For the love of the cash

Posted July 8, 2013


For the love of the cash

Coming off the Leduc Milleteers capture of several hundred dollars in Goodfish Lake, I wondered to myself if this is really what men’s teams prefer?

It seems several years ago it was all they cared about when it came to tournaments. Battle River teams especially smelled the cash and would immediately ask about the “payout” if you were having a tourney. If you didn’t have one, no one came.

It often meant they weren’t interested to come north because places like Bardo, Armena, Tofield and Camrose just couldn’t pay out hundreds of dollars, have real umpires and supplies of baseballs without losing a ton of money.

Tofield and Camrose were the closest you could get. They’d be able to run a beer garden, maybe get a sponsor or community support. Ryley has now been successful at this kind of thing, although this year they, too, struggled for teams.

Rumours spread of the Rosalind A’s unhappy with Powerline payouts. But it’s a double-edged sword as the big money tourneys are to the far north and south, and the BRBL tourneys are pretty much the same teams they’ve seen for decades. They also have players umping games, which is a huge conflict of interest – but they seem to enjoy the cheap rates and unpredictable calls.

Recently, a the tri-hosted tournament and the Camrose Axemen pre-season tournament were good examples of a pure break-even pay-to-play setup. Teams covered their costs of the umpires, even the home teams, and everyone got guaranteed games.

Unlike a tournament where you may pay $150 and win one and lose one and be done after 10 innings, everyone paid $175 and got a full 21 innings (or more) of baseball.

Now, Goodfish Lake isn’t the norm. They probably aren’t going to entice too many people to spread their wings to the reserve in early July without the carrot, but it does put some pretty big cash on the line for men’s baseball. The Royals got an invite this year and if we could have gotten together a team that was competitive and managed by someone else, I’d still have gone.

I guess I’m old and lame, but I’d simply rather play for pride than money. I guess it’d be nice to pad the wallets and have free beer or new jerseys, but I’d imagine a $1,500 game could get a little too intense for the wrong reasons. Some of the most memorable tournaments I’ve partaken in, included the Tarmena Lake-Men or Carmena Royal Runners of late. St. Paul for example was one of the funnest weekends ever with young and old Armena/Camrose products. The 1-2 record irrelevant.

As one unnamed player once quipped, “Don’t we all have jobs during the day? Do we really need to be paid to win baseball games?”

I’m probably outnumbered, but I’m all about the pure baseball. The love of the game. I’ll pay my $10-20 a game and leave it on the field as well as the beer garden or campsite. Curious to hear what the rest of the league(s) thinks.

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Jason Buzzell