While I am an avid sports fan my own skills in terms of sport have been limited.
I enjoy throwing steel-tipped darts but a lone 180 throw in all the games I have played is telling that I am not very good at it.
At 58, among the local community I am for 鈥榓n old guy鈥� not horrible at disc golf, but far from accomplished either.
Even in my younger years excelling at sports was not my forte.
In school, now some four decades ago, I could hold my own in doubles badminton, but there aren鈥檛 a box of trophies in the garage either.
The one sport I was pretty solid at, and enjoyed the most in my younger years was fastball. I played first base with the local area team the New Osgoode Bandits, a team that played at various tournaments each year; Rose Valley, Perigord, Golburn and Connaught among them.
Fastball is a sport where success is largely reliant on good pitching. When we could field an area pitcher who could get the time off from farming, or was back visiting family maybe, (yes a bit of a ringer), we did all right.
The Bandits were a lot of fun back then, a bunch of farm boys climbing down off their tractors, or setting down their feed pails to play some ball. It was thing I truly missed when I chose to come to Yorkton.
But, I still love fastball. I have often wished North America was a bit more sports diverse to the point of having a pro men鈥檚鈥� fastball league as an option to baseball some days.
There is the National Pro Fastpitch loop which currently features five teams: the Aussie Spirit, Beijing Shougang Eagles, Chicago Bandits, Cleveland Comets, and USSSA Pride, but I have not had a chance to see the league in action.
But Saskatchewan sports fans have an opportunity to see some high calibre softball (fastball) this summer.
The World Baseball Softball Confederation鈥檚 Junior Men鈥檚 World Softball Championship is being hosted by Prince Albert from July 7th - 15th.
The event is for players 19 and under, so the level of play will be about as good as the sport gets.
Kalen Kovitch, Media & Communications Director with the event was good enough to provide some information on the major championship.
鈥淲e applied to host the Junior Men鈥檚 World Championships back in the fall of 2015,鈥� he reported via email. 鈥淔irst we needed to get the stamp of approval from Softball Canada that we would be the bid package they would submit to the ISF (International Softball Federation) which at the time was the governing body.鈥�
Kovitch said they wanted the event in part because 鈥榝astball鈥� is popular in the area.
鈥淚n Prince Albert and surrounding area the sport is extremely popular with boys and girls teams in every single age category of provincials at the highest level of competition,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he reason we wanted to host this particular event is because we have had 13 athletes from our developmental program represent Canada at this exact tournament over the years.
鈥淲e really hope that it continues to feed the love of fastpitch softball in our community.鈥�
What countries are involved?
Thirteen countries will send teams: Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Czeh Republic, Denmark, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, 麻豆传媒AV Africa, Mexico and the United States.
鈥淛apan, New Zealand, Canada were the top-three teams at the last event in Michigan in 2016,鈥� said Kovitch who added that makes them early favourites. He then noted, 鈥淎ustralia, Argentina, Mexico and the United States should also have good squads.鈥�
Anyone who can find their way to Prince Albert should be up for some great ball.
Tickets are available online at www.jrsoftballworlds2018.com
