For better or worse, everyone had a favorite memory and an opinion of Bob Addy, even when their views seemed contradictory. Cap Anson famously described him as an “odd sort of genius” because, to the horror of the single-minded Anson, Addy “quit the game because he thought he could do better at something else.”4 Yet others found his passion for baseball unsurpassed. “Bob Addy is the modern wonder,” declared one sportswriter. “If base ball ever dies out, we believe Bob will want to die. His whole soul is wrapped up in the sport. To see him run in from the extreme field, and hear him beg for a high in-field ball, like a child begging for a bun, is amusing.”5 Cone agreed that Addy’s “temperament was such that he could never miss seeing a game.”6

On one point there was no dispute: that he was unforgettable. “Everybody remembers Bob Addy,” declared a Hartford Courant reporter in 1886 – twelve years after Addy had spent a mere six months playing ball in that city.7 More than three decades after Addy had played his last major league game, the nickname of rookie Shoeless Joe Jackson prompted a sportswriter to recall that “the famous second baseman, Bob Addy, did that very often, as he was much troubled with sore feet.”8

But it was not just his eccentricities and his wit that made Bob Addy so memorable. For one thing, he was one of the best players of his era in spite of being very late to take up baseball. In addition, he played the game with a spirit of reckless abandon that led teammate George Bird to call him “about the toughest fellow I ever saw. He would go after anything, any way, and his hands were broken and battered out of shape.”9 Finally, Bob Addy was the first Canadian major leaguer and, unlike many early Canadian-born players, he had actually grown up there.

When and where Bob Addy was born has long been a disputed issue, with most sources indicating that he was born in Rochester, New York, in 1845. Addy seems to have given this information out in his later years, but there is overwhelming evidence that he was actually born in Canada. He was living in Port Hope, Ontario, when the 1861 Canadian census was taken – his birthplace was listed as Upper Canada (Ontario), and his age was given as 19. Nine years later, he was living in Rockford with many of his baseball teammates and was reported to have been born in Canada around 1842. It was not until the 1880 census that he was first listed as being born in New York.

While the census data points to a Canadian birthplace, it is other evidence that clinches the matter. A. G. Spalding, who knew Addy from their days on the Forest City Club of Rockford, described Addy as “originally a Canadian cricketer.”10 Canada was also given as Addy’s birthplace in an 1874 book written by George Wright.11 Finally, when the Forest City Club stopped in Hamilton, Ontario, during an 1870 tour, the locals learned of his Canadian birth and Addy became “the object of special pride on the part of the Canucks, they claimed him from the start as one of them.” This made Addy the subject of kidding from his teammates and he finally declared: “I don’t care nothing for them, I tell you I don’t care nothing about ’em.’”12

Exactly when he was born remains unclear. Late in life he began claiming an 1845 year of birth, but the evidence suggests otherwise. His tombstone has 1838, which would be very intriguing if true, but the source of this information is not known. The 1860 and 1870 censuses suggest that he was born around 1842, and that seems most plausible.

Bob Addy reportedly “belonged to several cricket clubs in the Dominion,” but any details are lost to history.13 Nor is much known about his early years except that he was born shortly after his parents emigrated from Ireland and that his father, whose name appears to have been James, had died by 1857.

It becomes easier to follow Addy’s trail in 1861, when he appears in Port Hope on the Canadian census, already working in his lifelong profession as a tinsmith. Listed with him are his mother Ellen (age 44, born Ireland), his younger brother James (17, born Upper Canada, a saddler), and his older brother George (25, born Ireland, a clerk). George’s presence in Port Hope is a bit odd, since he had been listed in Ogle County, Illinois, on the 1860 U.S. census and got married in that county in February of 1861. So perhaps he was still in the process of relocating to the United States.

By 1866 George Addy was a well-established Ogle County produce dealer with two young children, and Bob had followed him there. Both brothers also started playing on the Clipper Base Ball Club of the nearby town of Rochelle. While the club itself had limited success, Bob Addy made the sort of indelible impression that he so often did. A. G. Spalding would later recall paying a fateful visit to Rochelle in June of 1866 with the Forest City Club of Rockford, during which “Robert Addy startled the players of the Forest Citys by a diving slide for second base. None of us had ever witnessed the play before, though it may have been in vogue. Certainly we were quite nonplussed.”14

On the basis of Spalding’s comments, Addy has often been credited with inventing the slide. It would be nice to report that this was true, but baseball innovations are rarely that clear-cut. Slides seem to have gradually evolved from accidental slips while trying to make a sudden stop at a base into deliberate evasive maneuvers. While a slide in 1866 would still have been a novelty, there is no way to definitively pinpoint the first intentional slide.15

What we can be sure of is that Addy’s play made a vivid impression the visiting players. “He showed wonderful ability as a ball player in this game,” recollected Spalding, “by practically playing the whole game, captain of the team, pitcher, catcher, and, in fact, took every position where the player had developed weakness by making an error.”16 Both his standout play and his tendency to try to cover the entire field would become recurring themes of the career of the “celebrated base ball character.”

Addy was soon offered a place on the Forest City Club and a job at a Rockford hardware store, both of which he accepted. It was a coup for the Forest Citys and the start of the club’s highly successful policy of recruiting players from the surrounding countryside.

The Forest City Club was still experimenting with lineups, and Addy played all four infield positions during the remainder of the 1866 season. He began a two-year stint as a club director in 1867, and it was during these years that the Forest Citys began using a regular lineup in which Addy played second base and batted leadoff. The new stability paid off on July 25, 1867, when the Forest Citys traveled to Chicago to face the Nationals of Washington, a seemingly invincible club that was making a historic tour of the South and Midwest. Spalding recalled that “we were all frightened nearly to death, with possibly the exception of Bob Addy, who kept up his nerve and courage by ‘joshing’ the National players as they came to bat with witticisms.”17 Addy also launched his reputation as a clutch performer by scoring four runs and turning a key double play as the Forest Citys pulled off a stunning 29-23 upset that put the club on the national map.18

The Forest Citys made a gradual transition from amateurism to professionalism over the next three years, a process that entailed the replacement of several starters. Only three players remained fixtures in the club’s lineup: Spalding, Addy, and a young protégé of Addy’s named Roscoe Barnes. Spalding and Barnes went on to become superstars in the first major league, the National Association (1871-1875). Addy is much less remembered today, in large part because his National Association statistics are not on a par with Spalding’s and Barnes’s gaudy numbers. But those who saw him play, especially during his years in Rockford, believed that he too was a star of the first magnitude.

George Wright wrote that Addy was “a thorough ball-player, and a most earnest worker; a splendid base runner, a good batter, and a lively fielder. He is a valuable member of any organization from the fact of his steady play having [a] tendency to infuse confidence into the minds of his fellow-players.”19 Anson recalled Addy as “a good, hard, hustling ballplayer, a good base runner and a hard hitter.”20 As late as 1876, he was still considered “one of the hardest working players and best run-getters in the country.”21

Such judgments do not mean much when they are not supported by the statistical record, and a superficial look at Addy’s National Association and National League statistics suggests that he was a run-of-the mill major leaguer. But such a conclusion can only be drawn by overlooking the key fact that by the time those leagues were formed, Bob Addy was already on the downside of his career – exactly how far past his prime he was again depends on the knotty issue of his correct age. While we have less extensive statistics from the 1869 and 1870 seasons, when Addy was in his prime, the available records show that he deserved to be regarded as one of the game’s best players.

In 1869 Addy averaged well over five hits per game, a figure that ranked him first among all the players on the more than 400 clubs that were members of the National Association of Base Ball Players.22 While the absence of at-bats make the comparison from club to club an imperfect one, he also easily topped a club that included Ross Barnes and many other future major leaguers in both hits per game and total bases.23 Barnes was only 19 that year, but the following year, it was again Addy who led the star-studded Forest City Club in batting, collecting 204 hits in 56 games.24

These two glorious seasons almost never happened. As the start of the 1869 season approached, Addy was talking seriously about heading west to “seek his fortune.”25 But in the end he decided to stay in Rockford for another summer, and he enjoyed a season that has to be ranked as the best of his career, since his five-plus hits per game were compiled while making the switch to the game’s most demanding defensive position.

Forest City catcher George King had chosen to retire after the 1868 season, so Addy moved behind the plate. Catchers wore no equipment except a rubber mouthpiece, making the position extraordinarily dangerous, and they also needed great dexterity to prevent passed balls. Working with a hard-throwing pitcher like Spalding was especially onerous, but Addy made a seamless transition to the new position. Even more impressively, when he saw Doug Allison of the “Red Stockings” of Cincinnati standing close to the plate to catch, he immediately made the same decision.26

The 1869 season is remembered as the undefeated season of the “Red Stockings” of Cincinnati, but it was also a memorable campaign for the Forest Citys. The Rockford club, although still ostensibly amateur, lost only four games all season – all of them to the openly professional Red Stockings. In one of those contests, the Forest Citys came within two outs of pulling off an upset that would have changed baseball history.      

The match was played in Cincinnati on July 24, and “Addy was the hero of the game in every way. Not only was he catching directly behind the bat, something he had done only at critical moments until two weeks before, but he allowed only two passed balls to [Cincinnati fill-in catcher Asa] Brainard’s five, scored four runs in five times at bat, one a home run, and continued the game after having been knocked flat by a foul in the sixth inning.”27 Addy’s insistence on remaining in the game after the gruesome injury led a Cincinnati paper to praise his “commendable pluck.”28

More than half a century after the fact, Addy’s brother-in-law Victor Wheeler still remembered the game vividly. “Bob was absolutely unafraid,” he recalled. “He would step into the fastest ball and it didn’t seem that anything could get away from those twisted fingers of his, strong as steel cables. Down in Cincinnati that day they carried him to the players’ tent on the grounds, with part of his teeth knocked loose, and sent for a doctor. Addy wouldn’t stay. He came back on the field and took up his place behind the batter. Then the game had to stop while Cincinnati stood up and cheered him for ten minutes.”29

Led by Addy’s heroics, the Forest Citys were clinging to a 14-12 lead as the game went to the bottom of the ninth inning. But after the first batter was retired, the Red Stockings mounted a three-run rally to preserve their undefeated season.

Bob Addy left Rockford at the conclusion of the 1869 season and announced that he would not be returning. But “the week before the election Bob was back again, swearing to locate permanently, and establishing himself in a tinning and jobbing shop opposite the court house.”30  He returned to second base in 1870 as the Forest Citys completed the transition to open professionalism. The club compiled a 42-13-1 record during a prolonged schedule that included Addy’s previously mentioned return to Canada and that climaxed with an October 15 victory over the Red Stockings. On one of the club’s few off-days, on August 13, Addy found time to get married in Rockford.

The winter following the 1870 season saw the birth of the National Association and the departure of three club stalwarts, as Spalding, Barnes, and Cone all chose to sign with Boston. The Forest Citys nonetheless decided to enter the new league, and Addy thus became the club’s longest-tenured member (with the exception of Al Barker, who played sparingly). A much younger lineup resulted, with Addy the grizzled veteran among a group of newcomers who included the nineteen-year-old Cap Anson.

Scott Hastings is now listed in record books as the manager of the 1871 Forest Citys, but there seems to be no basis for this designation. Most baseball clubs of the 1870s did not have anyone whose role resembles that of today’s manager, so listings of this sort are just an exercise in futility. Hiram Waldo, a Rockford bookseller, was the man who signed players and made player personnel decisions, while Addy was named the club’s captain and made in-game decisions.31

Addy got off to a sizzling start, pounding Asa Brainard, the former Red Stockings pitcher, for four hits in the club’s second National Association game and then collecting five hits two games later to lead the Forest Citys to a thrilling extra-inning come-from-behind victory over the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne. But then he cooled off, and so did his teammates. The season was not a success, but neither was it anywhere near as bad as the 4-21 record that appears in the record books – the club actually won eight of its 25 games but had to forfeit four wins when Hastings was ruled to have been ineligible.32

The Great Chicago Fire put a temporary halt to professional baseball in the region then known as the West and a permanent end to the brilliant career of the Forest City Club of Rockford. For a while, it appeared it would also mark the end of Bob Addy’s career, as the newlywed elected to remain in Rockford and pursue business.

He returned to the diamond in 1873 with the White Stockings of Philadelphia (one of two National Association entries from that city that year). His new club won seventeen of its first nineteen games to grab a commanding lead in the pennant race. But in early June, Addy requested and received his release. Despite his short stay in Philadelphia, he had made such a vivid impression that he was “he was presented with a magnificent gold watch by the directors of the club, and was tendered a dinner.”33

Business concerns were said to have been the reason for his return to Rockford, but a more personal matter may have been the determining factor. Bob and Ida Addy’s only son was a boy named George. Following in the family tradition, George would later give contradictory information about his date of birth, but it appears most likely that he was born on August 1, 1873.

Shortly after that date, following a two-month absence, Bob Addy signed to join Spalding and Barnes with Boston. The Red Stockings were nine games behind his old team at the time of the signing, but he provided a much-needed spark. He batted .355 in 31 games, and Boston won twenty-six of those games to cruise to the pennant. Tim Murnane later credited Addy with having “pulled the Bostons through for the championship by his fine work at right field and timely hitting and baserunning in 1873.”34

The hard-won pennant was jeopardized by claims that Addy was ineligible because of having played for a club in Rockford after leaving Philadelphia. But former Forest City Club officer A. N. Nicholds attested that Rockford had no club of any kind, and that Addy had merely taken part in a contest involving “little boys.” The controversy simmered down, and Boston was awarded the pennant.35

Addy spent the 1874 season in Hartford, his last year as a regular infielder. At season’s end, it was announced that he planned to organize a new professional club in Springfield, Massachusetts. But he was slow to sign players, prompting speculation that he would only enlist the services of a pitcher and catcher and would cover the rest of the field by himself.36  Eventually plans for the Springfield Club were abandoned, and Addy instead returned to the White Stockings of Philadelphia where, according to one rather far-fetched retrospective article, he pretty much ended up fulfilling the prediction that he would have to cover the entire field.

