Aimee
Jim Baba’s summers used to revolve around the ballyards in Moose Jaw.
That’s where he grew up, and it’s there that baseball meshed with his heart and mind, leading to his current job as Baseball Canada’s director general. Today, hanging on Baba’s basement wall, is a picture of Ross Wells Park – the pretty and iconic Moose Jaw baseball diamond that’s spawned a million stories.
“My dad was a baseball nut,” Baba – in Saskatoon for this week’s Baseball Canada Cup – says of Farris Baba, a well-known Moose Jaw baseball figure.
“He loved the sport. Mom liked scorekeeping … the whole family was involved. That passion rubbed off on me.
“Any weekend in Moose Jaw, there’s a tournament on. We were there, it seemed, 24 hours – your parents were working at the booth, or umpiring, or something else, and you hung around there the whole time.”
Baba became a pretty good player as the years went on, playing on a Moose Jaw Little League senior team that took silver at nationals, winning a Saskatchewan Major Baseball League batting title as a teenager, and playing collegiately in Yakima, Wash. where he also won a batting crown. He competed at nine Canadian senior championships.
He also turned into an elite coach, and he caught the eye of Baseball Canada when he piloted Saskatchewan to a silver medal at the 1989 Jeux Canada Games.
He went on to coach the national senior team before moving into an administrative role.
