Springfield derby honors Regi Martin with tribute and Wiffle Ball drama

Cameron Beaver opened Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association’s Regi Martin Memorial Home Run Derby with a first-pitch homer, and the night never drifted far from that opening jolt at Little Free Library Field behind Mother’s Brewery. The derby carried two jobs at once: it was a competition, but it also served as a living tribute to Regi Martin, whose name remained front and center from the first swing to the final out.

Reginald “Regi” Lynn Martin died on Feb. 16, 2023, at 63 after a Springfield legal career that ran from 2007 to 2016 as a family law practitioner before his appointment as family court commissioner in 2016. The Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association has long honored departed members with memorial resolutions attended by friends, family, colleagues and members of the bench and bar, and Martin’s memorial derby fit squarely inside that tradition. On March 27, the 31st Circuit Court en banc selected Kyle Kanable to fill the family court commissioner vacancy created by Martin’s death.

The 2026 SMBA Wiffle Ball season opened May 5 at Mother’s Brewery and ran every Tuesday evening through June 23 before the June 30 Home Run Derby. SMBA said the league filled 16 team spots in record time, a sign of how fully the event has taken root around the backyard field. The derby itself had already moved from the west field to Little Free Library Field through a mock-legal process that matched the association’s taste for theater, and the rules were simple enough for anyone in the crowd to follow: each batter got 10 outs, and anything that did not clear the fence counted as an out.

The field for the derby read like a league roster and a neighborhood reunion at the same time, with Scott Skocy, Joseph Reid, Cameron Beaver, Doug Reynolds, Alec Martinez, Andy Hosmer, Josh Christensen, Ben Stringer, Kenzie Hatman and Alden Smith in the mix. Skocy and Reid opened scoreless, Beaver immediately seized the night and finished with five home runs, and Reynolds, who had pitched and played three straight games, managed one. Martinez, the 2025 inaugural derby champion at Little Free Library Field, sent four balls over the fence, while Hosmer finally broke through after several near-misses and finished with one.

That mix of returning names, familiar ground and a memorial title gave the derby its shape. Martin’s legacy stayed active not as a plaque on the wall, but as the reason the league gathered again at Mother’s Brewery, under the same simple rule that governs every swing: clear the fence or record another out.