A daily game of catch with his great uncle Chester Faith was the catalyst that led to Robert Faith’s life-long dedication to the sport of baseball.
The Garrick product was seven when he started playing minor baseball. Those daily practice sessions with his great uncle – alongside the support of his grandfather, Dave Faith – paid immediate dividends as he excelled early and continued to improve into his teenage years.
More than five and a half decades later, Faith – now a 66-year-old cancer survivor living in Lafleche – keeps his finger on the pulse of the sport he has loved so long.
In August, Faith was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame’s Individual Category in Battleford.
“It’s really nice to be recognized for the time and effort you put into a sport,” Faith said during a conversation with the Review last week. “No one does it for the recognition, but it’s nice that your peers would take note of the things you’ve accomplished through the years.”
Growing up near Choiceland through the 1950s and 1960s meant baseball in the summer and hockey in the winter. Faith’s enthusiasm for the summer sport sprouted through his endless association with the people and places that made up Northeast Saskatchewan’s baseball country. He was batboy for the Garrick Senior Baseball Club, where the spark to be a pitcher was lit. He was only 13 when, short of players, the team asked him to play right field.
“They told me just to do what I could to catch the ball and to crouch down low while batting to make the strike zone as small as possible,” he said.
The following year, Faith played Bantam baseball in Nipawin. The left-hander led the league in pitching and was second in batting. While there, he was also called up to join the Midget club and, on occasion, the Nipawin Lawn Masters, the town’s representative’s in the North East Senior Baseball League.
“As a kid in the little wee town of Garrick, every town around had a team. There was minor ball from 10 years old and up to ladies playing fastball. Every weekend on a Saturday or a Sunday, there was a sports day,” he said while describing the ample opportunities to play set out for him.
“There were three sports: ball in the summer and hockey and curling in the winter. In Garrick, curling in the winter was a family thing, then you played hockey.”
As a Grade 10 student, Faith, a friend and two teachers formed the Choiceland Red Sox, which competed in the Torch River Baseball League. Two years later, he won the league’s batting championship and was second among pitchers just behind teammate Dave Pagan, who was also later inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame.
Together, Faith and Pagan took a leap at playing professionally in 1969 when they attended a Major League Baseball camp in Oliver, B.C. Both were chosen to play at Bellevue College in Washington State. However, Faith preferred to be on the field rather than playing in a pitching rotation and returned to Choiceland the following season to resume his senior baseball career.
Faith believes it was his lack of speed that really cost him a chance at the Big League. He wanted to be on the field every day, so he attempted to break into the pros at first-base.
“I was done when the stop watches came out,” he said. “I was never a fast runner... It doesn’t matter how well you can bat or field the ball. If you can’t run at a certain pace, they won’t look at you after that. The guys I played ball with over the years always kidded me that they could clock me on a sundial. My greatest weakness was that I did not run well.”
Pagan went on to play five seasons in the Major Leagues, pitching for the New York Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles, the Seattle Mariners and the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1973 to 1977.
Back in Saskatchewan, Faith attended university to become a physical education teacher. Besides a stint at first-base and pitcher with the Prince Albert Teramatics in the Western Canada Junior Baseball League, he played on several senior club line-ups in the North East Baseball League, the Torch River Baseball League, the North Central Baseball League and in Manitoba between 1972 and 1983.
Faith was instrumental in starting a baseball league in Flin Flon, Man. while working there in the late 1970s. He was also a pitcher with the Regina Red Sox, where he could throw the ball a blistering 90-plus miles an hour.
Beginning in the 1980s, Faith also participated in the sport as a coach and umpire at the provincial and national levels.
“Some of the guys used to say I complained so much about umpiring that I should become one myself, so I went to some schools and did some umpiring for a while,” he said.
He did not stop playing, though. When he was employed with Alberta’s Department of Education, he stayed in the game as a player and a coach. He also returned to Saskatchewan to join various squads when he could.
Faith also has a handful of provincial titles on his resumé, the last at the Intermediate division at the age of 42. He was the championship-game’s winning pitcher at a level well below his status as qualified Masters division athlete (aged 40 plus).
Faith moved to Lafleche with his wife, Jodi, in 2003. Despite a battle with cancer, he is still involved in the game, teaching young pitchers.
“I still umpire a little bit and I do more specialty coaching now,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of guys in their teens and early twenties that I spend time teaching the art of pitching.”
Faith was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame at the organization’s 2017 induction ceremony on Aug. 19 at the Alex Dillabough Centre in Battleford.