The roster of the White Stockings was strewn with talented players who had suspect reputations. According to this article, “in one game eight of the players were fixed to lose. The one true man was Bob Addy … It was thought by those who were engineering the ‘skin’ that it would not be necessary to buy Addy, and besides he had the reputation of being a square player.” Throughout the contest, Addy did “great work in the field and was striving to win, covering a wonderful amount of ground,” even while his teammates were conspiring to lose. Finally, at a pivotal moment Addy made a long run and saved the game by catching a ball that a teammate intended to let drop.     When the teammate realized what had happened, “his disgust was supreme, and in a tone of contempt and scorn he remarked: ‘Look here, Bob Addy, do you want to play the whole game?’”37

The story is at the very least exaggerated, and may be pure fabrication. Yet it is fascinating how well it captures two of the characteristics that were at the heart of Bob Addy’s reputation as a “celebrated base ball character”: his tendency to venture into the territory of teammates and his scrupulous honesty in an era when rumors of game-fixing were rampant. As Anson would say, “He was honest as the day is long.”38

After the 1875 season the National League was formed as a successor to the National Association. The main motive for this coup was that it legitimized Chicago’s William Hulbert’s signing of Boston’s four best players, the so-called “Big Four” of Spalding, Barnes, Jim “Deacon” White, and Cal McVey. From Rockford’s perspective, the development was most ironic: five years earlier, the National Association had been launched when Boston had signed Spalding and Barnes, and the two young men who had grown up in Rockford had led Boston to four straight pennants. So their return to Illinois seemed a case of turn-about being fair play.

The demise of the National Association left the fate of many players, including Addy, up in the air. It was at first reported that he would remain in Philadelphia with a club that would combine some of the most talented and unsavory players from a city swarming with men who embodied both traits. The New York Times reported with dark irony that the managers of the new club had “engaged such able and honorable players as Dick Higham, John Nelson, George Zettlein, Billy Craver, Treacy, Meyerle, Bob Addy, and Shafer. Mr. Bob Addy will officiate in the capacity of Captain. The one great advantage in having a nine of this kind is that they always play to win – perhaps. As an evidence of the high standing of this club, it is only necessary to state that at a recent election all the officers were required to subscribe an oath to the effect that they would not countenance the selling of a single game. Some people are curious to know why the imposing of such an oath was necessary.”39

But as the Chicago Tribune was quick to point out, the Times had done an “injustice to Addy in classing him with such a gang.”40  Like many of his teammates, Addy was owed money at the end of the 1875 season and was anxious to leave Philadelphia.41 Meanwhile, Spalding had been named captain of the new club in Chicago and Anson had been added to the club’s contingent of Forest City alumni. Spalding soon offered Addy a spot on the team and the two men who had already been teammates in Rockford and Boston were reunited for the third time.

Upon his arrival in the Windy City, Addy made his usual indelible impression and displaying the now-familiar traits. An account of the team’s home opener reported, “every man was where he belonged, from impassive White around to the agile Addy, and from the sure-handed Iowa infant [Anson] down through the grades of height to Capt. Bob Shorty, who teetered all over the infield as he thought there was occasion.”42

His wit also remained conspicuous. When a July exhibition game to raise funds for an orphanage was rained out, the Tribune observed that “the orphans were unlucky – in fact, to use the words of that venerable philosopher, Robert Addy, it was to have been expected that they would be unlucky, for if they hadn’t been unlucky they wouldn’t have been orphans at all.”43

Exactly how venerable Addy was by this time can only be estimated, but he was most likely nearing forty and now exclusively played the outfield. Nevertheless, he was as energetic as ever, and several game accounts describe slides like the one that had startled Spalding a decade earlier. According to one of these reports, “Addy opened the second inning and took his base on called balls. He at once stole second in his usual underground manner, and to the great detriment of his good clothes.”44

Chicago won 36 of its first 43 games to take a commanding lead in the race for the National League’s inaugural pennant. But Addy got off to a slow start at the plate and found himself sharing time in right field with Oscar Bielaski and Fred Andrus. His benching apparently was not Spalding’s decision; a Cincinnati Enquirer sportswriter maintained after the season that “a higher authority than Spalding laid Addy off the nine and put Bielaski in his place – Bielaski, whose batting shows him eighty per cent weaker than Addy, and five per cent weaker as a fielder.”45  

But the pennant race suddenly tightened up in August when the White Stockings were swept at St. Louis. Addy was reinstalled in right field and again showed his knack for clutch performances. He pounded out four hits in a crucial game against St. Louis and continued to swing a hot bat as Chicago maintained its lead.46

In September, with the pennant within sight, Boston came to town for a game that featured numerous players from the old Red Stockings-Forest City rivalry. Addy, Spalding, and Barnes all took the field for the home side, while the visitors included Andy Leonard and both Wright brothers. For good measure the umpire was Fred Cone, the third player who had left the Forest Citys after the 1870 season to play for Boston.

Boston jumped to a six-run lead, but Chicago roared back and finally pushed across two decisive runs in the ninth inning for a 12-10 win. According to a game account, “Addy and White carried off the honors very easily, both in fielding, batting, and run-getting. The former made five wonderful catches, those off [Jim] O’Rourke, [Jack] Manning, and [Harry] Schafer being as fine bits of play as ever were seen in any game. Addy’s base-running also drew out great applause.” The dramatic win allowed Chicago, in the words of the Tribune’s reporter, to reach “a step in the championship race which is next door to the absolute securing of the pennant.”47

The labyrinthine phraseology was necessary because of some disputed games, but there was now little doubt about the league’s first pennant-winner. Four days later, the last shred of doubt was eliminated when Chicago defeated Hartford. Once again, Addy was the hero in the clincher, making “a couple of extraordinary catches” in the ninth inning of the 7-6 nail-biter, one of which seemed “fairly impossible until taken.”48

Bob Addy had now played an important role for championship teams in both the National Association and National League, but his mid-season benching still rankled, and he was not interested in returning to Chicago.49 He instead signed with Cincinnati, prompting a reporter to offer this satirical warning to the fans of that city: “whatever happens on your ball-field the Hon. Bob will have part and lot in it; if a man is to be run out between third and home, Bob will show up and take a hand in it like as if he had been standing there all the while.”50

Upon his arrival in Cincinnati, Addy made the same kind of impression that he had made throughout his career. Before played his first league game with his new team, it was reported that “The Hon. Bob Addy seems to be a sort of demi-god in Cincinnati; if he stubs his toe the fact is recorded with due solemnity; if he tumbles down while fielding the ball, it is immediately telegraphed throughout the entire country, headed, ‘Sad disaster;’ and if he makes a base hit, the local reporters spoil their entire reserve of lead-pencils, in making a half-column note of it.”51 Alas, it was Cincinnati’s season that proved a sad disaster. After a 3-11 start, Addy took over as captain, only to see the team disband a few days later. Following a two-week hiatus, the team was reassembled, but the club finished with a dismal 15-42 record in a season that ended Addy’s major league career. In an odd twist, he also played a role in the end of Spalding’s pitching career – on June 5, Addy smashed a line drive that hit his old batterymate in the chest and literally knocked Spalding out of the box in what proved to be the final start of his illustrious major-league career.52

In November, Cincinnati announced that it was releasing Addy on the ground of drunkenness.53  But whether this was the real reason remains open to doubt. A Chicago sportswriter quipped that the charge, “sounds oddy,” and pointed out that “Bob, though never a reliable player, has always been considered an honest man.”54 More to the point, Addy had a two-year contract, and the allegation enabled parsimonious Cincinnati owner “Si” Keck to avoid paying him for its second year.55

“Philosopher Bob” returned to Chicago that winter and opened a skating rink on the corner of Madison and Ada streets. To drum up business, he even organized a game of baseball on ice.56  Addy’s new enterprise prompted one reporter to quip that “Bob stands up better on ice than he does on land.”57

But Addy soon gave up the skating rink business and finally did what he had so often talked of doing by heading out west, where he remained for the rest of his life. He brought along his young son George but not his wife Ida. She was still alive according to Bob’s listing the 1880 census, but otherwise she remains a mysterious figure. Her marriage record gives her name as Ida Belle Seeley, while her son’s marriage record says that it was Ida Enose, but she cannot be identified under either name. Nor is anything known about what became of her after Bob moved west.

Even after permanently settling in the West, Addy’s doings continued to be chronicled in the eastern press. In 1879 he was reported to be playing baseball in Salt Lake City for a team known as the Gentile Club.58  Seven years later, a claim that he had become a Mormon with twelve wives was widely reprinted.59 Other unfounded reports had him in Oregon and California.

The reality seems to have been more prosaic. By the time of the 1880 census, he was living in Evanston, Wyoming, and he was still there at the end of the decade. Around 1891, he moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where he opened a hardware store and, on the first day of 1892, was remarried to a much younger woman named Louise Emma Clark. The marriage produced one child, a daughter named Ellen Louise, who was born on December 1, 1897.

As we have seen, Bob Addy continued to be remembered with great fondness in baseball circles long after his retirement. His feelings toward the game are more difficult to ascertain, but it certainly appears that he retained his passion for baseball. As late as 1890 he was still playing for the town team in Evanston.60 His last known involvement with baseball came in 1899 when he took part in a “fat versus lean” game in Pocatello. Appropriately, the man who had been known for roaming the field at will started the contest with the “fat” side but ended it with the “leans.”61 One can imagine one of his fellow players exclaiming, “Look here, Bob Addy, do you want to play the whole game?”

Bob Addy died in Pocatello on April 9, 1910, after a severe attack of apoplexy.62  His widow passed away in 1929, and their daughter died in 1974. At least one grandson is still alive as of 2009. His son from his first marriage moved to Spokane, Washington, and then to Oregon, where he is believed to have died in 1957. His brother George was last heard from in 1900, when he was living in Philadelphia and made news by making a desperate trip to England. The purpose of the voyage was to prevent his youngest daughter Arlan, a soprano who was singing with the D’Oyly Carte Opera, from marrying Dr. Henryk Arctowski, the Polish explorer who had recently returned from heading the celebrated Antarctic Expedition. But after meeting Arctowski, George Addy dropped his opposition and gave his blessing to the wedding.63

This biography is included in “Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Coverage of the Forest City Club is usually based upon A. G. Spalding’s fascinating but unreliable America’s National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning, Evolution, Development, and Popularity of Base Ball, with Personal Reminiscences of Its Vicissitudes, Its Victories, and Its Votaries (1910) (reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992). I have instead relied primarily on two sources: an extraordinary 44-part history of the club that was written by Horace E. Buker and published serially in the Rockford Republic in 1922 and a five-part series by John Molyneaux that appeared in Nuggets of History, a publication of the Rockford Historical Society (“The Sinnissippi Base Ball Club,” 43: 1 (March 2005); “The Forest City Base Ball Club: The Amateur Years,” 45: 1 (March 2007); “No Longer Amateurs: The Forest City Base Ball Club in 1868,” 46: 2 (June 2008); “‘We Can Beat the Spots Off the Best Club That Ever Lived’: The Forest City Base Ball Club in 1869,” 46: 3 (September 2008); “The Eastern Tour – The 1870 Season of the Forest City Baseball Club,” 47: 3 (September 2009)). Other sources that were of help included coverage of the 1896 Harry Wright Day celebrations in the Rockford Register-Gazette on April 13 and 14, 1896; the reminiscences of Fred Cone (“Baseball Thirty Years Ago,” Lima News, July 15, 1899) and Charles Page (E. C. Bruffey, “Bruffey Tells of Charles T. Page, Atlanta Constitution, August 10, 1919: A4; Atlanta Constitution, March 14, 1909); “Spalding’s Start,” Sporting Life, June 20, 1908, 16; Harriet Spalding, Reminiscences of Harriet I. Spalding (East Orange, New Jersey: PUBLISHER, 1910); Peter Levine, A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1909); a history of baseball in Rockford written by James McKee that appeared in Sporting Life on April 9, 1884: 4; Harvey T. Woodruff, “Forest Citys a Noted Team,” Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1912: C2; Adrian C. Anson, A Ball Player’s Career (1900: reprint, Amereon), and William J. Ryczek’s When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998). Joe Overfield’s profile of Addy in Nineteenth Century Stars, eds. Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker, (Kansas City: Society for American Baseball Research, 1989) was also very valuable. Coverage of Addy’s time in the National Association and National League is mostly based on contemporaneous newspaper accounts and on William J. Ryczek’s Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871-1875 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1992). Specific sources are cited in the notes.    

Notes

William Wyman Andrus was born October 14, 1858, in the village of Orono, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of a New Yorker in the lumber and sawmill business, Edson, and his wife Mary Ann Wiman. Edson had moved his family to Canada while the Grand Trunk Railway was under construction.

Learning the game on the ball diamonds of Canada, Andrus got his first professional experience in 1883 with an Indianapolis club of which no records could be found.1 He was then with the Minneapolis Dudes of the Northwestern League in 1884. Typically batting second and playing shortstop, Andrus appeared in 45 games, scoring 41 runs on 48 hits.

Andrus’ first mention in the prominent sporting papers of the day came less than two weeks before his single cup of big league joe under the heading, “Canadian Base Ballists,” and read, “Andrus is hitting and playing short second to none.”2 Indeed, the Hamilton Clippers’ young star would lead the Canadian League in games played and at-bats, and was second in doubles, runs, hits, batting average, and total bases, the last four to teammate “Old Reliable” John Rainey.

But back to Andrus’s cup of coffee. On September 15, 1885, before 1,500 cranks at Seventh Street Park in Indianapolis, Frank Bancroft’s Providence Grays faced the St. Louis Maroons, and pitcher Egyptian Healy. Andrus, listed as Andrews in the box score and batting sixth, filled in at third base for a suspended Jerry Denny. Denny, an excellent ambidextrous fielder with a penchant for the bottle, is possibly best known for being one of the last men to play his entire career without the aid of a fielding glove. Fellow Grays on the day included: Paul Hines, Cliff Carroll, Jack “Moose” Farrell, Joe “Rocks” Start, Paul “Shorty” Radford, and Lon Knight, with a battery of Dupee Shaw and Barney “Mouse” Gilligan. Andrus played a clean third base, errorless in five chances, completing two putouts with three assists. At the plate, he would go 0-for-4 on the day with a strikeout. Providence won 6-0, and that was that. Andrus finished out the season with Hamilton and was one of the few returning Clippers in 1886 when they absorbed much of the Syracuse team.

Andrus moved to the outfield that year and again finished in the top ten in runs and stolen bases. On June 19, against Oswego, Andrus hit a home run off Mike Mattimore, who would eventually be one of three major leaguers buried in Butte, Montana. In mid-July, Andrus hit another dinger in a close game with Buffalo. Hamilton plated a pair in the ninth before Rainey hit a round-tripper that would have tied the game, but he was declared out by an ump named “Harrington” for not touching second base thus ending the game. In the subsequent squabble, Andrus struck the umpire setting off a near riot that the paper called, “an indescribable scene.”3 Shortstop Nate Kellogg was mistakenly arrested for the assault but released later that evening.

