2014 - Player
Association: Spokane
Jim Bedard, involved in softball since starting as a player in fastpitch in the Tri-Cities in 1969, has been the Spokane ASA Adult Player Representative since 2001. He began a two-year term as the NW Region 15 Adult Player Representative at the council meeting in which he was inducted. He is the 13th person from Spokane in the region hall of fame.
During his career he has been involved in three phases of the game – fastpitch, modified pitch and slowpitch – and in each was a player, coach and sponsor, most of the time wearing all three hats at once. He even coached a women’s modified team for a couple of years, with an unbeaten league championship team one year, and a league-champion women’s slowpitch team another year.
League championships and high finishes were commonplace for Bedard’s teams. In one 26-year stretch from 1979 to 2004 his men’s modified teams were either first or second with two undefeated seasons. He added four men’s modified and one coed city championship to that mix, a five-year run of men’s A modified fall league titles and later three league titles in men’s senior slowpitch.
Bedard played in four ASA national championship tournaments – two in men’s modified and one each in men’s 40-and-over modified and men’s senior slowpitch – with a high national finish of fourth. He also coached two of those teams.
He sponsored his first team in 1978 when he owned the Forum Tavern in Spokane Valley, and in recent years with his company Bedard & Associates, which deals in insurance and investments. He's sponsored at least one team in the 35 seasons since.
Bedard continues as a player, coach and sponsor, but his game of choice these days is in the men’s senior slowpitch program in Spokane.