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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Long ball

Home Run Sports hits grand slam with new dugout, er, digs

By: David Sanderson

30/05/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

KEN GIGLIOTTI WINNIPEG FREE PRESS / May 26 2009 - 090526 - Detour ICON - Home Run Sports new home

Note to readers who are big on tourist attractions like Arborg's colossal curling rock or Komarno's monster mosquito: the new Home Run Sports location boasts a baseball bat that gives new meaning to the term "heavy hitter.""It's the sort of thing you're going to want to drop in (doesn't he mean "swing by?") and see even if you're not a sports nut," says owner Scott Neiles, referring to the eight-metre-tall Rawlings bat that's currently turning heads inside his new location at 20 De La Seigneurie Blvd.

Neiles and his partners, who include his wife Carla and ex-Washington Capitals star Mike Ridley, have always considered Home Run Sports a destination-type store. But after they decided to expand, they asked themselves what they could do to create a more unique shopping environment for their longtime customers.

"Obviously, everyone's excited about the added space and openness but what really has people talking are things like the 24-foot football (field goal) posts and the section of (artificial) turf," Neiles says, showing off the weeks-old, 21,000-square foot facility. "We're also hoping to install a batting cage where we can run some indoor clinics."

Home Run Sports wasn't exactly a field of dreams when original owner John Hindle began operating out of his basement in 1986. Hindle, a Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and former general manager for the Goldeyes (1994-2001), acknowledges that there were detractors who thought he'd taken one too many fastballs to the noggin when he started a boys-of-summer business in a wintry, hockey-mad city like Winnipeg.

Neiles concedes there were days when he wondered the same thing. "I would literally go a week without having a single person come in the store," says Neiles, a fellow hall of famer who started working at Home Run Sports in 1993 when it was located at 970 St. Mary's Rd. "I'd ask John what was going on and he'd say, 'Just wait -- it's going to be crazy.' Sure enough, as soon as March rolled around, every week was twice as busy as the one before."

A larger store on St. Mary's Road followed. So, too, did a move away from a baseball-only inventory after Hindle sold Home Run Sports to Neiles and Co. seven years ago. Nowadays, Home Run Sports stocks volleyball, football and curling equipment, as well as supplying team uniforms for schools and sports associations from across North America.

"We briefly discussed the fact that we were saddled with a baseball name," says Neiles. "But by then the business was too well-established to seriously consider a change."

Baseball and softball are still the store's bread and butter: players and coaches can pick up everything from two-dollar whiffle balls to $2,700 pitching machines.

"Except we've kind of grown for all the wrong reasons -- a lot of stores don't want to stock ball equipment because it's considered a tough sell," Neiles says, citing parents who think nothing of spending $300 for a composite hockey stick but hem and haw over a $20 batting helmet. "It's because we were raised in a society where when you played ball as a kid, you were given everything -- the balls, the bats, the catcher's equipment.... And even though baseball is cheaper than other sports, there's still this mindset out there that it should be free."

Neiles finds the general reaction to the new digs amusing

"When we were on St. Mary's everybody seemed to love us," he says, picking up a ball and tossing it from hand to hand, "but now they're like, 'It's about time -- that other place was a disgrace.'"

For more information and store hours, visit www.homerunsports.ca

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 30, 2009 F3

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