In the following season, Andrus suited up for Portland of the New England League, covering the keystone sack as well as right field where he showed a knack for outfield assists, doubling-up many a greedy baserunner. W. Clifford writing for Sporting Life had this to say as the season got underway: “Andrus is a good one judging from the showing he makes in practice, and although slight and youthful in appearance [Andrus is listed at 5’6”, 155 pounds] he can slug a ball as hard as any man on the team.”4 The team captain and leadoff man generated much of Portland’s offense with a hitting streak that lasted at least through May 25. Andrus wound up leading the league in runs (165), hits (233), and walks (77) — adding 122 stolen bases in 103 games. Andrus belted his only round-tripper of the season on September 24 at home versus Lowell. The same two clubs were pitted in a best of five series to decide the league championship. Andrus managed just two hits in the three games as Lowell swept. He was back with Hamilton for 1888, signing on November 10.

In his usual spot atop of the batting order, Andrus, “[a man] not afraid to slide into a base,”5 appeared in all but two games for the Hams, touching the plate for 102 runs while swiping 89 bags in 110 games. In an early May game versus Buffalo, the opposing captain, Jack Remsen, was badly injured when he collided with Andrus on a close play at second. Andrus hit his sixth career home run on May 16 against Albany, and in a June 14 contest with London, Andrus teamed up with fellow Canadian Pete Wood for a triple play. Sporting Life reported that “Andrus is playing a good game at second, but that is not his position. He should be played in right field, where he has no superior in the league.”6 As the season wound down, officials of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railway, “The Hojack Line”, proposed a sprinting match of 100 yards at Windsor Beach along Lake St. Claire in which Andrus was a contestant. It is unknown how he did, but speed must have ran in the family as Wyman’s son, Edson — known as the Custer County Comet — would be an alternate on the 1924 Olympic team. The elder Andrus was on the Hamilton reserve list at season’s end, but he was released on December 5 and played with Buffalo for the ’89 season.

“Andrus got his release from the Hamilton Club last season in a somewhat novel way, says the Toronto Mail,” Sporting Life explained before the outset of the 1889 campaign. “The club owed him several weeks’ salary, and he got his release in lieu thereof.” Buffalo later made it good, so Andrus didn’t lose any money. “The only club that is indebted to Andrus is the Minneapolis club he played in 1884, when Ben Tuthill was its manager.”7 Captain Andrus suited up for 108 games with the Bisons, contributing 88 runs, on 114 hits combined with 45 steals. He made the top ten in doubles, and his 18 triples were good for second best. Andrus again started games at second base and right field, and again hit leadoff, getting his 100th safe hit on August 14. At season’s end there was talk of organizing a Canadian professional team to make a tour of the Caribbean, and Andrus was among those listed alongside Chub Collins, Dennis Connors, Joseph Knight, James Purvis, Alfred Sheppard, and Pete Wood as a possible member. No record of this tour could be found.

Andrus was reserved by Buffalo for 1890, and he signed on January 10. Sporting Life devoted some ink about the news:

Wallace [sic] W. Andrus has been signed by Manager Jack Rowe to play short next season. Andrus is a well-known player. He played right field for Hamilton in 1886, and in 1887 he went to Portland, playing right field and second base. He was captain of the team which forced the pace in one of the closest races ever seen in this country, only being forced to second place by three games. He stood third in the League in batting although his aptitude in patient waiting, for which he has few if any peers, gave him that rank. He was second in base-running, being over forty basses above his nearest neighbor in line. This last season he played in such a way as to cause many to regard him as one of the best all-around players in the League. He is intelligent, (he teaches a Canadian school during the winter) is a good but not noisy coacher, has a faculty of run-getting that will come in handy for us, a steady infielder, and, above all, a daring and successful base-runner—what Buffalo always needed. I can forsee that he will be a great favorite here.8

After vacating his coaching role at Toronto University in late April, Andrus was named team captain and pocketed $175 a month.

A tumultuous row over territory claimed by the Buffalo team of the upstart Players’ League forced the smaller budget International League franchise, already $2,500 in debt, to relocate to Montreal in early June.9 Sporting News had the following write-up on Andrus, “He is a very fine ‘keystone-of-the-diamond’ guardian, but in right field he would, dare I say, overtop all of them in the Atlantic. The way he used to cut down [Cupid] Childs, Sandy Griffin, and [Jack] Virtue at the plate was very alluring. We all wanted to see him do it again. As a gentleman, fast runner, excellent emergency hitter, Andrus is sure to please.”10

Sometimes, though, he only pleased the opposition. In a game at home on May 31, Andrus was caught by the London Tecumsehs second basemen with “the old hide-the-ball-under-the-arm trick.”11 The thirty-one year-old Andrus appeared in 41 International Association games, splitting time between Buffalo, then Montreal until the team folded, dispersing him to the Grand Rapids Shamrocks before the league finally disbanded. His 59 hits were second best in the short-lived season, and he contributed 39 runs and 18 swipes while compiling a .339 average and .408 slugging that were good for second and third in the league, respectively.

By mid-July Andrus had hooked up with Minneapolis of the Western Association, gathering 16 hits in his first eight games. “Andrus is a medium-sized man and looks like a ball player from the ground up. He is a hard left-handed batter, a very speedy base-runner and a good fielder. He is also a good coacher, just the kind of man Minneapolis needed. Everyone who has seen him play say that he will do.”12 By August the Minneapolis club had absorbed much of the Milwaukee club, leaving Andrus without a roster spot. He’d eventually land in the Tri-State league, suiting up for the Youngstown (Ohio) Giants in 48 games to close out the season. Andrus picked up 54 hits in 204 at-bats with a fielding percentage of .895 (fourth among left fielders).

Andrus appeared on the diamond for the Manchester Amskoegs of the New England League and then with Jamestown in the New York-Penn League in 1891, almost always as the leadoff man occupying a corner outfield position. On June 8 with Manchester, Andrus hit a two-run walk-off homer off George Henry with two out in the ninth to beat Salem. But with each of the eight teams of the league citing financial losses due to distances travelled (4,417 miles by Manchester alone), sub-par athletic grounds, as well as apathetic fan bases, the Manchester club disbanded in early August. The Manchester team was in such tough shape that in addition to owing players’ wages, it also owed substitute umpire J.T.H. Gillis $26. After selling its best players management still owed for the grandstand and fences. Captain Andrus attempted to re-organize the team as an independent club, but when that failed, he signed with Jamestown playing in 22 games scoring 17 runs off 29 hits.13

Though signed in early February by Abner Powell with the Seattle Hustlers, Andrus probably never set foot in the Evergreen State, as he was dropped by March 15. Andrus instead made it into 58 games for the 1892 Kansas City Cowboys of the Western League. His outfield prowess had preceded him though. In early season action it was noted that he was “not acquainted with the many peculiarities of Kansas City’s right field and it will probably take him some time to get accustomed to the slope and the sun. He is a very fast man, though, and will cover plenty of ground.”14 On June 27, Andrus lost a race to Count Campau for a $50 purse. A sign, perhaps, that at 33 his skill set may have been deteriorating. His numbers were in the middle of the pack, and by mid-season the papers were calling him dead weight. By the end of July Andrus declined an offer to manage the Wichita club, electing instead to finish his medical schooling.

In May of 1893, while wrapping up his degree, he and fellow physician and co-triple play infielder Pete Wood were playing for the Toronto University team. By June his studies were finished, and so were his playing days.

Dr. Andrus moved the same year to Billings, MT, before settling in the truly wild west town of Miles City—to this day the home of the largest bucking horse sale on the planet. A bustling trade destination at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone rivers, Miles City, incorporated just six years before Andrus’s arrival, had been founded sixteen years earlier, in 1877, as a military outpost before the Battle of Little Big Horn. Andrus wed Sarah Corma Ireland, daughter of a prominent Montana pioneer family, on November 20, 1895. Their union would produce a son, Edson, and a daughter, Kathleen.

Apparently Andrus made it back to Canada on occasion. “Dr. W. W. Andrus,” Sporting Life reported in December 1895, “one of the best-known and most popular of Canadian base ball players of a few years ago, is at present in [Toronto] staying at the Rossin House. Everyone knew Andy in the days of the old International and Canadian Leagues. … His great forte was in run-getting. He was a terrific hitter and base-runner, and, thanks to a careful mode of living, is still in the front ranks of the diamond. … and is now a flourishing physician in Myles [sic] City, Montana.”15

In addition to serving as the town doctor, Andrus, a Republican, was elected alderman and then mayor, serving five successive terms from 1899 -1909. He then spent two terms representing Custer County in the state legislature, was named president in 1922 of the Montana State Medical Association, and also served as the surgeon for the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1915 he was a member of the Montana commission for the Panama Pacific Exposition. He also served as the official Custer County physician for two terms and the county health officer for three. Perhaps more notably, he was the first person in Miles City to own an automobile.16

“Among the many eminent names to be found in the rolls of Montana’s professional men, none is more worthy of mention than that of William Wiman Andrus,” wrote Helen Fitzgerald Sanders. “A man of scholarly tastes and able to throw light on almost any subject connected with his profession, yet drawing from a fund of rich experience and ripened knowledge, Dr. Andrus is also a man of rare sympathy, great kindness of heart and magnetic personality.”17

Even with his many other pursuits, Andrus still found time for baseball, umping local games and serving as the president of the Miles City club while mayor in 1902. A history of his adopted home noted, “Andrus had not entirely forgotten his first love, as it is not an uncommon sight for the people of Miles City to see their trusted medical advisor and worthy mayor in the regulation flannel suit stopping hot grounders and ‘lining them out’ when the local club is in a tight place.”18

A 2009 inductee into the Clarington Sports Hall of Fame, Andrus died in 1935 at the age of 76 after an attack of erysipelas and is buried in the town he basically presided over for most of his adult life. Regarding his various political, medical and athletic pursuits, Andrus was frequently quoted as saying, “Gentleman, it’s a poor horse that can’t change directions.”19

Acknowledgements

This biography was reviewed by Tom Schott and fact-checked by Alan Cohen.

Sources

In preparing this biography, the authors relied primarily on online newspaper archives including The Sporting News offered at The Paper of Record, SABR’s collection of The Sporting Life, as well as the Library of Congress hosted Chronicling America newspapers and the online archives of the Montana Historical Society. The authors partially-excerpted their book, Montana Baseball History, The History Press and Arcadia Publishing, 2015. Additional information was obtained from the player’s file at the Hall of Fame Museum and Library in Cooperstown. Census data was acquired from familysearch.org.

The photo above is courtesy of Dr. Malcolm Winter’s self-published book, Miles City Medical History, 1995.

Notes

Aumont was born on January 7, 1989, in Gatineau, a city of more than 275,000 that sits across the Ottawa River from Canada’s capital city. The future major leaguer grew up in a working-class Francophone neighborhood and was raised primarily by his father, Jean-Pierre Aumont, who worked as a laborer for a moving company.1  

“Where I come from, we speak French. English is something you start to learn in school and past that, nobody really uses it,” Aumont said of his upbringing in a 2021 interview.2 He spent most of his time as a young man outside, playing with other children from his neighborhood. At age 11, he started playing baseball competitively and soon joined up with Canada’s national baseball program, playing in junior tournaments across North America. As Aumont grew during his adolescence, the baseball-mad teenager started to draw interest from baseball scouts. 

“My style of pitching was more power pitching than anything else. I never wanted you to touch the ball. All I was shooting for was a strikeout. Period,” Aumont said.3 His size and strength helped make his approach to pitching highly successful.

“My high-school career was great. I won many trophies and many medals,” Aumont recalled.4 As a junior in high school, he first realized that scouts were following his games closely, but this came as a surprise to him despite his success.

“I had no vision on going further and playing pro. The dream wasn’t really something I had coming up. I love to compete and when I do, I always want to win,” Aumont said.5

When the Mariners made Aumont their first-round pick in 2007, selecting him from high school (Ecole du Versant in Gatineau), it was a significant milestone in the baseball history of Quebec. Never before had a native son of La Belle Province been selected so highly in the first round. The most recent Quebecer selected in the first round previous to Aumont was Ntema Ndungidi of Montreal, an outfielder selected 36th overall in the 1997 draft by the Baltimore Orioles. Only two previous Canadians, pitchers Adam Loewen and Jeff Francis (both selected in 2002), had been selected higher than Aumont in baseball’s amateur draft.

“I had great support locally. People were really happy about it and I certainly gained a little bit more fame,” Aumont said of the experience.6

The Mariners, too, were excited to get their hands on the robust young prospect. 

“The first time I saw him last summer, he was throwing 92-93 [MPH] at the time, with the makings of a slider and some sink on his fastball,” Mariners scout Dave May said of Aumont to the Seattle Times. “This spring, he was up to 96 on his fastball with heavy sink and his slider got better. With him getting better and better, I think he has one of the highest ceilings of anyone in this draft.”7

Aumont signed with the Mariners and progressed rapidly in their minor-league organization. At just 20 years of age, he advanced to Double A, spending much of the summer of 2009 with the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx of the Southern League. The trajectory of Aumont’s career changed in December 2009 when he was one of three players (the other two being minor-league outfielder Tyson Gillies and pitcher JC Ramírez) sent to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for 2008 Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee. The trade didn’t really pan out for either club. Lee spent less than half a season in Seattle while Aumont, Ramírez, and Gillies all failed to turn into long-term big leaguers.

For the next three seasons, Aumont bounced around the Philadelphia organization before debuting for the Phillies on August 23, 2012. In 2010 the Phillies organization tried Aumont out as a starter in Double-A Reading with little success. In 2011 he made a combined 43 relief appearances in Reading and Triple-A Lehigh Valley with much greater success. Before making his big-league debut in August, Aumont was again a stalwart in Lehigh Valley’s bullpen, making 41 appearances with an ERA of 4.26.

Aumont recalled the jitters he felt when he entered his first major-league game at Citizens Bank Park. He came in for the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds.

“The gut feeling when you get the phone call in the bullpen to start warming up. The adrenaline kicks in and it just feels surreal,” Aumont recalled.8 The 23-year-old rookie did great in his debut, pitching a scoreless inning while surrendering a walk to Miguel Cairo. The Phillies went on to win 4-3 in 11 innings that evening.9 Aumont’s strong debut presaged a strong rookie campaign. Over the next two months, he made 18 appearances for Philadelphia, earning two saves and garnering a 3.68 ERA as a middle reliever.

The Gatineau native split the 2013 between Triple-A Lehigh Valley (International League) and Philadelphia. He again performed admirably for the Phillies, making a career-high 22 appearances, all in relief. In 2013, Aumont had a 4.19 ERA for the season and a 1-3 overall record.

