A St. Albert Minor Baseball Association tradition every May long weekend has a new name.
The annual Early Bird tournament will now be called the Larry Rindero Memorial Tournament.
“The name change was an easy decision for the SAMBA board of directors as we wanted to honour Larry, not only for his contributions as a coach and volunteer, but for the things he left behind,” said Kurtus Millar, SAMBA president and tournament coordinator.
“His passion for the game extended out to the community. He always had a way to make others feel welcome and make SAMBA feel like home. That’s something I think SAMBA has done very well throughout the years with this tournament. No matter who sat on the (board of directors), the Early Bird tournament was full every year and very well put on in making guests feel at home like Larry did.”
Rindero passed away when his son, Matt, was playing in the SAMBA rep program and a stone monument at Legion Memorial Park keeps his memory alive.
Matt went on to play a major role with the Big Red Machine, a.k.a. the midget AAA St. Albert Cardinals, and the junior and senior St. Albert Tigers.
“Matt has begun giving back to SAMBA by helping us out with corporate sponsorships and contractors to keep the facility up to par so we also wanted to honour his family name,” Millar said.
“We have a couple ideas to honour some more names in the next few years. I feel it’s very important that people know the contributions that these great people have given.”
SAMBA also switched the tournament format to AA teams.
“The Early Bird tournament has been a great tournament for years,” Millar said. “We went strictly to AA for a couple reasons. There are a lot of AAA tournaments out there but not so many for AA. We always struggled getting AAA teams with the other tournaments going on. We also wanted our AA teams to play all their games, or as many as possible, at Legion Memorial Ball Park. In the past they only got a few games if any at Legion because the AAA teams played there so it’s just a better experience for our AA teams.
“We also had no problems filling it up. We were full with several teams on the waiting list by March 1st.”
Last year’s Early Bird was cancelled before the first pitch was thrown because of wet weather.
Ninety games were scheduled for Legion, Meadowview Diamonds and Stony Plain for 47 teams in six divisions (mosquito AA, peewee AA and AAA, bantam AA and AAA and midget AA) and the SAMBA Cardinals had 10 teams entered.
This year’s 40-team tournament starts 6:30 p.m. Friday and the lineup includes 12 mosquito AA teams, 10 teams in both peewee AA and bantam AA and eight midget AA teams.
The Cardinals have three teams in mosquito, two in both peewee and bantam and one in midget.
The tournament draw consists of 86 games at the Legion and Meadowview facilities.
Monday’s finals are 3 p.m. in all four divisions.
Visit www.stalbertbaseball.com for schedules and results.
