Devlin tournament honours Gus Lindberg with new name

    Devlin’s annual slo-pitch tournament was renamed on Saturday, adding the late Gus Lindberg’s name alongside fellow umpire Kingsley Downs to become the Kingsley Downs and Gus Lindberg Memorial Slo-pitch Tournament.
    Devlin Slo-pitch League president Ron Kellar said the name change had been proposed at a meeting to honour the umpire’s dedication to the tournament and local baseball, but it was because of Downs’ wife Maureen’s insistence that the change was made.
    “We just left it to the family,” Kellar said. “We left it up to them because we thought it was theirs.”
    Officials took a break from the week-long tournament just before 1 p.m. on Saturday to raise a banner to the backstop, and held a moment of silence for the long-time local umpire who passed away in November of last year.
    Kingsley Downs’ son, Scott, said a few words in Lindberg’s honour, explaining that he was very close to his family. He compared the emotional impact to that when the tournament was named in his father’s honour in 2003.
    “It was something you can’t even put into words, how it’s affected my family,” he said.
    He added both umpires were an important part of the Devlin softball tournament.
    “It was fun,” he said. “They looked forward to it every year and everyone treated them like a million bucks.”
    Games continued shortly after under the new banner, and the championships were held the day after. In the final game, Village People beat Shade 19-12 on the back of an eight-run fifth inning to end with a score very much indicative of the runs totalled throughout the tournament.
    Also held on Sunday were the two consolation finals. In the ‘B’ Final, FUBAR beat Good Vibrations 14-5 and the River Rats beat Variety Zone 11-9 in the ‘C’ Final.
    The teams caught a bit of a break in terms of rainouts. With 21 games slated between last Wednesday and Sunday, there were no cancellations or major delays despite some fierce rain and wind throughout the week.
    “We got lucky,” Kellar admitted. “I guess you could say Kingsley and Gus were looking down on us.”
    Kellar added that the Downs family’s continued involvement in the tournament is a personal highlight. The family regularly fields a team—and a competitive one that won all but it’s final game this year.