
magine a baseball tournament without a
league, without playoffs and without the
same teams every year. This new concept
is the brainchild of baseball executive Bob
Bavasi, who has partnered with Horizon Air to
create the Horizon Air Summer Series.
Bavasi is the former owner of the Everett
AquaSox, an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners,
and a co-owner of the Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox, a
summer collegiate team. His brother Bill is the
general manager of the Seattle Mariners.
“It’s taken us two years to put this all
together because it’s an entirely new way of
doing things,” Bavasi says.
The Summer Series season, which runs late
May to mid-August, consists of competition
among 15 top collegiate teams from California
and Oregon, with the Gold Sox hosting every
team at least once in the Sox’s Marysville,
California, stadium. Each team comprises college players from throughout the country who
are improving their skills
by participating in one of
Teams and schedules
Horizon Air Summer Series teams
will include the Yuba-Sutter Gold
the seven summer leagues
are being finalized, Bavasi
Sox, based in Marysville, California.
in the Western United
says, with teams being inStates.
vited based on the comThe Summer Series is not itself a league.
mittee’s determination of who is most likely to
Instead, it features the best teams from these
be competitive. Every year the committee will
collegiate leagues—and a novel approach to
create a new invitee list to provide an opportundetermining a series champion.
ity for improved teams to participate.
A committee will review each Summer
“It’s all about the competition,” Bavasi says.
Series team’s league schedule and determine
“Players naturally want to play against the best.
which 44 of each team’s league games will
Our mission is to continually ratchet up the
count toward determining the Summer Series
competition, thereby attracting the best players
victor. All league games played against other
and teams to the Horizon Air Summer Series.”
Summer Series teams, at various stadiums, will
Games at the All Seasons RV Stadium will
count. However, so will league games against
feature fan-friendly events such as souvenir
select top-performing non-Summer Series
giveaways, between-inning contests and mascot
teams in the West that aren’t able to travel to
appearances by icons such as The Famous San
the Gold Sox’s All Seasons RV Stadium, about
Diego Chicken. Play-by-play audio will be
30 minutes north of Sacramento.
streamed live via www.goldsox.com.
In addition, in the spirit of an old-fashioned
For more information, visit www.
pennant race, there will be no playoffs in the
SummerBaseballSeries.com. Games in MarysSummer Series. Instead, the team with the best
ville will be played Thursday through Sunday
win-loss record at the end of the summer will
nights. Tickets are available at the Marysville
be the champion.
stadium gate and at 530-741-3600. —Jon Phillips
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A N DY K L I N S T I V E R
J
an Johnson, owner of
the Big Sky Fiber Farm,
walks to the creek near her
house on summer mornings.
She picks a handful of
goldenrod with clusters of
yellow flowers, and back at
home, she boils a pot of
water, putting in the goldenrod and a bundle of gray yarn
that was woven after she
sheered the Angora goats,
Shetland sheep, Angora rabbits and alpacas that graze in
her yard. It takes only a few
moments of boiling to create
glowing, evenly dyed gold
yarn.