Home
Team.
Murray · Hamilton Astros
My dad
taught me this game.
My dad was a baseball lifer. Deeply respected, with a career that touched more players and families than I could count. He taught me to coach, to compete, and to care about the people in the dugout more than the scoreboard.
He had a phrase he'd use with me — at the end of a hard conversation, or a tough stretch, or just to check in. "Home Team?" His way of saying: whatever else is happening, we're good. We're solid. We love each other.
After he passed, that phrase didn't go anywhere. My sisters, their families, my wife, our kids, my mother — we still call ourselves the Home Team. It's the name of our group chat. It's how we close a hard conversation. It's what we are.
So when it came time to put a name on this business, there was only one answer.
Marshall's Home Team Sports.
I grew up
in the dugout.
Baseball has been in my life since before I can remember. The first memories are the clearest ones — tee ball in the backyard, games at Exhibition Stadium with my dad, Running Bases (what most people call Pickle) with my sisters and cousins at Marshall Family Weekends. A catch with my brother-in-law at the cottage.
My sisters played too — baseball first, then softball, then adult rec ball for years after. The game has always been how our family shows up for each other.
I played from the time I was three and a half until I was nearly forty-two. Minor ball through high-level travel, college baseball, and Senior AAA in Ontario. I began coaching right out of college — travelled through Canada and the United States coaching top 16 and 18-year-olds with the Hamilton Astros and Team Ontario.
I met my wife through baseball. I had coached her brother. So had my dad. She is — without question — the greatest win of my life, in baseball or otherwise.
My son plays now. I coach his team. I try to let him have his own journey in this game — his story, not mine. But I'll never pass up a chance to have a catch with him. That part I'm keeping.
Brock Marshall · Waterdown
Three things.
Your glove is worth fixing.
A great friend will always be there for you. New gloves and friends are great, but never quite the same.
The margins matter most.
The best coaching happens in the margins — the postgame conversation, the quiet moment when a kid is figuring it out, the embrace of the struggle and the celebration of progress.
Home Team first. Always.
The game brought me everything. The family is why it matters.