Nino Fabbro didn't see the ball coming.
But like a Muhammad Ali haymaker, it arrived with a knockout punch.
Until that hard stitched-leather grapefruit nailed him square on the head, Fabbro's only concern was keeping the inning alive for his team in what was a close game of an all-Prince George playoff final at a Kelowna senior men's fastball tournament.
"It was a double-play ball to Eddie Dent at shortstop and I'm running from first base to second base," said Fabbro. "We needed the run and I didn't slide and Eddie threw the ball and hit me in the head and then he hit me with his body and I was out cold."
Fabbro was taken to the hospital, knowing by the time he left the field his team was losing badly. Still feeling the effects of a concussion, he was released and his wife Lori decided to drive him back to Prince George. His tournament was over.
"We got to about Winfield (22 kilometes away) and he phones the ballpark in Kelowna and said, "How are we doing?' and found out they came back after he got hurt," said Lori. "He said, 'Turn around, we have to go back to the park, and he went back in the game, because he wasn't out (and was still an eligible player), and they won."
Looking back on four decades of making fastball history in Prince George as a player, coach, manager and league administrator, it's not the games that Nino Fabbro remembers best, it's the people he's met along the way, and many of those old pals showed up Saturday for his induction into the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame.
"It's what happens after the games are all over, that's what it's all about," said Fabbro, "Right now it's people like Chad Ghostkeeper and Randy Potskin, and there are others, who are coaching the youth and doing things for them."
The highlight of Fabbro's 20-year playing career at third base came in 1977 when he helped the Navy Ensigns bring the provincial senior B and Western Canadian titles to Prince George. After he quit playing, when he wasn't serving as an umpire or making improvements at the ballpark, he found time to coach his kids' minor softball teams and was at the helm of a long line of successful junior and senior fastball squads.
"We got a lot of satisfaction winning games we had no chance to win," he said. "We played a senior A team from Grande Prairie (in the early 1990s) and we were a junior team with Gibby Chasse, Randy Potskin, Chad Ghostkeeper, Johnny Pagnotta and all those guys. We beat them, and the money we won paid our way to the provincial championship."
Fabbro sacrificed much of his free time to promote fastball and realizes his family paid the price when he was only rarely around the house during ball season. One of his greatest legacies is Spruce City Stadium, which – with him as the guiding force – underwent major renovations in 1990 while he was president of the Spruce City Fastball Association. Fabbro convinced local businesses to get involved and gathered donations of material and equipment, and he had his students at school build the roof trusses and the outfield bleachers in prefabricated sections.
Fabbro retired in 2002 from his job as a building construction teacher at College Heights secondary school and has lived in Peachland since 2010.
The accomplishments of three other hall of fame inductees were recognized Saturday at the Hart Community Centre. Hockey player/coach/official Orv Claffey, baseball administrator Audrey Foster and fastball coach/builder Charlie Ghostkeeper, who died in 2012, were included in the 11th induction ceremony.
"I always enjoyed hockey – I only played it for 70 years, that's not very long, is it," said a beaming Claffey, who turned 82 on Sunday. "I started when I was seven and quit when I was 77, when I had both knees replaced. I wanted to play more but didn't want to take the chance of hurting my knees."
Claffey, who came west from Saskatchewan at age 17 in 1953 to play for the Prince George Lumbermen senior team. said the only time he was hurt had nothing to do with the physical demands of the game but a manager's decision to cut him loose from the Prince George Mohawks of the Cariboo Hockey League in 1969.
"Trent Beattie brought in Bob McCusker, a good friend of his from the Vancouver Canucks (of the old Western Hockey League) and he took my card, so I went out to play in Houston (for the senior Luckies)," said Claffey. "We won the championship that year with the Luckies and here they didn't even make the playoffs. I was quite happy about that."
Foster got involved with baseball because her kids were playing and she started out as a volunteer with the Nechako Little League in the late-1970s. As District 4 director she started the Challenger Baseball League for players with mental and physical disabilities in 1993. In 1996, Foster brought the Canadian Little League championship to the city for the first time. Hosting the six-team tournament at Joe Martin Field was a mammoth undertaking made possible by a small army of volunteers.
"That Canadian Little League tournament was a big one, and thank heavens we got the Multiplex (now CN Centre) when we did because we ran a concession there and got hundreds of volunteers there through working that one winter at Cougar games," said Foster.
"People would stop and talk to us at the hot dog stand or the ice cream stand and the next thing, they were signed up and they had a job. Nechako Little League was the second-largest Little League in B.C. We only had kids from six to 12 years old involved and we had 457 kids."
As a taskmaster, Foster got people involved in making improvements to Joe Martin Field and was the instigator behind the project to build the four-diamond complex known as Volunteer Park.
Charlie Ghostkeeper's wife Lucy accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of her husband, who died of cancer at 73. Their four children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren attended the ceremony. Charlie's involvement in getting kids involved in sports and teaching them to respect the rules of games they played was his greatest legacy. That spirit lives on in the city's annual aboriginal fastball and hockey tournaments.
'He would have been proud of this but he didn't like to be the centre of attention, he liked to be in the background of everything," said Lucy. "He just loved helping children. He tried to help them as much as he could."
