Tangaroa, Burnside part company

Press, 12 March 1984, Page 36

Tangaroa, Burnside part company

Chubb Tangaroa, one of New Zealand’s top softball pitchers, and his club, Burnside, have parted company. A rift developed between Tangaroa and the Burnside premier men’s coach, Mr Arnold Hall, last month, but he stayed with the club to pitch in the Pan Am national inter-club tournament at Porritt Park, which ended on March 3. After that tournament, in which Burnside finished fourth, the team virtually had a week off and when the premier men’s competition resumed on Saturday the familiar figure of Tangaroa was missing from the Burnside dugout. The coach, Mr Hall, confirmed that Tangaroa was no longer with the team and that the 21-year-old pitcher had not yet been cleared to playrfor anyone else. Tangaroa, who came to

Christchurch from Levin early HTI9BO, has been racking up vast numbers of strike-outs for Burnside for the last three seasons after earlier stints with the Papanui and Western Suburbs clubs.

He has pitched for Canterbury at the last four Rothmans national tournaments, most notably last season when it was a shock runner-up to Wellington. Last season he made his international debut, playing for New Zealand in the mini-world series at Christchurch and Hutt Valley, and was also one of four pitchers used by the New Zealand coach, Mike Walsh, in last month’s test series against the CanadianAmerican All Stars. Before the Pan Am tournament Tangaroa was still very much in contention for the No. 3 pitching spot in the New Zealand team for the world series in Midland, Michigan, in July, but Steve Jackson (Auckland) almost certainly cemented that place by pitching Ramblers to the Pan Am Trophy.