The city is trying to bring back the same world-class baseball event it successfully hosted three years ago.
The Thunder Bay International Baseball Association submitted a bid to host the 2015 world junior baseball championships, the same event the city hosted in the summer of 2010. Monday marked the deadline for cities to submit bids to Baseball Canada, with a decision being made by the end of October to determine the Canadian representative to the International Baseball Federation.
Larry Hebert, president of the Thunder Bay International Baseball Association, said the success of the 2010 tournament made the decision to bid a no-brainer.
“We just thought it went so well fan-wise, entertainment-wise and definitely monetarily that we wanted to bring it back,” Hebert said. “We look at this is the keystone event that we could host here.”
The 2010 tournament saw nearly 50,000 spectators attend the games which were split between Port Arthur Stadium and Baseball Central.
The organization had previously bid on this year’s tournament, which was awarded to Taiwan. Hebert said the group decided to bid on the 2015 event after being unsuccessful for this year’s event.
The entry fee cost to bid is $120,000, which he said was left over from the 2010 tournament.
Hebert said the 2010 edition of the tournament resulted in $6 million worth of economic impact for the city, and he said Baseball Canada brought in more revenue than anticipated prior to the start of the tournament.
