By Mackenna Jamieson
With the induction of legendary Canadian baseball player Larry Walker into the Baseball Hall of Fame, there may be an increase of interest into baseball among Canadian youth.
Larry Walker was a five time MLB all star from Maple Ridge, BC and played 17 seasons in the league splitting his time between the St. Louis Cardinals, Montreal Expos and Colorado Rockies.
He also was awarded seven Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, three batting titles, NL MVP and two gold medals playing for team Canada in the Pan American games.
President of Kamloops Minor Baseball, Chris Balison says the impact of big Canadian athletes could affect a wide range of kids who may want to pursue baseball as a hobby due to Walker’s influence.
“We’re also finding ways to grow in different areas, like girls baseball, our program is really increasing in numbers in girls baseball as well as baseball for kids who have cognitive and physical disabilities”.
“We’re trying to expand the reach and I think with the conversation again in the news about Larry Walker being a Canadian and in the Hall of Fame, that’s just going to start a a wider conversation about baseball” says Balison
Baseball has become a pretty popular sport in Kamloops and the KMBA has had an increase of kids playing in the league as of recently in all age groups.
With spring just around the corner it’s a perfect time to start thinking about baseball for children in Kamloops and many leagues want to get the youth more involved with the sport.
“We’re a very affordable sport, one of the most affordable youth sports in the area. The other piece is programming, we can have certainty to programming on days of the week” Balison says is one of the factors why baseball is a favored sport in the Kamloops area.
“People get to know quite a large family, we integrate the parents into the learning with the kids. It’s a very large community and we find once people get in there is a lot of good word of mouth about the programming that we offer and our retention levels remain very high”.
There are 16 Canadian born athletes in the MLB currently, including five from BC.
Larry Walker will be officially inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in a ceremony on July 26th 2020 in Cooperstown, New York becoming the second Canadian ever to do so.
