New Group Gets M’S Camp Fantasy Event Team Includes Ex-Player Dave Henderson And A Spokane Man

A group that includes a Spokane man and former baseball All-Star Dave Henderson has been awarded a two-year contract to conduct the Seattle Mariners Fantasy Camp.

Baseball Adventures LLC will open its first weeklong camp next Jan. 30 at the Mariners’ spring-training facility in Peoria, Ariz.

Besides Henderson, a premier outfielder for the Mariners, Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals, the group includes Mike Murphey of Spokane as well as Fielding Snow and Don Gregory of Seattle.

Murphey is a former reporter for The Spokesman-Review. Snow is a retired pro racquetball player. Gregory is a business consultant.

Murphey said he met Snow at the first Mariners camp in 1998. Like fantasy camps run by other Major League Baseball teams, he said, the M’s camp caters mostly to middle-aged men and women, although the oldest participant this year was 83.

“It’s really not about being a good baseball player,” Murphey said.

Participants get an M’s uniform, use of the team’s locker room and much-needed treatment from the training staff.

He said he and Snow started an off-and-on conversation about how they would improve the camp.

Those discussions continued, and just before this year’s camp Murphey met with M’s Vice President Randy Adamack.

Snow and Murphey then approached Henderson, a Mariners broadcaster and fantasy camp coach who also owns a baseball instructional facility in Bellevue, Wash.

Murphey said Henderson agreed to become a partner once he was convinced the group had a legitimate chance of securing the contract, which had been held by a former Baltimore Orioles official.

Henderson brought in Gregory.

Murphey said Baseball Adventures hopes to attract 80 to its camp next year. Other potential ventures include a high school camp during Christmas break, youth clinics around the Northwest and a Japanese fantasy camp in cooperation with the M’s and the Orix Blue Wave that could be held in Arizona or Hawaii.

An amateur baseball player throughout his adult life, Murphey said winning the M’s fantasy camp contract was a long shot that followed casual brainstorming.

“If I dreamed up a job for myself, I couldn’t have done better,” he said.

AT A GLANCE Kids clinic Baseball Adventures will hold a clinic featuring Dave Henderson at Seafirst Stadium Saturday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The clinic will be free to kids 12 and under. For information, call 993-7338, or e-mail mmur7763@aol.com