Sharpe joins Baseball Canada executive

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This article was published 07/07/2018 (2908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ken Sharpe’s path in baseball has led him to one of the highest offices in the country.

Sharpe, 56, who lives near Minnedosa but operates an accounting business in Brandon and serves on the Brandon Minor Baseball board, was recently elected treasurer of the three-person executive committee for Baseball Canada.

“I love it,” Sharpe said of baseball. “To me it’s the most fascinating sport to watch. I like to think that I understand it so you pick up on positioning on infielders and what makes players good. There is so much to it. You have to use that thing above your shoulders more in it than almost any other sport. I was a pitcher and I prided myself on learning the game, as opposed to just throwing.”

Former Major League pitcher and Canadian Olympian Jason Dickson of Miramichi, N.B., was acclaimed to return as Baseball Canada president in late June after finishing his term from 2016 to 2018. He had been vice-president before that since 2010.

Don Paulencu of Sherwood Park, Alta., was given a second term as vice-president.

Sharpe takes over from former treasurer Jody Frowley of Middle Sackville, N.S. It was Sharpe’s fourth attempt at winning a spot on the board for a two-year term.

He started playing at age six or seven at a rural schoolhouse in Hazelwood, which was actually located on his family’s land. He and his brother Bruce, who is three years older, were part an 11-and-under team.

Sharpe eventually gave up hockey in midget, working through the winter one year with Manitoba Baseball Hall of Famer Lorne Lilley, something he said changed him from a thrower into a pitcher.

That summer, his Hazelwood team didn’t win a game but he was picked up by Hamiota, Cardale and then the provincial champion Kirkfield-Westwood Park for the first of many appearances in western Canadian championships.

Sharpe, a left-handed hurler, was scouted by universities at the tournament but he had already quit school to work on the dairy farm at home so he lost the potential opportunity. (He would later go back to school to become a chartered accountant.)

He would go on to found the senior AA Minnedosa Mavericks in the early 1990s, and after ending his playing career in the mid-1990s, continued a long coaching career. The rise of the Mavericks and the construction of new diamonds also rebooted a then-dormant minor baseball system in Minnedosa.

That first season, they had a single under-11 team that contained kids as young as five, and it quickly flowered into a thriving organization.

Sharpe also became involved with Baseball Manitoba, serving as a vice-president before becoming president for 12 years from 2002 until 2014.

He still sits on Baseball Manitoba’s board as past president.

That experience convinced him to seek a role with Baseball Canada.

“It’s my love of the game,” Sharpe said. “I still knew a lot of the directors of Baseball Canada, and I have a lot of respect for them and I believe they have respect back. I felt like I still had things to give the game and the only place that I could give it with any kind of succession was nationally. I’ve done lots provincially and I love helping Brandon minor, I’m on their executive and it’s wonderful, we’ve done great things. Actually I haven’t, I’ve just been helping (president) Blake Stephens and (13/15U convenor) Glen (Simard) do great things. I just like it. I enjoy the travel around to the provinces and I feel like I have a handle for all the things that are going on nationally.”

Sharpe had a hand in changing the Baseball Canada constitution that allowed more equitable voting.

Instead of the biggest provinces having more say, every province was given a single vote.

He also stayed busy in the game. After leaving the Baseball Manitoba presidency in 2014, he remained the national chair of sport development for two years.

“I think there are plenty of things to do to help,” Sharpe said. “I think Baseball Canada has great potential, unrealized at times. I’m not sure if it’s going to change or not. I would love it to, so I would like to be part of that.”

Sharpe said he has some issues of personal interest to him, although he’s quick to add they are his opinions rather than that of the national executive.

He thinks there should be more freedom of movement for players — “As long as they’re playing, I don’t care where” — although he recognizes the challenges that smaller communities face and the threat of people trying to assemble all-star teams.

He said a good example would be neighbouring towns where one team has eight players and the other has 15.

Sharpe was a member of the national committee that came up with the Rally Caps program, and while he thinks it’s been an outstanding addition, thinks it could use some tinkering to stay relevant.

“To me, if you’re not going forward, you’re going backward,” Sharpe said. “You don’t stay. Rally Cap is a wonderful program but it must be reviewed once in a while, and it must be tweaked and fixed.”

While it isn’t an issue in Manitoba, the Baseball Canada system also has direct competitors in the marketplace in some areas.

Little League Canada runs a parallel system, with 75,000 youngsters playing the game in 200 leagues across Canada in every province except Manitoba.

“We don’t have enough players to split them between two different kinds of baseball,” Sharpe said.

There are also unaffiliated premier leagues in some places that are poaching top players.

The high water mark in the national minor baseball registration came in 1992-93 when the Toronto Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles.

With between 250,000 and 400,000 kids now playing the game, Sharpe wishes a small fee could be remitted to Baseball Canada to give the organization the means to continue to improve the game, but admits it’s not an opinion shared by many.

“The sport is doing good,” Sharpe said. “I think sometimes we’re one of the big sports but we don’t act that way. And I don’t know how to fix that.”

There are also the dual and sometimes competing goals of developing both elite players and encouraging average players to stay in the game.

“I’m from a competitive background but I’m sport-development driven,” Sharpe said. “I think there has to be a combination. When you’re really small, you need to learn the sport and learn the skills, but it doesn’t take very long before you always have to learn how to lose. Sometimes I think we play and everybody gets trophy and it’s hard to get better if you get the same thing as the guy who went home and played catch all year long with his dad. Somehow we have to develop it because it’s the masses that keep the sport going but we have to do things to keep our best players interested as well and to challenge them.”

The executive committee is assisted by a 10-person board of directors, with one representative per province. Baseball Canada’s general assembly will take place at the fall convention in Ottawa from Nov. 8 to 11.

Sharpe said his wife of 34 years, Sherri, keeps him grounded and never forgetting his true motivation.

“I judge my decisions on when I go to bed at night and think ‘Did I make the right decision for baseball?’” Sharpe said. “If I did, then I’m OK.”

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