Before Hockey Greatness, Doug Harvey Shined on the Baseball Field

Two players from the Border League (1946-51) would become Hall of Famers. One, Willard Brown, played 30 games for the Ottawa Nationals in 1950 and narrowly missed being a teammate of another Hall of Famer. This other star athlete is not in Cooperstown, however, but rather in Toronto, home of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Regarded as one of the top defensemen in NHL history (ranked third by Sports Illustrated, behind only Bobby Orr and Ray Bourque), Doug Harvey excelled in virtually every sport he played, and for a time, many wondered if he was destined to find fame on the diamond rather than on the hockey rink.1

Douglas Norman Harvey was born on December 19, 1924, in Montreal, Quebec, and as a youth was a versatile and competitive athlete. Harvey tried badminton, track, lacrosse, and boxing during his high school years, and helped lead his school’s football team to the championship game.

While at home during the summer of 1943, Doug was asked to play fast-pitch softball in the newly formed Snowdon Fastball League. In the fall of 1943, Harvey joined the Navy, and he was assigned to play for Donnacona in the Quebec Rugby Football Union. In 1944 he was sailing across the Atlantic Ocean as a gunner on a merchant ship. After the war, he resumed his hockey career with the Navy and the Junior Royals, and the following year, he starred at defense on the Senior team.

In between hockey and football seasons, Harvey continued to play softball, and in the summer of 1947, a new opportunity arose. “Thomas Gorman (one of the founders of the NHL), now back in Ottawa, having recently retired as GM of the Montreal Canadiens, approached him about playing baseball for a new franchise he had landed in the Class C Border League.”2 Gorman admired Harvey’s durability and determination. So, while he had never seen Harvey play baseball, “he offered him a contract and never regretted it.”3

Despite being very new to the sport (with second-hand equipment and holding a bat with his hands several inches apart), in his very first game with Ottawa he came off the bench and managed two hits.

That season he made it into only 10 games but made the most of it as he went 6-for-15, “an amazing performance for someone facing professional baseball pitching for the first time.”4 As the Montreal Canadiens training camp had opened, Harvey missed the playoffs.

In 1948, Harvey showed up for spring training leaner than he had been the summer before and was determined to make the team, knowing the Nationals needed an outfielder. He hit the ball hard during exhibition games, picking up where he had left off the previous fall. On the eve of the season opener, manager William Metzig announced that Harvey would be his starting right fielder.

With the opportunity to play more regularly, Harvey made the most of it, and steadily moved up in the batting order. “By August, he was the team’s cleanup hitter and was contending for the Border League batting title. He was also named as a starter in the league’s mid-season All-Star game.”5

Harvey helped the Nationals win the pennant in 1948, and finished sixth in batting (.340) and second in runs scored (107). In the playoffs, he batted .357 with two HRs and five RBIs in the first four games against Ogdensburg but missed the final game because he had to report to the Montreal Canadiens training camp.

In early May 1949, as the Nationals began spring workouts, Metzig telephoned Harvey to ask him when he would be reporting to camp. Though Metzig had the impression Harvey wanted to play, a knee injury and an impending marriage were casting his return to Ottawa in doubt. He did eventually report to the team, and despite missing spring training, Harvey continued to terrorize Border League pitchers, winning the batting title with a .351 average and leading the league in runs (121) and runs batted in (109). He also demonstrated increased power with 14 home runs and continued to display impressive speed, stealing 30 bases, and hitting 10 triples. He was once again named to the All-Star team and “to Metzig’s satisfaction, he also became a team leader.”6

Now with two outstanding seasons under his belt, major-league scouts began to take notice. Harvey was offered a spot on the National League’s Boston Braves’ Class-B team in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and the Boston Red Sox were interested as well. He declined all offers in favor of the opportunities available to him from the Montreal Canadiens.

In 1950, he agreed to play with Ottawa when available, as he now had to focus on his hockey career and his family. He played only 10 games for the Nationals that season. He did not leave baseball entirely at this time however, as he played semiprofessionally in Quebec until 1952.

Harvey was a natural both at the plate and on the basepaths, and we can never know if he had the skills and talent to make it to the major leagues, but baseball, he noted, “is a sport that I always loved to play. … If I chose hockey over baseball, it was that my chances of progress within the organization with the Canadiens were better than they were with the Boston Braves. Personally, I think I made a wise decision to abandon baseball.”7

What is known is the result of his decision to commit to hockey. As part of the great Montreal hockey dynasty in the 1950s, Harvey helped Montreal win the Stanley Cup six times including a record five in a row from 1956-1960. He also played with the New York Rangers, then briefly with Detroit and St. Louis before retiring in 1969. He was named to the NHL All-Star Game 13 times and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman a total of seven times from 1955-1962 (second only to Bobby Orr who won eight). Doug Harvey was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1973. The Canadiens retired Harvey’s number 2 in 1985, a few years before his death on December 26, 1989, in Montreal at the age of 65.

MARTIN LACOSTE recently retired as a high school music educator and is excited to have more time to devote to some of his interests, including baseball. Once an avid Montreal Expos fan, since their relocation he has refocused his passion for the sport towards its history, notably nineteenth-century Canadian baseball. He has presented papers at the Canadian Baseball History Conference, written biographies for SABR, and contributed articles for the 2022 SABR publication on the development of Canadian baseball, entitled Our Game, Too.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the sources listed in the endnotes, the author consulted various newspapers, including:

Ottawa Journal and The Gazette (Montreal) (at Newspapers.com), Gazette de Valleyfield & Ottawa Citizen (at Google News Archive), and the following papers online at the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec: Le Devoir (Montréal), Le Droit (Ottawa), La Presse (Montréal), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), Montréal-Matin, Photo Journal (Montréal), Sherbrooke Record, The Gazette (Montreal).

The author also consulted:

Baseball-reference.com

“Douglas Harvey,” The Sporting News Player Contract Cards, https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll3/id/69118/rec/5, accessed December 23, 2022.

”How Doug Harvey Loafed His Way To Fame,” http://archive.macleans.ca/article/1958/2/15/how-doug-harvey-loafed-his-way-to-fame, accessed December 5, 2022.

Photo credit: Doug Harvey, Trading Card Database.

 

NOTES

1 “Top 25 NHL Defensemen of All Time,” https://www.si.com/nhl/2015/01/16/top-25-nhl-defensemen-all-time, accessed December 8, 2022.

2 William Brown, Doug: The Doug Harvey Story (Montreal,QC: Véhicule Press, 2002), 29.

3 Lloyd McGowan, “Canadiens’ Doug Harvey Border League Slugger,” The Sporting News, February 23, 1949: 2:5.

4 William Brown, 31.

5 William Brown, 43.

6 William Brown, 56.

7 Bert Souliere, “Harvey aurait pu se créer une carrière au baseball,” La Patrie du Dimanche, December 3, 1959: Section Spéciale, 4.