Brewers have a ball... on the diamond

Ken, also known as @ontariobeerguy, shows off his umpiring moves
during one of the ball games. First, he told the batter that he was out!
Then he told me I was out of order! Then he said we were ALL out of
order!!! I felt like I had seen it in a movie or something. But seriously,
he was out there volunteering his time and doing something great for
the McMaster Children's Hospital, who saw the proceeds on the day.
But Ken won the 50/50 draw and did something even cooler. Read on.

So Sunday morning, I looked at all the empty beer cans in my basement. I then dumped them out of their trays into a big green garbage bag. Because I work at a Beer Store, I always take them back in trays. It's neater, easier for me and because they're upright, there's no can juice spillage. Which in the Summer, well, that juice can get a nasty smell pretty quickly. And the bugs, let's not forget the bugs.

But this Sunday would be different. My empties, rather than being applied to my next purchase, would go elsewhere on this day. I bagged up 155 empty cans and took them on a road trip to Hamilton. In a slightly less vague sense, I took them to Collective Arts Brewing. But in a far more specific sense, the empties traveled to the two baseball diamonds to the immediate west of the brewery.

You see, this was the site of the First Annual Collective Arts-Southern Ontario Beer Boys Brewers Ball baseball tournament. And the empties, as well as all the monies raised on this day, would go to a far more noble cause than my next beer purchase. In fact, all proceeds on the day went to McMaster Children Hospital. So basically, it was a day of baseball, drinking, more baseball and fun, all to benefit the kids. The hospital has long been a beneficiary to the generosity of the Southern Ontario Beer Boys, who are constantly holding events to raise them cash.

Peace out, homey! Tiffany, better known as
Traveling Pint, played on Team Insta, an rag-
tag assortment of Instagramers, bloggers,
vloggers and Twitter-Tweeters. The team
didn't win but in terms of combining beer
and baseball, they were true gold medalists. 

Once arriving, I quickly caught up with Steve and Neil, half of the Southern Ontario Beer Boys at the check-in booth. In front of them on the table was at least $300 worth of tasty craft beer to be raffled off. We'll get back to that in a bit because by the end of the day, that amount more than doubled. As well, there was a big-ass trophy just begging for a team name to be engraved upon it.

But first things first. I had to ask Steve how the S.O. Boys pulled all this together. "Organizing something is always a challenge because a lot of them were breweries and they only had five or six who could come out," he told me. "So if we do this again next year and hopefully we will, we'll have more because there was a lot of breweries that wanted to come out but they just couldn't get the bodies." (After the overwhelming success of this inaugural tournament, not to mention, the afternoon fun had by all, getting more teams next year will not be an issue.)

"I had spoken to Collective (Arts Brewing) back in January to ask them if they were interested in doing something for Mac Kids," he continued. "They said they had done a little tournament last year so they said they had no problem doing another tournament this year to help raise some money for the Children's Hospital. That's kind of where it started."

Paul, one quarter of the Southern Ontario Beer
Boys, also spent the day umpiring games. The
SO Boys have donated so much of their time and
efforts towards fund-raising in Hamilton, notably
to McMaster Children's Hospital. Pretty noble...

But time has a way of slipping through our fingers, like a bouncing ball between a shortstop's legs, so the S.O. Boys threw the tournament organizing into full gear as the warm weather finally hit. "The Summer went by pretty quickly and then we (SO Boys and Collective) chatted together at the end of July and said let's make this happen and here we are today," said Steve.

And what a day. Had it been held two days prior, the last day of Summer, no one would have been able to breathe, due to the heat. And the day before, the first day of Autumn, they would have been out there with parkas on - cold, overcast and drizzly. But on September 23, it was perfect baseball weather - just above 20C (70F), sun shining and spirits were high all day.

In the end, six teams were recruited, four of which were amalgams of local breweries - Collective Arts, Fairweather Brewing, Grain & Grit Small Batch Beers, Merit Brewing and shipped in from Guelph, Wellington Brewing. Another was local eatery, Lou Dawgs, which also supplied the food (pulled pork - tasty) for the day on the Collective beer patio. And finally a team of bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers and Twitter-Heads called Team Insta.

Joe Mrav, co-owner of Grain & Grit Small
Batch Beer in West Hamilton, comes off the
field as an inning ends. Joe told me that the
brewery couldn't field its own team, having
just nine employees (which is five more than
when I first visited in February) but that he
wanted to be part of the action anyway and
simply lent his talents to an amalgam team.

Wandering between the two diamonds for the better part of the day, I had time to talk to a bunch of friends from breweries, as well as finally meeting Facebook, Twitter and Instagram friends in person. One thing was clear. Everyone was having a great time.

When I went to the far diamond, the first person I met was Ken, aka Ontario Beer Guy. He asked where our man and Hamilton mainstay, Robert, aka Drunk Polkaroo, was on this sunny day. Well, the simple fact is we all knew. Polk, the 2018 Ontario Beer Writer of the Year (Have I mentioned this? Yes? No? Maybe once?) was working as he always is.