Aumont gained his first and only career victory on April 12, 2013, against the Miami Marlins. He entered a 1-1 game in the bottom of the ninth inning at Marlins Park and faced three batters. He retired Plácido Polanco on a groundout, walked Justin Ruggiano, and got Greg Dobbs to hit into a double play. Chase Utley and Michael Young drove in runs for the Phils in the top of the 10th and Jonathan Papelbon finished off Miami in the bottom of the inning, earning the save to Aumont’s win.

 “I came out, did my job to put up a zero on the board and we scored the next inning with Papelbon closing it out,” Aumont recalled.10

For whatever reason, Aumont could never break out of his status as a borderline big-league pitcher in the Philadelphia organization. Both at the major- and minor-league levels, he had a tendency to give up walks and home runs – both were certainly a product of his power-pitching approach to the game. The 2014 and 2015 seasons proved to be particularly frustrating ones for Aumont. During both campaigns, he pitched well for Lehigh Valley but struggled in his rare appearances at the major-league level.

In all, Aumont made just five appearances for the Phillies in 2014, posting an ERA of 19.06 for the season. In 2015 he made just one major-league appearance.

On June 19, 2015, Aumont started his first game in the majors. He surrendered six earned runs to the St. Louis Cardinals in four innings, taking the loss in a 12-4 Cards win. The defeat proved to be not only Aumont’s first career start but also his final major-league appearance and his only appearance of the 2015 major-league season. The Phillies released Aumont shortly thereafter, thus beginning a more than half-decade odyssey throughout Organized Baseball.

On June 28, 2015, Aumont signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and made five appearances for the Buffalo Bisons, the club’s Triple-A affiliate. Toronto released him in late August. He joined the Chicago White Sox organization during the offseason and spent the first half of the 2016 campaign with the Triple-A Charlotte Knights before being released. In 2017 Aumont returned to his old stamping grounds, pitching for the Ottawa Champions of the independent Canadian-American Association.

The Detroit Tigers were sufficiently impressed with Aumont’s performance in Ottawa to sign him to a minor-league contract in January 2018. The then 29-year-old pitcher spent the vast majority of the season with the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens and was released after the season.

After his release by the Tigers, Aumont re-signed with Ottawa of the Canadian-American Association in 2019 and enjoyed a renaissance season. Working exclusively as a starter, he was named the league’s Pitcher of the Year, going 8-4 with a 2.65 ERA. In one outing, Aumont struck out a league-record 18 batters.11 His production in 2019 earned Aumont another opportunity to make it back to the big leagues.

In December 2019 Aumont signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and gave it another shot in spring training. Before Major League Baseball shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March of 2020, Aumont made two appearances for the Blue Jays in spring training. Amid the shutdown, he decided to retire from baseball and pursue family farming on a farmstead just outside Gatineau. As of the June 2021 interview, he and his wife, Frederique, were still settling into the 12-hour workday on the farm.  

“This is our first year growing crops in greenhouses. We plan to grow fully organic in high tunnels and outside in the fields within the next three to five years,” Aumont said of his life after baseball.  “We want to create a bit of an ecosystem on the farm where we can develop self-sufficiently and also feed our community with organic foods and get away from industrial chemicals foods.”12

Looking back on his big-league career, Aumont said he felt a great sense of pride.

“From where I come from to where I am now, not many people in the world can say they did and experienced what I did. I’m proud to be part of that.”13

Photo credit: Courtesy of Phillippe Aumont.

Notes

1 Phillippe Aumont, interview by the author, June 14, 2021; David Singh, “Why Phillipe Aumont Gave Up Pro Baseball to Become a Pitcher,” Sportsnet, September 13, 2020. Accessed September 14, 2020: https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/longform/phillippe-aumont-gave-pro-baseball-become-farmer/.

2 Aumont interview.

3 Aumont interview.

4 Aumont interview.

5 Aumont interview.

6 Aumont interview.

7 Scott Hanson, “M’s Pick Up Aumont at No. 11,” Seattle Times, June 8, 2007. Accessed on September 14, 2020: https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/ms-pick-up-aumont-at-no-11/.

8 Aumont interview.

9 “Phillies Slip Past Reds in 11th on RBI Single from John Mayberry Jr.,” ESPN.com, August 23, 2012. Accessed September 14, 2020: https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap?gameId=320823122.

10 Aumont interview.

11 “Champions Hurler Sets Single-Game Strikeout Record,” CBC.com, July 17, 2019. Accessed September 14, 2021: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phillippe-aumont-gatineau-strikeout-record-champions-1.5214601.

12 Aumont interview.

13 Aumont interview.

After that fine rookie season in 2004, Bay had four more good-to-excellent years with the bat, with just one down year out of five. Alas, his career was cut short by two concussions suffered in collisions with the outfield wall in 2010 and 2012. He was out of baseball after 2013.

Jason Raymond Bay was born September 20, 1978, in Trail, British Columbia. His parents were David and Kelly Bay.1 David worked at Teck Cominco, a zinc smelting and gold mining company, while Kelly worked for the Canadian government.2 He also has a sister, Lauren Bay (b. 1981), a former professional softball player who pitched for Canada in the 2004 Summer Olympics.34 “My sister got the arm in the family,” Bay said. “How about that? She’s a world-class left-handed pitcher.”5

As one article from 2004 noted, “The Bay children benefited from excellent bloodlines. Their great uncle on their mother’s side, Gerry Moro, represented Canada in the 1964 and 1972 Olympics as a pole vaulter and decathlete. A great uncle on their father’s side played minor league baseball in the 1950s.”6

Young Jason grew up playing hockey — little surprise for a Canadian — but eventually quit in order to focus on baseball. At 12, he represented Canada by playing for the Trail Little League team in the 1990 Little League World Series, which finished in third place.7

Bay played college baseball at Gonzaga University, not too far over the border from his hometown in British Columbia. He earned first-team All-West Coast Conference honors as a junior and senior, and led the West Coast Conference in batting in 2000 with a .388 average.89 During his summers in college, he played for the Chatham A’s of the Cape Cod Baseball League.10

Bay was chosen in the 2000 amateur draft by the Montreal Expos with the fifth pick of the 22nd round, No. 645 overall. “You could stream [the draft] from the internet,” Bay said. “That was like one of the first years that they had done it. I was listening pick by pick. My dad took the day off work and we listened together. It wasn’t like it is a lot more today with the parties and hoopla, for me anyway… Coming from a small town in Canada, it was big news. Whether it was the first round or last round, just getting drafted was big news.”11

Over two minor-league seasons split among Class A Short Season, Class A, and High A, he hit .312 with 180 hits, 16 home runs, and 83 runs batted in. He won the Low-A Midwest League batting title in 2001 after hitting .362 in 87 games.12 Prior to the 2002 season he was traded along with Jimmy Serrano to the New York Mets for Lou Collier. He was traded again in July, this time going to the San Diego Padres along with Josh Reynolds and Bobby Jones in exchange for Jason Middlebrook and Steve Reed. He finished the season with the Padres’ Double-A affiliate, the Mobile BayBears, racking up 17 home runs, 85 RBIs, and 127 hits in 126 games.

Bay started the 2003 season with the Triple-A Portland Beavers, but got called up to make his major-league debut on May 23 against the Arizona Diamondbacks after Mark Kotsay got injured.13 Bay started the game in center field, batted seventh, and went 1-for-4 with a solo home run.

His first big-league stint did not last long, however. In just his third game with the Padres, he was hit by a pitch from Elmer Dessens of the Arizona Diamondbacks,14 fracturing his right wrist. When his injury healed he was back in the minors, and in August he was traded with Oliver Perez and a player to be named later (which became Cory Stewart) to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Brian Giles. He joined the Pirates’ big-league club immediately and stayed with them for the rest of the year, hitting .291 over 27 games.

Bay had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder in the offseason and did not take the field for the Pirates until May 2004, but he quickly began to make a difference in the Pittsburgh lineup.15 He hit .300 in the month of May on his way to a .282 overall mark for the season, with 26 home runs, 82 RBI, 24 doubles, and 116 hits. Those numbers earned him the 2004 Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award, beating out Khalil Greene and Akinori Otsuka. “It means the world to me,” Bay said. Asked about how it felt to be the first Pirate to win the award, a team with past players such as Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Barry Bonds, he said: “You walk into the locker room and you see all those jerseys hanging up, it’s kind of amazing it never happened.”16

That was not the only milestone Bay celebrated that month. Two days before winning Rookie of the Year, he married his college sweetheart, Kristen Beaulaurier, in Seattle. “I never got down on one knee,” he said about how his proposal went down. “And she still busts my chops to this day. I was looking around for something in my luggage. I said, ‘I think you know what I’m doing. I think she said, ‘About time’ instead of ‘Yes.’”17

There was no sophomore slump for Bay the following year, 2005. He played in all 162 games and slashed .306/.402/.559. His batting average fell below .250 only once all season; after April 20, it never dipped below .273. On top of all that he had 32 homers, 101 RBIs, and a career high 183 hits, making him by far the Pirates’ most productive hitter.

“I’ve finally had an opportunity to come to the park and be able to play every day, to get into a routine, to be in one spot the entire year,” said Bay. “I’m pleased that it’s gone well so fast. Rookie of the Year. All-Star Game. It’s been gratifying, knowing you can do it when maybe some people didn’t think you could do it. It’s been gratifying for me to show that my rookie year wasn’t just one great year. I hope there are even better ones to come.”18

Bay earned his first All-Star Game selection that year and also appeared in the Home Run Derby, but was eliminated after failing to hit any homers in the first round. That winter, Bay and the Pirates agreed on a four-year contract worth $18.25 million.19

“The Pirates have been burned in the past by some contracts that didn’t pan out, and they were probably a little more apprehensive than some teams to do this,” Bay said. “I think that’s why I’m so grateful — to know this is the first long-term deal that’s been done by the Pirates in quite a few years. They didn’t have to do anything, but I think the way I was going gave them the confidence that, hopefully, I was going to get better and that, in the long run, it was going to be a little bit cheaper. I still don’t really fully comprehend it.”20

In March of 2006, Bay represented his native Canada in the inaugural World Baseball Classic. “I’m standing on the railing, watching, watching, watching — I rarely get emotional, and I jumped the railing like a Little Leaguer,” Bay said. “I went, ‘Wow, it’s March 8, and it’s too early for this.’ But you can’t simulate it, you can’t prepare someone for that, and I just want to experience that here [in Pittsburgh].”21

Bay went 5-for-11 with five runs in the first round, with Canada going 2-1, but they were eliminated by a tiebreaker. He carried that offensive production into the regular season, hitting 35 home runs and 109 RBIs on his way to earning his second-straight All-Star Game appearance. That November, he had surgery to fix a problem in his left knee that had nagged him throughout the season.22 The procedure took 10 minutes and he was able to walk out of the hospital.23

When the 2007 season started, Bay struggled a bit out of the gate with only five home runs and 29 RBIs through May 24, well below his pace from previous years. “It’s not like I feel overmatched,” Bay said. “It’s more like a feeling where you’re 0-2 before you get in the box, where there’s no rhythm with the count or anything about the at-bat. Even from game to game … I go out there and get three hits and think, ‘Oh, I’m back.’ And I go out the next day feeling like I haven’t gotten a hit in two months.”24

He managed to get things back on the right track for a while — staying above .300 from May 27 through June 7 — but by July 20, he was at .246. “I want to turn it around,” Bay said. “I’d love to see it happen. But everyone’s looking for some overnight answer. How do you do that? How do you just flip the wall switch? That’s the tough part. Here we are, after all this time, still trying to find that.”25 Unfortunately, the rest of the season went no better for Bay. Following the All-Star break he hit eight home runs and had just 28 RBIs. He finished the year with a .247 average and a .418 slugging percentage, the first time in his career he failed to slug at least .500.

Bay experienced a bit of a turnaround at the beginning of 2008, hitting .284 with 16 home runs at the end of June. But his time with the Pirates was running out. At the July 31 trade deadline, “3:59 and seconds,” as Pirates general manager Neal Huntington called it, Bay was traded to the Boston Red Sox as part of a three-team deal involving the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Pirates received four prospects — Andy LaRoche, Brandon Moss, Craig Hansen, and Bryan Morris — while the Dodgers obtained Manny Ramirez from Boston.26

Upon joining the Red Sox, Bay hit .293 with nine homers and 37 RBIs over 49 games. He also got his first taste of the playoffs and did not disappoint. He batted .412 with a pair of home runs in the ALDS, in which Boston defeated the Los Angeles Angels, followed by a .292 average in the ALCS, in which the Tampa Bay Rays eliminated the Red Sox in seven games. “I come from Pittsburgh after six years, and all of a sudden there’s no grace period. Overnight, I’m in a pennant race,” Bay said. “And getting traded for Manny didn’t make it any easier, although I was so engulfed in everything else, it wasn’t even an issue. That first week is a blur. There was definitely a 24-hour culture shock.”27 Bay finished 2008 with a combined slash of .286/.373/.522 with 31 home runs and 101 RBI over 155 games.

In March 2009, Bay again represented Canada in the World Baseball Classic. He went 2-for-4 with two RBIs over two games, but Canada went winless and was eliminated during round play. When the big-league season started, his first full season in the American League, it turned out to be a strong year for Bay. He had a team-best 36 home runs and 119 RBIs, earning him his third All-Star Game selection and his first Silver Slugger Award. “People always ask, ‘Is it tough to play here?’” Bay said about playing in Boston. “In some aspects, with the external stuff, it’s a little different, but what people don’t realize is that all that stuff aside, it’s a fairly easy environment hitting-wise to thrive in. You look up and down that lineup, I don’t think I’m the guy, I’m just one of the guys and I think that helps me out a little bit.”28

In addition to the awards he received for his play on the field, he also had a reason to celebrate off the field. On July 2, he was naturalized as an American citizen during a ceremony at Boston’s Faneuil Hall.29 He helped lead the Red Sox to 95 wins that season, good for second place in the AL East and a wild card berth, but they were swept in the ALDS by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

In November 2009, Bay became a free agent for the first time in his career. He was among the most coveted outfielders on the market that offseason, with the others being Matt Holliday, Mike Cameron, and Marlon Byrd.30 A number of teams were interested in Bay, including the Red Sox, who offered him $60 million over four years, but he turned it down because Boston wouldn’t add a fifth year to the deal. He ultimately agreed to a four-year contract for $66 million with the New York Mets, which included a vesting option for the fifth year with the potential for him to earn $80 million in total. The move was seen as a major offensive gain for the Mets, a team that had hit the fewest home runs in the National League in 2009.31

“I like the camaraderie,” Bay said about joining the Mets clubhouse. “A lot of people tried to paint a grim picture. I haven’t seen any of it.”32

“He’s just a guy that goes out and quietly plays like a superstar,” said David Wright, Mets third baseman and future captain, about Bay. “He goes about his business without a lot of flash, but he’s one of the best run producers in the game.”33

Regarding his role with the Mets, Bay said, “My job is to drive in runs and get on base. That’s what I was brought in for, and what I’d like to do.”34 Unfortunately, those numbers just weren’t there for Bay. He started slowly and through June, he was on pace for just 12 home runs and 75 RBIs for the year, which would’ve been the worst stats of his career. Granted, the Mets offense as a whole wasn’t making much noise; they would finish the season in the bottom five in the NL for batting average, hits, home runs, and RBIs.

