Sydney senior baseball league celebrates 50th anniversary

The Sydney Sooners celebrate 50 years of swinging for the fences.

The Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League is marking its 50^th anniversary, as are some of its teams which have been around since the beginning, including the Sydney Sooners in Cape Breton.

There are even people who have been around since the beginning – including Sooners manager Jim “Rico” MacEachern.

“1977, I was one of the original 20 ball players that were on the team,” the Sooners’ longtime manager said on Sunday.

MacEachern said he is one of the last people still involved in the league 50 years later, and added what keeps him coming back to the ballpark year-after-year is simply the love of the game.

“Six years ago, our 44th season, I stated to the complement of that team, ‘Guys, I’m going to try something that I think might be impossible. I’m going to try to be around here for the 50th season’,” MacEachern said. “I’m here today. I don’t know how much more I’ve got in the tank.”

In the bleachers, some fans have their own stories of dedication.

Robert Morrison has been making the one-hour drive each way from St. Peter’s, N.S., to Sydney for about 20 years to watch the Sooners play from his seat behind home plate.

“I was brought up here in Sydney,” Morrison said. “It’s like a homecoming every time I come down here.”

“I think this is an incredible milestone for this league,” added Bruce Rainnie, president and CEO of the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame.

Rainnie said the big anniversary makes him think of founding fathers like MacEachern in Sydney and the Van Blarcom brothers in Kentville, NS.

“Both teams were there, by the way, on day one and are still here to this day,” Rainnie said. “They have paved the way for great baseball players in this province to keep playing after junior and for years the competition has been superb. It continues to be so.”

Back at the Susan MacEachern Memorial Ballpark in Sydney, which since 1995 has been named for Rico MacEachern’s late wife, his plan from here on in is to take things one season at a time.

“I’d love to stay around until, as you say, they put me in the grave but there’s good people ready to jump in,” MacEachern said.

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