By IAN WILSON
The Western Canadian Baseball League is going to be rooting around in southeast Saskatchewan this summer.
Carnduff, Saskatchewan – the hometown of one of the league’s biggest star players in recent seasons – will play host to the annual Rural Roots Baseball Classic on Friday, May 29th.
Highlighting the event will be a regular-season WCBL game between the Saskatoon Berries and the Weyburn Beavers, with first pitch scheduled for 6:05 p.m. in the agricultural town of 1,150 people.
“We are very excited for the second ever Rural Roots Baseball Classic. This is our version of Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams game,” said WCBL President Kevin Kvame in a press release.
“We will move this game around each year to a historical baseball location in our footprint and put on a regular-season WCBL game with two of our franchises. We were thrilled to kick this off in Oyen, Alberta last year and we cannot wait to show off our league to Carnduff in 2026.”
The Berries are tied to Carnduff through hard-hitting outfielder Carter Beck. The lefty slugger was raised in Carnduff and has suited up in 106 games for Saskatoon since the Berries inaugural season in 2024. In that time, Beck has a .400 batting average, 121 runs, 25 doubles, 24 home runs, 96 RBI and 36 stolen bases over 435 at bats. He was named the WCBL Rookie of the Year, Most Outstanding Canadian and All-Star Game MVP in 2024, as well as a WCBL First Team All-Star in both 2024 and 2025.
“It means a lot. I think it is super cool that Carnduff has been granted this opportunity. It will really be the first time the far southeast corner has an opportunity to watch some WCBL action. I think it will open some eyes of kids to what baseball can look like and what you can do with it. So, I am super excited that Carnduff will host this game, and I know that it will be run very well,” said Carter, adding his hometown played a major role in shaping his love of baseball.
“When I was really young, baseball in Carnduff was pretty limited, mainly just the Senior Astros. I would go to every home game to watch my dad play and chase down foul balls, hoping to collect enough quarters to buy a freezie or two. Once school let out each day, I was able to spend hours at the ball diamonds for batting practices that my dad ran. A lot of kids from my team would come out, and we would all get to hit on the field.”
He added: “Carnduff has a beautiful ball complex with four smaller diamonds and one full‑size baseball diamond, and it’s been really cool to see how much the game has grown since I was a kid. When I first started playing, we didn’t even have proper team jerseys, just red jerseys that said ‘Carnduff.’ Now, all the teams play as the Astros and wear the same logo, which really shows how much baseball has grown and become a big part of our community.”
Carter’s father, Blair Beck, has been a long-time baseball coach in the area. He was the head coach of the 15U Ray Carter Cup team from Saskatchewan that competed in Summerside, Prince Edward Island in 2025.
“Obviously, with Carter and the success he’s had in the WCBL, it means a lot to our community. And people are very invested in the WCBL because of the success he’s had,” said Blair, who was named the 2021 Baseball Sask Coach of the Year.
“We just were really excited to get that quality of ball here.”
Added Blair: “It’s such a unique event. We don’t get opportunities like this in small towns very often … when they come to our area, it just means so much more to everybody to be able just to go out and go to the diamonds locally and to see that quality. I don’t have to tell you about the success of WCBL guys in the last draft years and those kind of things. Those kind of players exist. And to have them at our diamond and get a chance to show off our diamond in our town, we’re just super excited.”
While the Berries connection to Carnduff through the Beck family stands out, there are also links between the area and the Weyburn Beavers, who will serve as the official home team for the game against Saskatoon during the WCBL’s opening weekend of action.
Trent Dorrance of Alameda has coached alongside Blair Beck with several Saskatchewan teams. He is the head coach of the Southeast Twins 18U AAA baseball team in Estevan and a director for the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League (SPBL). His son, Tyren, represented the Weyburn Beavers for a number of years. The outfielder took the field in 69 games with the Beavers from 2022 through 2025.
“He was kind of the first guy in this new generation to go to college (to play baseball), and he’s four or five years older than some of the guys around. Lots of guys in the area are like, ‘Hey, look, Tyren’s going to school in California. That’s really cool. He’s from Alameda. I could do that, right?’ He set the standard for everybody else … so, hopefully the kids that are coming up today get to see that, see what Carter’s done, and different guys have done and are like, ‘Hey man, I can do that,'” said Blair.
Carnduff was incorporated as a town in 1905 and baseball has been a part of the community’s fabric since the very beginning. A group of senior ball players from Carnduff won the Souris Valley League championship in 1909 and a Thunder Creek squad from the area operated as a nine-man team in 1910. By 1913, parked cars would crowd around diamonds, where spectators could partake in the baseball action from the comfort of their vehicles.
Carnduff’s involvement in the Saskota Baseball League – a senior men’s circuit based in southeast Saskatchewan and southwest Manitoba – also extends back for over a century. In 2003, the Astros became the most recent Carnduff iteration in the league and they captured a championship at the Jack Harbourne Memorial Tournament in 2019.
“I love going back and looking at the old pictures from like a hundred years ago and just thinking about where they got the jerseys or gloves or, you know, the things we all take for granted today and how that love of baseball gets passed down over the generations. And guys today still get that opportunity to go and play a great game,” said Blair.
The community is supported by baseball infrastructure that received a major overhaul in the 1990s. Landscaping for the Carnduff Ball Park began in 1992 and five diamonds were completed as part of that project by 1996. The facilities are considered to be among the best in Saskatchewan and have played host to several provincial softball and baseball championship events.
“We’re really proud of our ball diamonds and we keep them busy. We’ve got 100-plus kids registered for ball in a town of 1,200 people. So, obviously ball plays a pretty major part, but we want to also expand that into the communities around and keep everybody active in the sport, instead of just maybe like a small pocket. We want to continue to grow that in Carnduff and outside of Carnduff, as well,” said Blair.
“I think that community spirit that comes out in small towns when you get a chance to do something like this, it gets everybody excited and they really want to do a good job. And I think at the end of the day, we will.”
This is the second annual Rural Roots Baseball Classic event. The first one took place in 2025 when the Sylvan Lake Gulls and Lethbridge Bulls squared off in Oyen, Alberta.
The league describes it as a “celebration of the towns and cities that served as pioneers for the game.”
Tales of Baseball 