But we talked about how Polk, at the end of this week, was shifting within his grocery chain to another store where he will be working the night shift - 11 pm to 7 am - stocking the store. "Think about it," said Ken. "When Polk gets home at 8 am, that'll be his night-time. He'll be doing beer reviews at 10 am, rather than 10 pm. It's going to seem kind of crazy." Actually, I haven't thought of that. While the rest of us are blearily working on our second cup of coffee just to wake up, Polk will be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just getting home from work and happily drinking and talking about tasty Ontario craft beer.

Now, for the record, when I posted a picture of Ken on Twitter, I noted that not only had he volunteered his day to the tournament umpiring but at 7-foot-2, he was also the official bouncer just in case rowdiness ensued.

Neil of Southern Ontario Beer Boys awarded Jill
Harris, the big winner of the Craft Beer Raffle. In
the end, with more than $600 of beer placed on the
table by players and breweries, it got split up five
ways. While all players were asked to bring one
beer to the tourney, breweries were dropping trays!

Ken laughingly corrected me, noting he was only 6-foot-6. Frankly, I say, let's split the difference. For those keeping score at home, let it be known that Ken is now officially listed in the books as 6-foot-10.

But Ken also made a pretty huge gesture at the end of the day. After his ticket won the 50/50 Raffle, he donated his winnings of $110 right back to the cause. Quite a guy. An 6-foot-10 Ontario Beer Guy, if you will.

The rules on the day were Softball 101. You pitch to your own team but each batter only gets three pitches so you better hit one of them. But one thing I noticed through the afternoon was, as often as not, if a batter whiffed on all three pitches, the other team started chanting, "One more pitch! One more pitch!" Like I said, the afternoon was built more on fun than anything else.

That's not to say there wasn't some friendly competition. I was watching the Wellington ballers play one of their games and they seemed to be such a cohesive and skilled unit that I finally asked a player if the squad played together in a Guelph softball league. No, he noted, saying a few of them probably played some after-hours softball but this was their first time together as a team. Pretty impressive.

There you go. The first ever team to have their name
on The Collective Cup Brewer's Ball championship
trophy was Fairweather Brewing out of Hamilton.

In the mid-afternoon, before the playoff rounds even began and I was on my way home, I called for a Wellington and Collective Arts final. I was half right. Wellington did make the final but were up against Fairweather Brewing, who eventually won the whole shooting match.

Now let's get to the best part of the day - that Craft Beer Raffle. When I arrived there was probably $300-plus on that table. By the end of the day, there was so much ($600-plus worth) beer on the table that they decided to turn it into several prizes.

At the beginning of the tournament, Steve told me, "Yeah, I had asked for one beer from each player to be included in the raffle. It was literally a last minute idea, like five days ago and 'How can we raise a little bit more money?' so let's see if everyone can bring one beer. So that's at least $300-$400 worth of beer that someone's gonna get for 10 bucks." What he wasn't anticipating was that people and breweries would continue to add to the already-generous pile through the day. By the end, it was simply too much for any one person to win.

The guys from Wellington relax before a game with some beverages in
Solo Beer Cups that I feel certain must have been Gatorade or an energy
drink of that sorts. Because no way was anyone drinking beers on this
fine, sunny day at a baseball tourney featuring the people who brew it.

Unless it was me. Or that 6-foot-10 umpire. I was long gone at this point but I gave my 50/50 and Beer Raffles tickets to Tiffany, aka @travellingpint with strict instructions never to inform me if I won. (She would have totally told me, I'm sure. No one listens to me... with good reason.) But in the end, they split all that beer up into five prizes, Steve said.

"We raffled five different beer prizes," Steve messaged me. "There were three mixed two-fours of Wellington Upside IPA, Hamilton Brewery Riley Red Ale and Muskoka Detour. (The next prize was) one case of a pair of every Collective Arts beer currently produced. And a grand prize of all the individual beers that people donated - from short cans to bottles of Barrel-Aged beers." In the end, Jill Harris of the Fairweather team won the big prize.

The winning team from Fairweather Brewing all seem to be signaling
something... holding up one finger each. But I can't quite decipher this
code. Are they pointing to the sky? Is this to indicate a number of some
sort? Who can tell. But I bet they were Number One on this day of ball.

And in the end, just how much was raised for McMaster Children's Hospital, I asked.

"I need to hear back from Collective," said Steve. "But I'm pretty sure it was over $1,000. I spoke with Parker Neale (Senior Development Officer) of McMaster Children's Hospital today and they were most appreciative of the effort everyone made. A future cheque presentation with Collective Arts and Southern Ontario Beer Boys will be scheduled (shortly) at the hospital."

So a great day of fun in the sun, baseball and beer, all for a great cause. Let's face it. No one lost at this tournament. But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain...