Great day for baseball

Tammy Walters says she’s ready to retire after 14 years as president of the North Bay Baseball Association.

Walters let her feelings be known Friday at the Voyageur Inn, where the association received a $17,000 cheque from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Nipissing MPP Monique Smith presented the cheque to Walters and the association, and the money will be used to purchase equipment, including a pitching machine.

Fresh start
The baseball association, Walters said, will be getting a fresh start.

For one thing, it has paid off a $40,000 debt.

“That put a lot of stress on our body of volunteers because when you carry a debt people don’t want to help, they want to stay away from the debt,” Walters said.

“So we’ve had a dedicated core group of people and we’ve managed to pay off the debt, become incorporated and obtain the Trillium Foundation grant. So I don’t think there’s been a better day in baseball for quite some time.”

Terrific support
Walters said the association went into debt around 1986.

“It started out as a little debt and grew into a bigger one, and to eliminate it we did things like cancel our rep program for a number of years and focus on the basic grass roots house league programs, and that enabled us to keep our costs down,” Walters said.

“And we used to give out things to our coaches and stopped giving them out hoping the coaches would understand, and they showed terrific support.”

When she does retire from the association, Walters said she’ll leave knowing it’s back on the right footing.

“I feel very good now in the direction they’re going and knowing they’ll be able to put forward a very good program without a debt to weigh it down.”