Still, at the end of June they found themselves 10 games above .500 and just 1½ games behind the Atlanta Braves for first place in the NL East. Nearly a month later, however, on July 27, the Mets found themselves 6½ games back — and suddenly without Bay, who had suffered a devastating injury against the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

On Friday, July 23, on the bottom of the second inning, Bay collided with the outfield wall after catching a fly ball hit by the Dodgers’ Jamey Carroll. He was slow to get up, but remained in the game, and later hit a bases-clearing double in the top of the eighth to extend the Mets’ lead to 6-1, the final score. He also played the final two games in the series on Saturday and Sunday, going 2-for-9 with a walk and a run.

Bay first reported possible concussion symptoms to team doctors on the plane ride back to New York on Sunday night.35 The Mets were off on Monday and he saw a doctor on Tuesday as the team was starting a home series against the St. Louis Cardinals, at which point manager Jerry Manuel was informed of the situation.36 Bay was taken out of the lineup for a couple of days to see if the symptoms would subside.37 “This has never happened; this is uncharted for me,” Bay said about the injury.38

The symptoms persisted, however, and Bay was placed on the 15-day disabled list on July 30. A couple of weeks later he was still experiencing headaches, and he ended up being sidelined for the rest of the year.39 His final stat line for the season was a .259 average, six home runs, and 47 RBIs over 95 games. “I just had a bad year. I was the first to admit it as I was living it, and I’ll be the first to admit it looking back on it,” Bay said about his struggles in 2010. “For whatever reason, I never got in a rhythm at the plate, and I felt like I was swimming upstream all year trying to catch up. The next thing you know it’s July and you’re like, ‘Wow, I haven’t been able to piece anything together.’ The question is, what did you learn from it? I feel like I learned a lot.”40

Going into 2011, having recovered from his concussion, Bay had a positive outlook. “I’m back to doing what I’ve always done. But I’m focusing on doing it better,” he said.41 He hit another snag, however, when he injured his ribcage during batting practice on March 29, causing him to start the season on the disabled list. He finally made it to the lineup on April 21, going 1-for-4 with a double and two runs in a 9-1 victory over the Houston Astros.42

However, 2011 was another lackluster season for Bay. He hit 12 home runs and drove in 57, both career lows for seasons in which he played in at least 100 games. Those numbers also included a 29-game stretch without a homer and just 10 multi-RBI games. He slashed .245/.329/.374, only his second time batting below .250 and his first year slugging below .400. “All those years I did well, I never worried about what I was doing,” Bay said. “There were good days, and there were bad days, and that was that. But I never analyzed. [The past two years], I over-analyzed everything. I was trying to make everything perfect. My hands here, my feet here; I wasn’t really a hitter. I was trying to make myself into a robot.”43

Teammate David Wright said the pressure of playing in New York may have had an impact on Bay’s performance. “It’s tough when you sign as a big free agent, and the town you happen to come to is New York,” Wright observed. “In Jason’s case, the team was struggling. We signed him, and all of a sudden he is supposed to come in and be a difference maker. So he put an incredible amount of pressure on himself.”44

It was also a lost year for the Mets overall. They went 77-85 and finished fourth in the NL East.

Bay spent the following offseason working on his hitting with his former Pirates coach Don Long. “I’m scrapping everything, and I’m just going to swing. I’m just going to stand up there, hold the bat and swing,” Bay said about his new mindset at the plate. “Can I hit 30 home runs? I 100% think it’s possible. No question.”45

Over his first 15 games to start the 2012 season, Bay hit .240 (12-for-50), with 3 homers, 5 RBIs, and 17 strikeouts. During the 15th game, on April 23, he got hurt while trying to field a fly ball from the San Francisco Giants’ Gregor Blanco. The ball fell out of Bay’s glove and he landed hard on the ground. He was placed on the 15-day disabled list the following day after an MRI confirmed he had a broken rib.46 “It’s extremely frustrating,” Bay said. “There’s really no other way to put it… All I can do is try and look forward and try and build off of the momentum.”47

He ended up missing 42 games, not returning to the lineup until June 8. He went 2-for-25 over the next seven games, and got injured again on June 15. This time, it was a second concussion he sustained after crashing into the outfield wall during a game against the Cincinnati Reds.

“I know how he feels,” said Mets catcher Josh Thole, who also suffered multiple concussions throughout his career. “I know exactly what he’s doing right now. He’s probably passed out in his bed, just in the dark. Any time the light shines in your eyes, the noise, you get that — it’s the worst. I feel for him.”48

“Jason Bay is a fine baseball player,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “Jason Bay is one of the finest people I’ve ever had on one of my teams. And I just hope he gets out of this and recovers, because I’m pretty concerned about it right now.”49

It was another 24 games before Bay was back on the field. By the time he finally returned on July 17, the Mets were seven games back in the division, a margin they would never reduce. They would finish the season 74-88, in fourth place once again. Over his final 48 games, Bay hit just .151 with four home runs and 14 RBIs.

In November, Bay and the Mets reached an agreement to terminate his contract a year early, but the team would still pay him the $21 million owed to him over the next two years. “Jason has a tremendous work ethic. There was never any question about it. Unfortunately, the results weren’t there and we are in a results-oriented business,” general manager Sandy Alderson said in a statement.50

“I still feel I have plenty to give to this game and that I can play baseball at a high level. But after serious consideration, both sides agree that we would benefit from a fresh start,” Bay said in a statement. “I’m excited to keep playing and have no intention of just walking away… I enjoyed my time in New York. I have no regrets in signing with the Mets, other than that I wasn’t able to play to the level that the team, the fans and I all expected and that we weren’t able to win more games. I move on with nothing but an appreciation for the organization and its fans and best wishes to all my teammates there.”51

Bay was not without a team for long, signing a one-year deal with the Seattle Mariners in December. “Wherever I ended up was going to be a fresh start and the chance to do it here in my backyard, so to speak, will be nice,” said Bay, alluding to his origins in nearby British Columbia. “That’s all I was looking for. It didn’t work out for whatever reason and it was kind of a mutual split. I want to start fresh and wipe the slate clean and that’s what I get to do here.”52

As a result of his past injury history, the Mariners had Bay examined by two team doctors and neurosurgeon to confirm that he had fully recovered from his previous concussions.53 At 34 years old, he was the third-oldest player on the Mariners’ Opening Day roster, with only Raul Ibañez and Endy Chavez born before him. “I don’t feel like I’m that old, but I guess I am around here,” Bay said.54

Bay started the 2013 season as the Mariners’ primary left fielder, but he hit just .204 with 11 homers and 20 RBIs over 68 games. He was designated for assignment on July 29 and released on August 6. He retired that offseason, ending his career in the major leagues. He finished with a lifetime batting average of .266 with 222 home runs and 1,200 hits.

In 2015, Bay was inducted into the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor for his play at Gonzaga from 1999 to 2000. He was the first Bulldogs baseball player inducted into the WCC Hall of Honor. “Without Gonzaga, I wouldn’t be here,” Bay said during his acceptance speech at the ceremony. “I’m a quintessential example of what college athletics can do for a person. I’m extremely proud of where I’m from and I’m extremely proud to be a part of the Gonzaga community, which is the highest compliment I can get.”55

In 2019, Bay was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame along with former pitcher Ryan Dempster, coach Rob Thomson, and executive Gord Ash. His 222 career homers are fifth-most among Canadian-born players and he is one of 13 Canadians with at least 1,000 hits in the majors. He also remains the only Canadian to win the Rookie of the Year Award. “It was a very pleasant and somewhat unexpected surprise to get that call from the Canadian Hall of Fame,” said Bay. “I’m proud and honored to be recognized with great people who have helped build baseball in Canada in various ways, to the elite level it has become.”56

Also in 2019, residents of Bay’s hometown of Trail, British Columbia, began efforts to name the baseball field at local Butler Park after him. “He was absolutely flattered to have his name added to Butler Park,” said Lou DeRosa, one of the project leaders. “He’s very appreciative and very humble.”57 However, the Jason Bay Field Project was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a 2021 wind storm that downed trees and light standards in the park.58 After a five-year wait, the project was completed on April 5, 2024, when a maroon sign with “Jason Bay Field” in cursive script was installed atop the scoreboard.59

Bay and his wife Kristen live in Seattle with their three children: Addison (b. 2006), Evelyn (b. 2008), and Garrett (b. 2011).60, 61 Since his playing days, he spends time coaching his kids in baseball and soccer. “I’m just a dad with some time on his hands,” said Bay.62

Unfortunately for Bay, many baseball fans, and Mets fans in particular, will remember him as a player who got injured too often and didn’t produce enough when he was actually on the field. “I got banged up a little bit,” Bay said. “Not an excuse, just the reality and that didn’t help. I don’t think that was the No. 1 reason, I just think I couldn’t really get on track. I couldn’t just move forward. I was always stuck in one gear and I couldn’t get going.”63

Looking back on his career as a whole, Bay said: “In baseball, the window is so short. I would just hate to have a mark on me for my effort. It would irk me to no end if someone said, ‘Yeah he was decent, but he was lazy.’ Or, ‘He didn’t respect the game.’ Because I can control that. … My motivation was never status. It was never money. My motivation was just progressing in life. … If you find the answer to that mystery, let me know. And then I’ll know.”64

Last revised: February 4, 2021

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Joe DeSantis and fact-checked by Mark Sternman.

Notes

1 Jim Bailey, “Jason Bay returns to Trail, baseball card signing at Smokies game,” BC Local News, December 31, 2019.

2 Joe Starkey, “Tough love helped Pirates’ Bay travel unlikely ‘Trail’ from British Columbia to major leagues,” TribLive.com, August 1, 2004.

3 https://okstate.com/news/2003/4/19/Lauren_Bay.aspx

4 Porter, 2008.

5 Dejan Kovacevic, “Bay’s backward step a multi-part mystery,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 6, 2007.

6 Joe Starkey, “Tough love helped Pirates’ Bay travel unlikely ‘Trail’ from British Columbia to major leagues,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 1, 2004.

7 Matt Porter, “The Jason Bay file: (More than) 30 things to know about the newest Sox slugger,” Boston.com, July 31, 2008.

8 Porter, “The Jason Bay file.”

9 John Sickels, “Pirates prospect Jason Bay,” ESPN.com, January 30, 2004.

10 Porter, 2008.

11 Mark Fischer, “Ex-Met bust Jason Bay recalls his draft experience in return to New York,” New York Daily News, June 10, 2016.

12 USA Today Sports Weekly, June 4-10, 2003.

13 USA Today Sports Weekly, June 4-10, 2003.

14 Albany Times Union, May 27, 2003.

15 Sickels, 2004.

16 Chuck Johnson, “Pirates’ Bay, Athletics’ Crosby receive rookie of year honors,” USA Today, November 9, 2004.

17 Steve Serby, “Serby’s Sunday Q&A With Jason Bay,” New York Post, March 28, 2010.

18 Dejan Kovacevic, “No sophomore jinx for Pirates’ Bay,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 16, 2005.

19 Jason Meyer, “Pirates intend to use Bay as franchise’s cornerstone,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 18, 2005.

20 Meyer, 2005.

21 “Bay has admirer in Gretzky,” Associated Press, March 28, 2006.

22 Kovacevic, 2007.

23 Porter, 2008.

24 Kovacevic, 2007.

25 Kovacevic, 2007.

26 Dejan Kovacevic, “Pirates wait until final minute to trade Bay,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 1, 2008.

27 John Tomase, “Recalling Jason Bay’s best days,” Boston Herald, July 9, 2013.

28 Shi Davidi, “A hot bat in Boston; Jason Bay thrives on high expectations with Red Sox,” The Canadian Press, June 1, 2019.

29 “Bay to become U.S. citizen,” Associated Press, July 2, 2009.

30 Tim Dierkes, “2010 Top 50 Free Agents,” MLB Trade Rumors, November 9, 2009.

31 David Waldstein, “Mets and Bay Agree on a Contract,” New York Times, December 29, 2009.

32 Serby, 2010.

33 David Waldstein, “A Standout Player Who Is Happy Blending In,” New York Times, March 29, 2010.

34 Serby, 2010.

35 Joe Lapointe, “Concussion Symptoms Developed Late for Bay,” New York Times, July 27, 2010.

36 Lapointe, 2010.

37 Lapointe, 2010.

38 Lapointe, 2010.

39 Bob Klapisch, “Bay is poster child for Mets’ downfall,” FOX Sports, August 9, 2010.

40 Jerry Crasnick, “Jason Bay Eyeing Far Better Times in ’11,” ESPN.com, January 31, 2011.

41 Crasnick, 2011.

42 “Mets’ Bay Scratched With Injury, Could Land On DL,” Associated Press, March 29, 2011.

43 Andy Martino, “Bay: I Ain’t Done… Yet,” New York Daily News, February 12, 2012.

44 Martino, 2012.

45 Martino, 2012.

46 Brendan Prunty, “Mets place Jason Bay on 15-day disabled list with fractured rib,” NJ.com, April 24, 2012.

47 Prunty, 2012.

48 Tim Rohan, “Jason Bay Hurt as Mets Fall to Reds,” New York Times, June 15, 2012.

49 Rohan, 2012.

50 “Mets, Jason Bay terminate contract a year early,” Associated Press, November 7, 2012.

51 Associated Press, 2012.

52 Tim Booth, “Jason Bay hoping for a fresh start in Seattle,” Associated Press, December 10, 2012.

53 Booth, 2012.

54 Booth, 2012.

55 “Jason Bay inducted into WCC Hall of Honor,” GoZags.com, March 7, 2015.

