“As long as it’s remembered, that’s all we wanted, and I think we did that,” said a choked up and sentimental Rob Kanomata as he delivered the final speech at the final Lon Ferguson Memorial Slo-Pitch Tournament on Sunday during closing ceremonies at Ken McDonald Memorial Sports Park.
And remembered it will be for a tournament that had gone through many changes in its 25 years of existence, but one thing that had never changed was the youthful spirit and camaraderie to help commemorate the person it was named after.
“What stands out to me is the teams that we have in it, because of the atmosphere, everyone is so accommodating,” said Kanomata, reminiscing the next day after his speech of his 25 years of memories commemorating a fallen friend. “You can see it between the workers and the teams and our Saturday-night cabaret — it is the atmosphere. Everyone wants to do something special for this tournament.”
You could even see it in the last “A” final game of the tournament’s existence, as six umpires lined the field to guide the game free of charge, giving it a fond farewell in which the Rubber Arms emerged victorious. The “B” division winner was Pop’s Pub, while “C” honours went to Three on the Rack. The Shockers took the “D” division.
“It was my last connection to Taber. My father passed away a few years ago and my mother moved to Lethbridge, so I had no reason to visit Taber like I did before,” said Rob Miyashiro, a friend of Lon Ferguson who has noted he had not missed one tournament in its 25-year run. “The tournament gave me a chance to come back and reconnect with people from here that I grew up with.”
The Lon Ferguson Memorial Slo-Pitch Tournament has had Kanomata involved for over half of his life. Every third weekend of August means something extra special to Kanomata’s heart with the tournament. Three generations of Taberites have helped with the Lon Ferguson tournament, including Rob’s son, Jaden, who tended the grill at the beer gardens on the weekend.
“It was just natural what we did every summer. In my final speech I didn’t want to say what the tournament has done raising money over the years,” said Kanomata. “Hopefully, out of all that, we remember the person who the tournament was named after, because that’s what it is about — the people. All that we did was just to remember our fallen friend.”
The tournament had its heyday in the middle of its run as an ultra-competitive tournament that teams caught wind of outside town limits.
“It became one of the most competitive tournaments around. We had a five-and-five format that a lot of tournaments wouldn’t do,” said Miyashiro. “There were teams from Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat and it became the tournament to go to, to prove yourself. There was some very good ball being played here with national-calibre teams.”
But the competitiveness came with a price, as it scared away the recreational teams the Lon Ferguson tournament was built on — a foundation that started simply from a way for close friends and family to reminisce Ferguson, who lost his life to a car accident on April 5, 1986.
“People were saying they didn’t want to come because the teams were too good. So, we changed some of the rules and we asked some of the teams that were very competitive not to put in such competitive of teams,” said Miyashiro.
Co-organizers have implemented many rules over the years to make it more recreational, which included a longer list of banned composite bats, five-on-five for male and female ratios, and a three-and-one rule for home runs, so one team was not outslugging another, and so on. Prize money was curtailed so it was spread out among more teams to return the tournament to its more intimate roots. Organizers were tournament trailblazers of sorts in increasing the fun factor of its offering, which included unique non-slo-pitch game being played every year in the first day of competition for players to enter.
“I wanted to go back to what we had in our first year when our buddy died and we just wanted to hang out, and think about our friend, our son, our cousin. That’s all we wanted to do. Not every year did we have that agenda,” said Kanomata.
The tournament had 21 teams competing for “A” to “D” division honours this past weekend.
At its peak, Lon Ferguson slo-pitch saw 40-plus teams utilizing every single diamond the town had, and the cabaret pushed 1,200 people at the Taber Agri-Plex fand featured such bands as 54-40, Prism and Harlequin. Behind the scenes were the vigilant volunteers who while looking after the cabaret until the wee hours of the morning, were up again tending the fields for the 8 a.m. draw the same day, rain or shine.
“There were people from the community that knew us that were bringing in vac trucks to suck water off the diamond and others were bringing back hoes and bobcats hauling shale for us,” said Miyashiro. “These weren’t guys from our core group (on the memorial society), they were friends and acquaintances of Lon who knew we needed their help.”
Everything eventually has to come to an end, as members of the Lon Ferguson Memorial Society thought the 25th year of the slo-pitch tournament’s existence was as good as any. Those men and women in their early 20s who first got the tournament on its feet are now well into their 40s, with those extra responsibilities parenthood brings. But they will also be young at heart thinking about Lon.
“It has been a great run. I wouldn’t trade all the hardships of working all night and the rains for anything. The friendships and camaraderie that have been made out of this, it would be tough to strike that many up without doing something like this,” said Kanomata.