Letters From Ron

By Ron Pegg

Canadian Baseball Network

During the last week of August, the Women’s World Baseball Championship was played in Florida. It was the eighth women's world championship. The first one took place in Edmonton in 2004. The championships have been held every two years since its beginning.

Japan has dominated the championships, having won the past six tournaments. The United States won the first two. Canada has been very prominent in the championships having had two second place finishes and four bronze medals. Canada won its fourth bronze this year when it defeated the United States in extra innings in the game to decide third places. Earlier in the tournament Canada lost to Japan by the score of 2 – 1.

Each year that the tournament has been held, the number of countries who have entered has increased.

Lets go back a dozen years before the first world tournament. It is the early 1990s. There was zero woman’s baseball in Canada. The Ontario government offered some grants to provincial organizations for the promotion of women’s sports. I was the treasurer and business manager of Ontario Baseball with the office of this organization being in the basement of our home.

I believed that this was a good grant to go after. Ontario Baseball got the grant but we did not have any teams. I decided to try and organize a tournament in our village for bantam aged girls. Although that information went out to the entire province, there was very little response. There was one team from the Toronto area. In Flesherton, we had a number of good women players who were this age. We could become the second team in the tournament. Rick Fremlin and Jamie Pegg became coaches. We needed two more teams. A person from Goderich had shown some interest. I contacted this person and he agreed to get a team from that town.

My brother, Dave, was co-ordinating baseball in Everett. He agreed to work to get a team from that village just outside of Alliston. We had our four teams. The first women’s baseball tournament took place that August in Flesherton. Flesherton won.

During the next couple of years the women’s baseball grew in the province. In the first years all of the provincial championship tournaments were hosted in Flesherton. Mississauga and North Bay became hot beds of women’s baseball. Barrie and Newmarket began teams.

The first three junior women's championships were hosted in Flesherton. Our little village won all three. The coaches were Mary Post, Muriel Stewart and Nancy Strutt. The team was mainly Flesherton girls but were strengthened by players from Kincardine, Hanover, Clifford and Tottenham.

Linda Lewis, a long time worker in Ontario Baseball, was its representative to Baseball Canada. She took the idea of women’s baseball to it. Canada now had women’s baseball, and in 2004 Canada hosted the first world tournament in Edmonton.

Yes, it all began in Flesherton where a tournament almost didn’t happen.