56 http://baseballhalloffame.ca/blog/2019/02/05/bay-dempster-thomson-and-ash-to-be-inducted-into-canadian-baseball-hall-of-fame/

57 Bailey, 2019.

58 https://www.trail.ca/en/play/jason-bay-field-project.asp

59 Jim Bailey, “Jason Bay’s baseball legacy lives on at East Trail park,” Trail Times, April 18, 2024, https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/jason-bays-baseball-legacy-lives-on-at-east-trail-park-7346533

60 Bailey, 2019.

61 David Waldstein, “Jason Bay Returns to Mets After Birth of Third Child,” New York Times, May 5, 2011.

62 Ryan Collingwood, “Gonzaga alum and MLB All-Star Jason Bay enjoying retirement,” The Spokesman Review, July 4, 2018.

63 Booth, 2012.

64 Martino, 2012.

Babe Ruth greets a Civil War veteran under the approving gaze of his mentor in life and baseball, Brother Matthias. (Erin Casey)

Shortly before he died, baseball superstar Babe Ruth publicly credited a man who was born on Cape Breton Island with making him the ballplayer and man he had become. He did it in writing. Not once, but twice. In his 1948 autobiography, the third and final telling of his life story, George Herman Ruth was effusive about Martin Leo Boutilier, a man who taught him at St. Mary’s Industrial Training School in Baltimore. “It was at St. Mary’s that I met and learned to love the greatest man I’ve ever known,” Ruth said of the teacher he knew as Brother Matthias. “He was the father I needed.”1 Ruth admitted he’d been a “bad kid,” listed as incorrigible, when he was sent to the reform school and orphanage just west of Baltimore at the age of 7.

On the same day Ruth died, his second tribute to Matthias appeared in an inspirational publication called Guideposts Magazine, founded by Christian preacher Norman Vincent Peale, author of the best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking. In the Guideposts article attributed to Ruth, billed as his “last message,” he repeated that he had been “a bad kid,” and that Matthias had turned his life around and had introduced him to baseball. He called the 6-foot-6 Nova Scotian “the greatest man I have ever known.” Ruth said Matthias detected natural talent in the troubled boy, and taught him how to throw, catch, and hit properly. “I would watch him bug-eyed,” Ruth said of seeing his mentor drive a ball 350 feet with a bat in his right hand in the St. Mary’s schoolyard.2

Ironically, although Ruth himself credited Matthias with making him a ballplayer, the press acclaimed another Catholic brother for discovering and coaching the baseball phenom and getting him into professional baseball. And like many things in baseball, the true story was eclipsed by another that became embedded in the lore of the sport. Consequently, the story of the quiet Canadian, Brother Matthias, and his contribution to baseball history are not well known, and deserves to be shared.

Martin Leo Boutilier was born in 1872 in the coal-mining community of Lingan, near the tip of Cape Breton Island, not far from New Waterford, the eighth of 10 children born to Joseph Boutilier and Mary Ann Howley. Two of their sons had died as infants. Joseph Boutilier, variously listed as an engineer or machinist, maintained and repaired equipment in the mine at Lingan, and on seagoing vessels. Because of difficult economic conditions in the Maritimes, some other members of the Boutilier family had moved to Boston. As the mine in Lingan began to play out, Joseph began to explore employment options elsewhere because he had so many mouths to feed. He first tried Halifax, a bustling seaport of 68,000, but by the late 1870s a lingering recession limited prospects there, so he took his family farther south to Boston, a city of 362,839, late in 1880.3 The family settled in East Boston, not far from today’s Logan Airport, where many expatriate Canadians had taken up residence. Son Martin had just turned 9 years of age.

The Boutilier family settled into a city that was crazy about baseball. They may have been familiar with the game back in Lingan, but it’s doubtful they had much exposure to it in the hardscrabble mining community where spare time was rare. With seven boys ranging in age from 6 to 22, the family had nearly enough to field their own team in their new home. Residents of East Boston had been playing the game since as early as 1843, and immigrants considered it an important part of becoming American. The streets of working-class Boston were often filled with men and children playing games to the delight of spectators who cheered them on from front porches and windows. The Boston Red Stockings were charter members of the first professional baseball league, the National Association, founded in 1871; they placed second that first season and were league champions from 1872 to 1875. Boston was a strong franchise and became a founding member of the National League in 1876, capturing the pennant of the new league in 1877, 1878, and 1883. It was clear baseball had a firm grip on America’s fifth largest city.

Aside from their love of baseball in their adopted city, Martin and his older brother Thomas were more spiritually inclined than other members of their family. Thomas was attracted to the Brothers of Charity, a Belgium-based Catholic order that operated the House of the Guardian Angel, an orphanage and training school, in Boston. Thomas was sent for training at the Brothers of Charity in Montréal, but his inability to speak French proved to be an obstacle and he returned to Boston.4

Back home, Thomas connected with the Congregation of the Brothers of St. Francis Xavier (known as the Xaverians), another Belgium-based order that had its American headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and whose operating language was English. The Xaverians (pronounced za-VAIR-ians) focused their work on education and moral guidance for youth. They are laymen who take the same vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity as priests, but cannot conduct Mass or bestow sacramental privileges. Thomas Boutilier discovered that during his sojourn in Canada, younger brother Martin had become involved with the Xaverians in about 1890.

The Xaverians had begun operating a new school in East Boston where Martin likely first encountered them. By 1891, he signed an “agreement of membership” and became an apprentice with the order. By the time his training was completed four years later, he had been assigned the name Brother Matthias, as was the custom of the Xaverians. Thomas also joined the order and became Brother Amandus. During their training, the Boutilier brothers were sent to Xaverian-operated Catholic schools in Baltimore – Amandus to Mount St. Joseph College and Matthias to St. Mary’s Industrial Training School.5 The schools were not far from each other, but Mount St. Joseph was a more traditional high school with tuition and board and a focus on academics, while boys at St. Mary’s were often sent there by the courts, were known as “inmates” and were trained to work in the trades. St. Mary’s was a combination training school, orphanage, and detention facility for which permission was required to leave the premises.

Brother Matthias was better educated than his older brother and took up teaching at St. Mary’s, while Amandus performed administrative duties at Mount St. Joseph. Somewhere along the line in Xaverian paperwork, an “i” was dropped from the spelling of the Boutilier name to become Boutlier. Matthias, likely because of his size, became head disciplinarian at St. Mary’s, which sometimes housed as many as 800 boys. He could bring order to an unruly scene simply by showing up and quietly making his presence known. To his colleagues, he was known as Big Matt, but to the boys, he was known as The Boss. Matthias was also one of the baseball coaches at the school, which sometimes fielded 40 or more teams in a season. Baseball was king at St. Mary’s, which had two fields, one for the older boys and another for the younger ones. It was to St. Mary’s that a youngster would come, just as Matthias was settling into a life in the service of God. The boy changed the life of the big Xaverian who saw something special in him, trained him in the finer points of baseball, and helped him transform the game.

George Herman Ruth was born in Baltimore on February 6, 1895, in the Ridgely’s Delight neighborhood, immediately west of Camden Yards. He was the first child born to George and Katie Ruth, who had eight children, but only George Jr. and his sister Mary survived past infancy. George Sr. and his brother John operated a lightning-rod business established by their father, but in 1901 George left the business to operate a bar downtown on West Camden Street, and his family moved in above it. The premises were in a gritty working-class area, and young George soon found himself getting into trouble while his parents worked long hours in their saloon. Strains became evident in their marriage, aggravated by too much alcohol consumption. Meanwhile, George Jr. was becoming a street kid, tossing stolen eggs and tomatoes at the heavy vehicles on their way to and from the Baltimore docks. A lefty, young Ruth developed an accurate arm and also joined his pals in rudimentary games of baseball on the busy city streets. Sometimes Ruth and his fellow troublemakers were caught and whipped for their misdeeds by truck drivers, and they received beatings from shopkeepers, he recalled in a 1928 autobiography, ghost-written by sportswriter Ford Frick.6

In 1902 George Ruth, at the urging of a police officer friend, placed his 7-year-old son at St. Mary’s Industrial Training School, to which courts sent many youngsters in a bid to deter them from a life of crime. “I was listed as an incorrigible, and I guess I was,” Ruth admitted in his 1948 autobiography.7 Not long afterward, either in the classroom or on the ball field, the youngster met Matthias, the man who became a surrogate father of sorts. In the classroom, Matthias encouraged the young lefty to write with his right hand, in flowing script. On the ball field, Matthias noticed abundant raw talent and took extra time with the newcomer, drilling him in proper fielding and hitting techniques. Ruth became a catcher, but the school had no gloves suitable for lefties, so he was forced to catch with a glove on his left hand, then quickly flip off the glove and throw the ball with the same hand. It was cumbersome, but young Ruth became adept at it. And when he ridiculed a pitcher he was catching one day, coach Matthias made him take over the pitching duties himself. It was a fateful move that soon began attracting attention to the young hurler. Ruth played on school teams with older boys, winning the school championship in 1912. During his nearly 12 years at the school, Ruth off the field became a skilled shirt-maker in the school’s tailoring shop, which also made uniforms for the St. Mary’s baseball teams.

Baseball and young George Ruth were meant for each other. And Brother Matthias cultivated and channeled the raw talent of the loudmouthed, good-natured kid to whom he took a shine. One of Ruth’s pals, Fats Leisman, figured Ruth was a baseball prodigy who didn’t really need much direction. “My personal opinion is that the Babe was born to play ball,” Leisman later wrote.8 For his part, Ruth disagreed. He said this about his mentor and coach:

Brother Matthias had the right idea about training a baseball club. He made every boy on the team play every position in the game, including the bench. A kid might pitch a game one day and find himself behind the bat the next or perhaps out in the sun-field. You see Brother Matthias idea was to fit a boy to jump in in any emergency and make good. So whatever I have at the bat or on the mound or in the outfield or even on the bases, I owe directly to Brother Matthias.⁹

Ruth was in awe of Brother Matthias and copied many of his techniques. The big man swung with an uppercut at a time when level swings were in vogue to smash line drives during the Deadball Era. But Matthias could easily loft a ball over the outfield fence with his powerful swing. His young protégé developed his own long swing and powerful uppercut. Matthias, a big man, ran around the bases with surprisingly small steps and was rather pigeon-toed. There is no shortage of film showing Ruth scampering around the bases with similar footwork during his long career. The form of Matthias was unorthodox, but effective. By copying much of what he saw in Matthias, young Ruth went on to revolutionize the game of baseball, especially with his bat. “I think I was born as a hitter the first day I ever saw him hit a baseball,” the home-run king said of Matthias in his 1948 autobiography.10

Ruth’s baseball exploits, particularly the effectiveness of his pitching, began attracting attention in the Baltimore baseball community during his years at St. Mary’s. In his annual report for 1913, Brother Paul, the school superintendent, proudly reported: “One boy created a sensation by his excellent work.”11 He wasn’t talking about academics. The boy was Ruth; the “work” was baseball. A player at Mount St. Joseph, which fielded highly competitive teams, was among those who took note. He suggested to Brother Gilbert, his ball coach and an administrator at the school, that he see the young hurler for St. Mary’s. Gilbert did so, and was impressed with what he saw. Gilbert, an extrovert, unlike the retiring and rather shy Matthias, had many connections in the baseball community, and was friends with Jack Dunn, owner of the Baltimore Orioles of the Eastern and then International Leagues. Gilbert often alerted Dunn to local talent, and Dunn, a former major-league pitcher, was always on the lookout for young pitchers he could develop.

There are several versions of the story about how Dunn learned about Ruth, most involving a tip or introduction by Brother Gilbert. In his 1948 autobiography, Ruth said that during February of 1914, shortly after his 19th birthday, he was throwing a baseball around the still-frozen yard at St. Mary’s, when he was approached by Brothers Matthias, Gilbert, and Paul, and the Orioles owner. Gilbert introduced him to Dunn, who asked the startled Ruth if he’d like to sign with the Orioles.12 Dunn offered to become his legal guardian and pay him $600 for the 1914 season. Babe accepted.

Brother Gilbert had many friends among sportswriters, some of whom promulgated the story that Gilbert not only tipped Dunn to Ruth, but that he had also coached him. In a seven-part series in the Boston Globe published in 1923, in which Brother Matthias is barely mentioned, Gilbert’s credentials were described this way by the editors: “No other one man, except the Babe himself, knows more about his life than does Brother Gilbert.”13 Gilbert was soon enshrined by sportswriters as the discoverer of Ruth. For his part, the modest Matthias made no protest. He and his surrogate son knew the truth, and felt there was no need to upset Gilbert’s applecart. Gilbert, a popular after-dinner speaker, delivered more than 1,000 speeches in his lifetime, many of them discussing his time with Babe Ruth. When he died in 1947, Gilbert was working on his memoirs in which Ruth loomed large. At the time, sportswriters were still hailing him as the one responsible for The Babe.

George Herman Ruth Jr., now 19, was quickly dubbed “Babe” when he appeared at spring-training camp for the Orioles in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “Look at Dunnie and his new babe,” one of the older players said at one point, while another took pity on him when Dunn bawled him out for something, saying: “You’re just a Babe in the woods.”14 Another story was that Dunn was impressed with a home run Ruth belted at Fayetteville and reportedly said: “This baby will not get away from me.”15 The name stuck. To Matthias, however, he was always “George.”

Babe Ruth did well with the Orioles, but Jack Dunn faced unexpected competition in 1914 from the Baltimore Terrapins of the new Federal League, and was strapped for money. In July he sold his “baby” to the Boston Red Sox along with two other players. Babe would earn $650 a month in Boston, up from $500 in Baltimore. As a tailor, for which he’d been trained at St. Mary’s, he would have earned about $60 a month. Ruth was unhappy, however, at leaving Baltimore, his home, and Brothers Matthias, Paul, Gilbert, and others. Fortified with the acquisitions from Dunn in Baltimore, the Red Sox were making a run for the American League pennant; by August, however, the Philadelphia Athletics had an insurmountable lead, and Boston owner J.J. Lannin decided to send Ruth down to the Providence Grays of the International League for more playing time and experience. The Grays, purchased by the Canadian-born Lannin from the Detroit Tigers, were a sort of farm team for the Red Sox. Babe retained his Red Sox salary but was unhappy at the move, which he viewed as a demotion. He was in Providence for six weeks, helping the team to the International League pennant. Along the way, he belted his first home run in a professional game, on September 5 in Toronto against the Maple Leafs. Mythmakers insist the ball sailed over the bleachers at Maple Leaf Park on Hanlan’s Point island into Lake Ontario, but contemporaneous press accounts made no such claim of the ball getting wet that day.16

Babe returned to Boston and helped the Red Sox win three World Series in the next four years. In 1920 he was famously sold to the New York Yankees. There, he quit pitching so that he could wield his mighty bat in every game. He stayed in touch with Brother Matthias and St. Mary’s, and often brought fellow players with him when he returned to the school for visits. In 1919 a fire heavily damaged St. Mary’s, and Babe pitched in to help fundraising efforts, persuading the Yankees to let the St. Mary’s band accompany the team on a road trip, and to pass the hat to rebuild the school that Babe considered his real home.17 As his fame grew and he transformed the game with his home runs and made the Yankees a formidable powerhouse, Babe continued to stay in contact with Brother Matthias, and sent him tickets for some games. Babe’s late-night extracurricular activities with drink and the ladies often got Ruth into trouble with team brass, who occasionally called upon Matthias to counsel their star.

