For the fifth straight year Innisfail baseball teams won't have their names inscribed on the Dallas Yarbrough Memorial Award.
But that is just fine with tournament organizers as the mandate for last weekend's Fifth Annual Dallas Yarbrough Memorial Tournament in Innisfail was to have fun, promote fair play and to raise money to support a local baseball camp next month for young ballplayers.
“This year we are going to partner with some other guys and run our own baseball camp, free to any kid that wants to come. It will be our own, ‘Day with the Indians',” said Steve Bouteiller, tournament organizer and head coach of the Innisfail Indians. “Between the Alumni guys, our guys and other guys that have been around we just want to give back to the community and help promote baseball.
“Unfortunately, we have not had a midget team for a few years now, and that is our feeder program and what keeps this team going,” he said, adding the camp is tentatively scheduled for mid-July. “We all want to get old and play on the Alumni team and watch the other guys play.”
The tournament, which began June 6 and wrapped up in the late afternoon of June 8, attracted six senior men's baseball teams, including the Indians, Irricana Canadians, Acme Pirates, Calgary Diamondbacks, Calgary Dust Devils and the Innisfail Alumni, the latter comprised of Indians of the past.
There was also a separate slo-pitch tournament of 10 teams, mostly from Innisfail, one from Red Deer and another from Olds.
On the baseball side of the tourney, Calgary teams have won the event three out of the four previous years since it was created to honour Yarbrough, a popular and talented 24-year-old ballplayer who was tragically killed in a car accident along Highway 13 west of Wetaskiwin on Dec. 16, 2004. Last year the baseball tourney was won by the Provost Combine Pilots.
But both the Indians and Alumni came up short again this year. The Indians, missing several of their key players, lost both their opening games and had to play in the lower rung C Final against the Dust Devils. The Indians, led by Kyle Burkitt's three-run homerun and two doubles, won the game 13 – 2.
“It was kind of tough when you are running the tournament and trying to field a team. We have to umpire slo-pitch games too and try to find enough guys to actually play,” said Burkitt. “It was tough yesterday (Saturday) but today we had enough guys and we had a good pitching game from Jay (Kirkham).”
In the consolation baseball B Final Acme defeated Irricana 8 – 4 while in the A Final, comprised of the tourney's two top teams, the Diamondbacks crushed the local Alumni squad 18 – 0.
“I thought it was going to be a little closer but our sticks were pretty hot this weekend. Yesterday we hit well and today we hit well too,” said Diamondbacks coach and captain Tom Gayef, whose team has now participated in all five tournaments and claimed its second title last weekend. “We enjoy it. Good weather, good people and we just have a blast, win or lose. And we appreciate being part of the cause here.”
Despite the hometown teams' ongoing on-field misfortunes, Bouteiller said the event was once again a success and its future continues to look bright.
“All the teams that are here now have been here before. It is something they enjoy coming to. They reach out to us and we are looking for a few more teams to make it a consistent tournament every year,” said Bouteiller. “We are a little bit lower on slo-pitch teams than we have been in the past.
“Unfortunately we had to compete with a couple of different slo-pitch tournaments that are fairly local that have been around a little bit longer. It is just the way the year ran out but everything has been running well.”
On the slo-pitch side of the tournament, Innisfail's PED won the C Final with a 12 – 7 victory over Red Deer's Hit-N-Mitt. Innisfail's Cruisers beat the hometown Rustlers 14 – 1 to claim the B Final while the Cripplers defeated GTR 10 – 2 to win the A Final.
Prize money was awarded to each winning baseball and slo-pitch team, with smaller amounts of cash also going to each losing team in the three slo-pitch finals.
