In the simplest of terms, it’s hard to overstate just how much Eddy Moore meant to the sport of fastball in Moose Jaw.
Thousands of players learned to play the game under his tutelage, covering decades and decades of dedication that saw local athletes develop a love for the sport while becoming some of the top players in the province and beyond.
Now, his legacy will be secured forever.
The Moose Jaw Senior Ladies Fastball League held a special dedication ceremony to open their 2023 season on Tuesday night, with the Caribou Heights diamonds officially renamed to Eddy Moore Park.
That includes the main sign entering the park in addition to special plaques that will be installed on both diamonds explaining Moore’s importance and what he meant to the sport.
“When my predecessors rented the space from the city and built the diamonds, Eddy was a very influential person in that he supported the ladies and what they needed to make sure we had a place of our own,” said league president Erin Tribier. “We recognized his contributions over the years, we even had the Eddy Moore Award we’d present for contributions to the league, and with his passing, we couldn’t think of a better honour to give him than requesting Caribou Heights be renamed in his name.”
The league approached the city with the idea last year, and once procedures were completed, word was received just prior to the start of this season that the renaming had been approved.
That led to Tuesday night, as the league held a special ceremony prior to the first game of the season between the Park Hotel Colts and the Heat.
Moore first became involved in the sport back in the early 1980s when daughter Joelle started playing fastball. A neophyte at the time, Moore began researching and learning about the sport as much as he could, and when Joelle decided to become a pitcher, he turned that aspect of the game into his focus.
“He looked up all the techniques to help her become a great pitcher and he got so good at it, he became the pitching expert in Moose Jaw and was running pitching clinics through the city program,” Tribier said. “He taught all those generations how to pitch, just through supporting his daughter and getting into the sport.”
As a result, for the better part of the last 40 years, if you were an elite pitcher from Moose Jaw, odds were extremely high you’d come under Eddy’s tutelage at one point or another.
“There are ladies who are 60, 65 now who learned how to pitch from Eddy, then it went to my generation and younger generations for so, so many years,” Tribier said. “And Eddy continued to coach long past his daughter stopping playing, too. He was the head coach of Colts when I came into the league in 2000 and had been the coach of the team for years before then. He continued to want to be part of the sport and was always involved.”
Moore also spent many, many an hour working on the Caribou Heights diamonds, making sure they were in as good of shape as possible to not only act as a quality playing field, but also something Moose Jaw could be proud of.
On a whole, Eddy’s passion for the sport was infectious and led to many an individual helping take up the reins and keep the park in as good of shape as possible.
“You were worried about disappointing him, and he’d tell us ‘these diamonds are yours, ladies, make sure that they look and represent what you want out of the sport’,” Tribier said. “He reminded us of that and tried to make sure we felt passion for the sport and were proud of it. He made sure we had the best diamonds and the best opportunity to play the game as we could.”
Now, generations in the future will know of the man who helped make fastball what it is in Moose Jaw.
“The next generation might not know who Eddy is personally, but they’ll know his reputation and love of the sport,” Tribier said. “We want to make sure they know that name and how important he was to all of us and the community,”