Matthias visited New York to see Babe play in 1922 or 1923, and was surprised when Ruth announced that he was buying Matthias a brand-new Cadillac as a thank-you for everything he had done.18 The big brother was astounded at Babe’s generosity. Because of his vow of poverty, Matthias had the luxury car registered in the name of St. Mary’s, which gave him exclusive use of it. Always the teacher, Matthias used it as an educational tool at times, showing the boys rudimentary auto mechanics. He also ferried around young passengers to various concerts and other events. One night during the summer of 1927, while returning home from an out-of-town event, the Cadillac stalled on some railway tracks and was demolished when struck by a train.19 Luckily, Matthias and the boys escaped unscathed. When Babe heard about the incident, he promptly bought Matthias another Cadillac.20

By 1926 Babe was constantly womanizing and had separated from his first wife, Helen. He considered divorce, but Matthias talked him out of it. Ruth recorded 47 home runs that year, bouncing back after a poor 1925 season, but his off-field activities produced grief for Yankees general manager Ed Barrow and on-field manager Miller Huggins. The team assigned a private eye to follow their star, whose late-night antics continued unabated. In June the Yankees made a road trip that included Chicago, a city whose delights Babe always sampled in large dollops. Team management called upon Brother Matthias to come to Chicago and speak to Ruth about their star’s behavior, hoping the Xaverian could yet again provide fatherly advice and modify Ruth’s behavior.

The city was hopping when the Yankees arrived in town. The 28th International Eucharistic Congress was being held for Catholics around the world, the first time the event had been held in the United States. The Yankees found an invitation for Matthias to attend the congress, and asked him to speak to Babe while both were in town. One evening Matthias came to the Prado Hotel, where the Yankees were staying, and occupied a chair in the hotel lobby from which he could watch the elevator. Ruth soon appeared, apparently ready for a wild night on the town, but he spotted Matthias and the two men greeted each other warmly. Matthias said he was in town for the religious congress and to see Ruth play the White Sox. He said he wanted to take his former pupil out to dinner and to chat. His plans for the night dashed, Ruth agreed and the pair stayed out until 11 p.m. as Matthias sternly advised Ruth to clean up his act because many people were concerned for him. He likely reminded the Babe that he had been encouraged to live a God-centered life as a young man at St. Mary’s, not a hedonistic lifestyle filled with women and booze. What kind of role model was George for young men like those still at St. Mary’s? Babe was letting down the boys at his old school who idolized him. The sobering talk left the prodigal son promising to do better. Ruth biographer Marshall Smelser called this a “turning point” in Ruth’s behavior. “Certainly he no longer after that time had the reputation for hell-raising that he had before.”21

It was in that second Cadillac that Matthias himself got into trouble. He was seen driving the big car while repeatedly visiting a much younger woman during 1931, and concerned neighbors reported him to the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. Matthias was 58 at the time, the woman 23. He denied any improper relationship when his activities were investigated by church officials. Matthias could have been expelled from the Xaverians for violating his oath of chastity, leaving him penniless as he approached the age of 60. Instead, the church reprimanded him and transferred Matthias to a Xaverian-operated school in Danvers, Massachusetts, noting: “If Brother Matthias had been more amenable to discipline over a period of years, his scandalous actions might have been avoided.”22 He’d been head disciplinarian at St. Mary’s, yet his own conduct had fallen short of what was expected of him. In 1942 he celebrated 50 years with the Xaverian order while living in retirement at St. Joseph’s Juniorate in Peabody, Massachusetts. Two years later, Matthias was found dead in his room at the age of 70. He is buried at the Xaverian cemetery in Danvers. It is not known how much he was able to see his surrogate son after his move to Massachusetts.

In his only known interview with the press, the unheralded Matthias told a reporter in 1935 that Babe was one of a kind: “There never was a better boy at St. Mary’s School in Baltimore than ‘George.’ I was there 38 years and there were better ball players, but never a better boy.”23 The affection of the surrogate father was clear. And Babe returned the sentiments publicly in print shortly before his own death in 1948.

Sources

The author has also written a full book on Brother Matthias. See Brian Martin, The Man Who Made Babe Ruth: Brother Matthias of St. Mary’s School (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2020).

Notes

1 Babe Ruth, as told to Bob Considine, The Babe Ruth Story (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1948), 13, 18.

2 Babe Ruth, “The Kids Can’t Take It if We Don’t Give It!,” Guideposts Magazine, October 1948: 1-2, 23-24, accessed February 10, 2018, http://baberuthcentral.com/remembering-the-babe-/babe-ruths-public-statement.

3 The move of the Boutilier family to Halifax was recorded by Cape Breton researcher Virginia MacDonald in the November 24, 2007, edition of the Cape Breton Post. Her grandfather was born in Lingan in 1871 and her father, Bernard, was a machinist/engineer. The 1881 Census of Canada recorded the Boutiliers as still living in Lingan. Descendants of the Cape Breton Boutiliers, Jean Mor and Francis McGillivary, confirmed to the author that the move to Halifax came about this time.

4 Brother Amandus Dossier CCFX, 6/03 #318, of the Xaverian Brothers, University of Notre Dame Archives, South Bend, Indiana.

5 Brother Matthias Dossier, CCFX 6/04 #329, of the Xaverian Brothers, University of Notre Dame Archives, South Bend, Indiana.

6 Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 3-4.

7 Babe Ruth, to Considine, The Babe Ruth Story, 12.

8 Lou Leisman, I Was with Babe Ruth at St. Mary’s (Aberdeen, Maryland: self-published, 1956), 21.

9 Babe Ruth, Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2011), 6.

10 Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story, 15.

11 Marshall Smelser, The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 31.

12 Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story, 20.

13 Brother Gilbert, C.F.X., “Babe Ruth’s Great First Home Run – Brother Gilbert Discovers Him,” Boston Sunday Globe, October 14, 1928: 20.

14 Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story, 25-26.

15 “Babe Ruth ‘A Natural’ Even as Oriole Rookie,” Baltimore Sun, August 17, 1948: 15.

16 Leonard Levin, “Baseball. Arrival of Ruth Turned Grays’ Skies to Blue/81 Years Ago, the Bambino Led Providence to the International League Pennant,” Providence Journal, August 14, 1995: B4. Levin quotes from Journal sportswriter Bill Perrin, who wrote about Ruth’s blast that sailed “over the right field fence.” No Toronto paper reported that the ball made it into the lake that day.

17 Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story, 132.

18 Some reports say the year was 1925 or 1926, but an early 1924 report in the Baltimore Sun mentions Matthias taking St. Mary’s boys to a theatrical performance “in an automobile given the latter by ‘Babe’ Ruth, the baseball player.” Date of the article is March 17, 1924, “White House Talk Explained by Lang,” on page 4.

19 “Auto Presented by Babe Ruth to St. Mary’s Smashed by Train,” Baltimore Sun, August 17, 1927: 22.

20 Babe Ruth, The Babe Ruth Story, 107.

21 Smelser, 239.

22 Matthias Dossier, University of Notre Dame Archives.

23 Thomas Sheehan, “Brother Matthias Talks of ‘George,'” Boston Evening Transcript, February 28, 1935: 6.

Bowsfield was born in Vernon, British Columbia, on January 10, 1935. Baseball records have long shown him as born on the same date in 1936. He explained that when he first came to the big leagues, someone urged him to “cheat on your birthdate a little bit. It might keep you around a little bit longer if they think you’re a bit younger.”1

The family moved to Penticton, BC, when he was just a year old.2 He was raised there, attending the Penticton public schools through graduation and then two years studying accounting at the Penticton College of Commerce. His father Frank Oliver Bowsfield worked as a salesman. His mother was listed on the 1935 BC voter list as “Mrs. Frank Oliver” Bowsfield. Her actual name was Queene Bowsfield.3 Frank Bowsfield later got into the insurance and real estate business in Penticton, a town of 12,000 closer to Spokane than to Vancouver.

It was a town where hockey and basketball reigned. “There wasn’t even a high school baseball team,” Bowsfield later recalled. “But for some reason, I don’t know why, I liked to throw a ball.”4 His mother was often the one with whom he played catch. A 2013 article explained, “His mother and her two sisters all played on a girls’ baseball team during the war years. ‘I think my athleticism comes from that side of the family,’ he said.”5 Vernon was at the time a relatively small town, but the women’s baseball team was a very good one and often took on men’s baseball teams in the area. A third, younger, sister of his mother also played on the team at times.6

Accounting was not Ted’s field of choice; he wanted to play baseball. His father encouraged him, organizing from scratch a four-team league when Ted was 8 or 9 years old. “He used to jam 10 or 12 kids in his big Hudson,” Bowsfield later recalled.7 There were some trips as far as Vernon, some 75 miles away.

Les Edwards, a former minor-league pitcher, organized a semipro league when Ted was about 14.8 “He told me I should concentrate on pitching.”9 “I could throw really hard. That was the thing that got me noticed. Sam Drossos was my semipro catcher. He was really important in molding my career. When I was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, he was the one who did the presenting. He was as good at baseball as I was or better. He had all the tools.”10

Red Sox scout (and a former southpaw) Earl Johnson, who handled the Pacific Northwest area for Boston, signed Bowsfield. “They gave me a bonus of $4,000.”11

Though a lefty on the mound, Bowsfield batted right-handed. He wasn’t much of a hitter, with a career .127 major-league batting average (and .193 on-base percentage) in 199 plate appearances. He wasn’t even a particularly good fielder; his five errors with the Angels in 1961 led the league and he had a lifetime .916 fielding percentage. But he won 37 games as a big-league pitcher. He stood 6-feet-1 and was listed at 190 pounds.

After signing, his first pro ball placement was with the San Jose Red Sox in the Class-C California League. He got his feet wet with 16 games (five starts), recording an earned run average of 4.95 with a record of 2-3. He nearly tripled his innings count in 1955, working 117 innings and improving his ERA to 3.00. His won/loss record was 9-7.

Bowsfield joined the Boston team in Sarasota at the start of spring training in 1956.12 He was then elevated to the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, but he suffered a bad break – almost literally – in his very first game of the year, when he severely dislocated his ankle sliding into second base. He was on the disabled list most of the year, and his record was a very disappointing 0-3 (3.80). On the next-to-last day of September, he married Lila Ann McDonald.

In 1957, Bowsfield pitched for the Texas League’s Oklahoma City Indians. It was Double-A baseball and he had a very good 2.57 ERA in 19 starts and six relief stints. After the season, two picked teams – Oklahoma City and Austin – played seven games in Mexico City, for which each player received $250. Bowsfield benefitted from more than just the money. “Down there on that trip, I found my curve control. The control started to come along at the end of the season. I wasn’t convinced, however, until I pitched three games in Mexico.”13 At the time, his wife was pregnant with their first son, Ted Jr. The couple later had a second child, Bradley. The marriage ended in divorce, after 13 years.

In 1972, he married Marilyn Holden. They were married for 41 years.

Promoted to Triple A and the Minneapolis Millers, Boston’s top farm club, in 1958, Bowsfield started strong, with a 2.62 ERA and an 8-4 record.

The Red Sox were in fairly desperate need of pitching and on July 14 brought up Bill Monbouquette and Bud Byerly to the staff. Bowsfield was a year older than Monbouquette “and had been regarded as the best pitching prospect in the farm system of the Red Sox. So – apparently to keep from injuring Bowsfield’s morale — the Sox two days later decided to bring him up, too.”14 All three pitchers signed their contracts in the general manager’s office, and all met Tom Yawkey, on the same day.

Bowsfield’s big-league debut came in the first game of a Sunday doubleheader, Boston hosting Detroit. The Tigers held a 3-0 lead after eight innings. Manager Mike Higgins asked Bowsfield to pitch the ninth. He gave up a single to the first batter – Gus Zernial – but then retired the next three. Had the Red Sox scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth, he would have earned his first win – but not only did the Sox fail to score a run, they never managed a hit in the entire game. Jim Bunning had no-hit the Red Sox.

After several fine relief outings, he got his first start on August 3, in Cleveland, allowing two runs in four innings. One week later, on August 10 in Yankee Stadium, he got another start. Though he gave up three runs in seven innings, the Red Sox scored nine and Bowsfield earned his first major-league win. In front of nearly 56,000 people, he held the Yankees hitless through 6 1/3 innings until Norm Siebern lined a clean single to right field in the bottom of the seventh.

He beat the Yankees at Fenway Park on August 15. On the 20th, he only lasted a third of an inning, but was fortunate to have a no-decision. Bowsfield went to 3-0 with a complete-game 4-2 win in New York on September 1. In a 22-day span, he had beaten the Yankees three times. New York manager Casey Stengel said, “No left-hander the Red Sox have had since [Mel] Parnell was able to do that. Not that many people beat the Yankees just like that.”15

He lost a couple of road starts, but closed his season 4-2 with a 4 1/3-inning win in Washington, in relief on September 28. His ERA for his first major-league season was 3.84. The Boston Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America voted him Red Sox rookie of the year.16

Bowsfield was, to this point, an alien pitching for the Red Sox. (His alien registration number was All 839 368.) On February 22, 1959, he was admitted to permanent residence in the United States. He became a naturalized U. S. citizen on June 30, 1967, and 50 years later still retains dual citizenship.

He built a pitching tunnel where he could pitch indoors during the cold British Columbia winters and enlisted a neighbor to catch. John Murphy of the Red Sox had urged him to keep throwing some over the wintertime, keep his muscles stretched out. His plan was to show up ready for work in the spring of 1959, with a bit of a boost in pay. He said his most important pitch was the change-up. “Keep that hitter off stride,” he said. “Don’t let him get set.”17

His sophomore season was something of a disaster. His first appearance of 1959 was, perhaps appropriately, against the Yankees at Fenway on April 18. He retired the side 1-2-3 in the top of the first, but began the next inning by yielding two singles and a walk to load the bases. Andy Carey singled to drive in a pair. After two strikeouts, he was asked to walk Hank Bauer intentionally to load the bases and set up a play at any base. He did walk him, but then walked the next two batters as well (Siebern and Mickey Mantle), and Higgins pulled the plug. He lost the game, his only decision of the year. He only worked in five games, a total of nine innings, and had a 15.00 ERA. On May 18, the Red Sox sent him to Minneapolis.

