This year's Maxi Twilight Baseball Tournament was a huge success and received nothing but positive feedback from the community. It began back in 1976, and only 16 teams were allowed to enter, forcing others to create their own tournament. Now the tournament features 21 teams from across Saskatchewan. "The tournament started in 1976. It started out as a strictly over-35 tournament. It was quite successful, they had 16 teams; they had a waiting list to go on, but they always limited it to 16 teams."A few years back there was a realignment because the teams that couldn't make the 16 teams tournament had a mini-tournament. Now they combined the two, so we actually have 21 teams this year from all over the province," said Lindsay Clark, co-chair of the Maxi Twilight Baseball Tournament. The tournament was created for those athletes who had grown out of their age divisions, but still wanted to enjoy the sport, said Clark. "It was that people progressed out of their age group and still wanted to be out with their friends playing ball, but didn't have a venue to do that. "I think there was a lot of people in the area that wanted to have a place to play, and I think somebody came up with the idea of it and it carried on for years."This year's tournament honoured long time participant, Bryan Gowen."Bryan Gowen in 1981 became involved in baseball. He received his 25-year award in 2006. Bryan has ALS and he wasn't able to play that year but was still able to attend, but was very involved in organizing and keeping this team going," said Clark.ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.Clark said that when the community heard that Gowen was to be honoured, they could not have been more excited.However, Gowen remains humble about the entire event and even joked about why they would pick a guy like him."I suppose I was instrumental in keeping the Estevan team alive, and always making sure we had a team to go to these tournaments.""I think they just decided to pick my name out of a hat, but I was surprised when I found out that they were going to honour me and I was like 'are you sure you got the right guy here'. All I did was play ball and give a little bit of money to minor baseball," said Gowen. This year's tournament champions were the Lampman Legends.
