{"id":3354,"date":"2009-06-29T20:40:10","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T03:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2009-06-29T23:43:58","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T06:43:58","slug":"farewell-for-softball-champ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/?p=3354","title":{"rendered":"Farewell for softball champ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/nelson-mail\/sport\/2552868\/Farewell-for-softball-champ\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/static.stuff.co.nz\/1236197200\/031\/2000031.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/static.stuff.co.nz\/1246324359\/875\/2552875.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>SAFE TRAVELS: Among those bidding Marty Grant, back row, middle, farewell were, back row, councillor Aldo Miccio and Jack Fletcher and front, from left Lewis Miccio, Grant&#8217;s son Cooper and Hugo Fletcher<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Around 30 friends and supporters bid Nelson&#8217;s Marty Grant an emotional farewell on Sunday as the veteran Black Sox pitcher left for his fifth world championship softball campaign in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>With three world crowns already under his belt, the 42-year-old Grant is chasing title No 4 in Saskatoon starting on July 17.<\/p>\n<p>An official sendoff from councillor Aldo Miccio, representing Mayor Kerry Marshall, and a rousing Haka Tika Tonu performed by the Nelson kapa haka group Whatukura were part of the brief farewell ceremony at Nelson Airport.<\/p>\n<p>Grant thanked his supporters and training partners Derryn French, Sam Miller, Simon Ashby and Jack Fletcher, and his friends who  in a surprise gesture last week  presented Grant&#8217;s wife Abbie and son Cooper with air tickets to travel to Canada for the championships. Abbie is recovering from successful breast cancer surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Grant&#8217;s progress can be followed on his Twitter page or via the international softball federation website link for the champs, which will provide coverage of games and Ballpark Radio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note:  <\/strong> &#8220;Bon Voyage&#8221; might be a more suitable headline;  &#8220;Farewell&#8221; sounds like retirement and Marty is very much on the active player list, earning All World honors at last year&#8217;s ISC World Tournament at age 42.   The last line of the story is not quite accurate &#8212; we&#8217;ll be broadcasting the Black Sox games on Ballparkradio at the World Fastball Invitational at Monkton this coming week\/end, July 2-5, 2009, but not the ISF Championships which start July 17, 2009.   Ballparkradio did submit a proposal to broacast the 2009 ISF World Championships in Saskatoon, but was not selected to do the broadcasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAFE TRAVELS: Among those bidding Marty Grant, back row, middle, farewell were, back row, councillor Aldo Miccio and Jack Fletcher and front, from left Lewis Miccio, Grant&#8217;s son Cooper and Hugo Fletcher Around 30 friends and supporters bid Nelson&#8217;s Marty Grant an emotional farewell on Sunday as the veteran Black Sox pitcher left for his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,16,19,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/morningbrief\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}