Vancouver Canadians catcher Jackson Hornung grew up in a Boston suburb and he can still sound disappointed about the 2011 Stanley Cup Final vs. the Bruins.
Hornung was cheering on the Vancouver Canucks to beat the Boston Bruins so ardently back then that his elementary school classmates playfully chased him around the playground one afternoon during the series.
Hornung, 23, is from the Ashland, Mass., which is about a 30-minute drive from Boston. He played as much hockey as he did baseball as a kid. He’s the son of a transplanted New Yorker and Hornung says that his favourite NHL teams are the New York Rangers and whoever happens to be playing the Bruins, which leads us back to that seven-game set 13 years ago.
“My friends can attest to that day,” Hornung said of the playground shenanigans. “It was a funny day because I got a lot of crap.
“I still get a lot of crap. My friends say I’m a bandwagon guy. I’m not. I just don’t like the Bruins.”
The 6-foot-1, 215-pound, right-handed hitting Hornung was a 16th round pick by the Toronto Blue Jays in last summer’s Major League Baseball amateur draft out ot Skidmore College, an NCAA Div. III program based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
He finished last season with the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays after signing with Toronto and was bumped up a level to high-A Vancouver to start this year. He was batting .235 with four home runs and 18 runs batted in through 53 games going into the C’s Wednesday visit to the Tri-City Dust Devils. Hornung had hit in the No. 4 and No. 5 spots in the Vancouver batting order in 36 of his games ahead of Wednesday, which is why the Blue Jays braintrust are giving him a prime time opportunity.