In retrospect, Bowsfield says the polyethylene-covered pitching tunnel was “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” It wasn’t so much the cold as he had not built it wide enough. It should have been two or three feet wider. He was cramped when he threw, and was bundled up, too. “That spring, there was a definite knot in my pitching shoulder that I never did get rid of. From that time on, I was basically pitching with a sore arm.”18

Nonetheless, Bowsfield acquitted himself very well with the Millers – a 10-5 record and a 2.45 ERA. He helped Minneapolis reach and win the American Association playoffs. The Millers and the International League’s Havana Sugar Kings faced off in the Junior World Series. The series lasted seven games; because of the weather in Minnesota, the last five games were all played in Havana. The Cuban Revolution had just triumphed at the beginning of 1959. Bowsfield told baseball historian Stew Thornley, “Young people not more than 14 or 15 years old were in the dugout with us, waving their guns around like toys. Every once in a while, we could hear shots being fired outside the stadium, and we never knew what was going on.”19

Bowsfield remembers Fidel Castro coming into the stadium from center field for each game. “He would talk to us. He was very cordial, but he always wore these two pearl-handled guns on his hips. I pitched the sixth game in the series, I believe, and we won that game. Before the final game, Castro came through center field. We had a pitcher named Edo Vanni. He was quite a character. He only had one eye. Castro stopped to chat with us and he said, ‘Tonight, boys, Cuba wins!’ And he put both his hands on his pistols. And Edo Vanni said, ‘If I get in the game, no problem. You’re going to win.’ We all laughed like hell at the time. Castro laughed, too. Gene Mauch said to me later, ‘If I’d had the rotation set up differently, I would have pitched you in the seventh game, but in hindsight, maybe it was a good thing we didn’t win.’”20 It was the last professional baseball game played in Cuba.

In the winter of 1959/60, he went to a warmer climate and pitched in Venezuela, where he was 14-4.

He made the Red Sox again in 1960, but was not impressive. He appeared in 17 games, all but two in relief. He earned a couple of saves, but blew two and also blew a lead. He won his first start, 12-3, in the second game of the Memorial Day doubleheader at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, but lost his only other start, to the Yankees, 8-3, lasting only a third of an inning and giving up four runs.

On June 13, with an ERA of 5.14 and a 1-2 record, he was traded to the Cleveland Indians with Marty Keough, for Carroll Hardy and Russ Nixon. He pitched in 11 games for the Indians, six of them starts, and was 3-4 with a 5.09 ERA. He was sad to leave Boston, saying that his wife and he would talk things over “back home in Boston” during the offseason.21 Coach Del Baker told him to buck up: “You’re one of the best left-handed pitchers in the game.”22

On July 29, the Indians optioned him to Indianapolis. There he was 0-5 with a 6.09 ERA.

The Indians elected not to protect him when it came time for the expansion draft in December 1960. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Angels as the 17th pick of the draft. Oddly, though, he was returned the same day. Come February 1, 1961, however, when catcher Red Wilson announced his retirement (Wilson was one of the players the Angels had drafted from Cleveland), the Indians sent Bowsfield to fulfill their commitment.23 Angels GM Fred Haney had observed Bowsfield while broadcasting for NBC. “I remembered his work and inasmuch as we needed a southpaw, Ted was our pick. We’re glad to have him.”24

He was welcomed by manager Bill Rigney. Bowsfield worked in 41 games (21 starts), throwing 157 innings. He had four complete games, one of them a shutout.

The Angels finished eighth in what had in 1961 become a 10-team league. They were 70-91. Ken McBride had the most wins (12-15) but an ERA of 3.65. Tied for second-most wins were Eli Grba (11-13, 4.25) and Bowsfield (11-8, 3.73). McBride’s WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) was 1.370 to Bowsfield’s 1.382. Bowsfield was the only starter with a winning record.

Looking back more than 50 years later, Bowsfield expressed the same thing many players – pitchers, in particular – from earlier days have said: “There was not a lot of teaching going on. I never did really have a mentor. The best pitching coach I ever had was Marv Grissom, the pitching coach for the Angels in ’61, ’62. He taught me the changeup, which helped me a lot. It probably kept me in the big leagues at least another year, that pitch.”25

Bowsfield came up with a sore arm at the end of spring training in 1962, and his first appearance was on April 28, a 7-6 win in Detroit. His record for May was three losses and two no-decisions. He missed the last week of May and he first two in June because of a medical scare – and he understood he had been diagnosed with polio. “His left arm was so weak he couldn’t lift a three-pound weight…there was a chance Bowsfield might never pitch again.”26 He couldn’t throw the ball all the way to home plate. Fortunately, it was said to be a mild form of the disease, and he had had Salk anti-polio shots beforehand. Some electro-shock therapy helped and his strength came back.27 Two days later, Angels physician Dr. Robert Woods said it was a misunderstanding – that Bowsfield had been told, “You’ve got an arm like a man with polio” – but it was just a weakness of his throwing arm.28

Then he won three in a row. By season’s end, he had a 9-8 record and a 4.40 ERA. The Angels, in only their second year, finished in third place. Three Angels pitchers had double-digit wins, and the team’s ERA was 3.70. In November, the Angels sent Bowsfield to the Kansas City Athletics as the player to be named later in a deal made back on July 21.

He pitched two years in Kansas City. They were both subpar years, with losing records and an ERA below team average – he was 5-7 (4.45) in 1963. That’s not to say there weren’t good moments. On May 11, 1963, in Minnesota pitching against the Twins, he had a no-hitter going through nine innings. The Athletics led 5-0 going into the bottom of the ninth. Bowsfield walked the first batter, Zoilo Versalles. Vic Power then singled Versalles to third, snapping the no-hit bid. Versalles scored on a 6-4-3 double-play groundball. Bowsfield then got the final out. After the game, he praised K.C. manager Eddie Lopat. “I’ve never felt I was good enough to pitch a no-hitter,” he said. “Mediocre pitchers aren’t meant to pitch no-hitters.” He added his appreciation to Lopat for rescuing him from the scrapheap: “If it weren’t for Lopat, I wouldn’t be pitching.”29

“He kept fighting for me to stay in the big leagues and he’s one of the guys responsible for me qualifying for the pension. At that time, it took five years to qualify. We had a nice celebration in Cleveland when I did.”30

His next game was a three-hit shutout.

In 1964, Bowsfield was 4-7 (4.10). In 1965, after a sore arm in the springtime, he was activated on May 12 and played a few games for the Vancouver Mounties but then developed both bronchitis and a knot on his left shoulder. He was dealt to Spokane but was soon returned to Vancouver. Cortisone shots had helped get him through a couple of seasons, but the arm problems had become too persistent to continue pitching at a high enough level. “At age 29, I was done.”31

He left baseball and took up work as a partner in a liquor store.32 The store did fine until a Safeway was installed in the same shopping center and undercut them on prices.

He soon found work in baseball, thanks to Cedric Tallis. “I was looking for a job, and he hired me. He had to go through a lot of hoops to hire me. He had to get Fred Haney to approve it. He had to talk to Gene Autry.” Bowsfield was hired as assistant to the director of stadium operations in Anaheim. Tallis, he says, “taught me everything He was the type of individual who involved you in everything he was doing. He gave me the opportunity to work with Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, the City of Anaheim, the County of Orange. Cedric became the general manager for the Kansas City Royals expansion team and left the Angels. Fred Haney offered me his position. I consider myself a very fortunate individual, and if I’ve had any successes in the management of facilities, and in consulting, it was through this man. He really grounded me in all of the things that you needed to know to run a facility. That includes negotiating with the city, the union negotiations, the concessionaire, the parking, security. He allowed me to learn all the ins and outs of running a facility, first-hand.”33

Bowsfield worked as Tallis’s assistant in 1966 and 1967 and then early in 1968 became the director. In 1973, he also took on the role of traveling secretary.34

In July 1974, he resigned to take another position – as director of Seattle’s King County Stadium, then under construction.35 As such, he played an important role in bringing major-league baseball to Seattle (after the short-lived Seattle Pilots), the team that became the Mariners.36 The cost of the dome was reportedly $67 million. It opened in March 1976. The Kingdome was one of the first facilities in the United States to have four prime tenants – the Supersonics, Mariners, Seahawks, and the Sounders soccer team. “Financially, it never took one nickel out of the County’s coffers. The Kingdome was the only dome that I know of – ever, to this day – to succeed financially without having to incur any costs for the taxpayer.”37

In 1980, as head of the Kingdome, he became embroiled in a lawsuit when the Mariners sued King County to have their lease with the county voided so they could play elsewhere. Among other things, Bowsfield was alleged to have made “false and disparaging comments” about the Mariners owners.38

In 1984, the Kingdome hosted the NCAA basketball Final Four, which Bowsfield called “the biggest single event in the history of the Kingdome.”39

At the end of 1985, Bowsfield resigned to become director of the Tacoma Dome. He knew the Mariners and Seahawks were trying to privatize the Kingdome “and I’m sure that the privatization operation did not include Ted Bowsfield.”40 His new position made him director of Tacoma’s Department of Public Assembly Facilities.

He also worked with Bob Walsh and Ted Turner to bring the Goodwill Games to Seattle, helped to launch the Yakima Dome, and managed some smaller arenas in the Tri-City area of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, Washington. The Okanagan Life noted, “While running a consulting business he worked on BC Place Stadium and Toronto’s SkyDome.”41

Around 1998, his wife’s parents pled for the Bowsfields to relocate closer to them, in the San Diego area. For 17 years, Ted Bowsfield worked part-time at the Cypress Ridge Golf Course near his home in Nipomo, California. He lost his second wife, Marilyn, to complications of cancer a few years ago; she had battled cancer for 26 years, though fortunately with one 16-year stretch of remission. “If anybody had a big impact on my life, it was probably her because she made me a better person.”42 Bowfield expresses pride in both sons, J.R. and Bradley, J.R.’s wife Janice, and his two granddaughters.

In 2017, Bowsfield still keeps active and runs a golf tournament three Sundays a month at Cypress Ridge.43 “I’ve been a very fortunate individual,” he says. “When you think of where I came from in Penticton where all I really had was the gift of a really good left arm. I’m very blessed.”44

Last revised: June 13, 2017

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Phil Williams and fact-checked by Kevin Larkin.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Bowsfield’s player file and player questionnaire from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, Rod Nelson of SABR’s Scouts Committee, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

For 22 years, the name Charles Bronfman was synonymous with major-league baseball in Montréal. As the son of immigrants who made their fortune in the whiskey trade, Charles made a name for himself in his own right. At the age of 37, he raised the funds required to obtain an expansion baseball franchise in the National League. The Expos under Charles’s stewardship put an entertaining product on the field in spite of the external forces of baseball economics and national unity politics. His baseball days behind him, he applied his values as a Canadian and as a Jew to improve the lives of others.

The saga of the Bronfmans originated in the town of Otaci, in the region of Bessarabia, in the Russian Empire. In 1880 Yechiel Bronfman married the former Mindel Elman.1 The Bronfmans were tobacconists, and although they grew quite wealthy, their affluence was no match for the prevailing anti-Semitism throughout the Russian Empire. A wave of pogroms ensued after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. The Bronfmans felt no choice but to flee, departing with their four children, servants, and personal rabbi for the New World in 1889.2 The youngest of the four, an infant named Samuel, grew to become the patriarch of the Bronfmans.

Yechiel settled his family first in Wapella, Saskatchewan, and then in Brandon, Manitoba. Mindel delivered four more children, and by 1903 the family had recovered enough of its wealth to purchase the Anglo-American Hotel.3 Prescient in his business acumen, young Samuel observed that the profits of the hotel were concentrated in the sale of alcoholic beverages. ‘Mr. Sam,’ as he would become known, soon entered the liquor trade. Meanwhile, in the United States, Congress on October 28, 1919, passed the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages. Mr. Sam saw an opportunity. He would sell whiskey to American entrepreneurs, but his doing so in Canada made his business perfectly legal. Mr. Sam founded the Distillers Corporation in Montréal in 1924.4 By 1928, he had accumulated enough capital to purchase Joseph Seagram & Sons.5 Mr. Sam had married the former Saidye Rosner in 1922; they had four children: Minda, Phyllis, Edgar, and the youngest, Charles Rosner Bronfman, on June 27, 1931.

The Bronfman family lived at 15 Belvedere Road in the Montréal suburb of Westmount.6 For his education, Charles attended Selwyn House in Montréal and Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. Meanwhile, Mr. Sam’s empire continued to expand. According to Charles’s memoirs, by 1933, “the Company had 40 percent of the Canadian whisky market.”7 Mr. Sam was the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962, and became an important benefactor to both McGill University and the Israel Museum. These lessons of philanthropy and community activism were not lost on young Charles and his siblings.

After attending McGill University, Charles went to work for Mr. Sam on March 12, 1951.8 He was appointed to run the Adams whisky label in 1954, and in 1958, “at the grand old age of 27,” he was made president of the House of Seagram.9 In 1961 he married the former Barbara Baerwald; they had two children, Stephen and Ellen.

During the 1950s and ’60s, the Seagram’s empire expanded its horizons beyond whiskey, entering both the real estate and oil markets. Meanwhile, Mayor Jean Drapeau was concocting his latest grand projet for the city of Montréal. During his 30-year tenure as mayor, Drapeau put Montréal on the world stage with Expo 67, Place des Arts, the Metro system, and the 1976 Summer Olympics. Now he was trying to convince Major League Baseball that Canada’s largest city should be awarded an expansion team.

Montréal had a storied baseball history as the top farm club for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Charles Bronfman was 15 years old when Jackie Robinson led the Montréal Royals to the Little World Series in 1946. As he told biographer Howard Green, “my mother [maintained] I was crazy about baseball as a kid. … [I]f she was implying that I played it, that’s not the case. I just followed it.”10 The expansion fee for a National League team was $10 million, and Charles offered to put up 10 percent with his own money. His wife, Barbara, questioned his decision to invest: “A million dollars and you just say yes?” “Well,” he replied, “it’s never going to happen anyway.”11

“But happen, it did,” in the words of Donald Sutherland.12 Montréal, along with San Diego, was awarded a National League expansion franchise on May 27, 1968. Much like Pierre Trudeau, a fellow Montréaler who was elected Prime Minister in 1968, Charles cited “reason over passion” for his investment in the baseball team. At a time of a burgeoning sovereigntist movement in Quebec in the wake of the Quiet Revolution,13 Charles envisioned a baseball team as a unifying force, not only in Quebec, but throughout Canada.

The other major investor, Jean-Louis Lévesque, did not share Charles’s enthusiasm, and withdrew from the project. Finding a place to play was another ordeal, as the Autostade, home of the football Alouettes, was rejected for baseball. Would the franchise be snapped up by a city like Milwaukee, Buffalo, or Dallas before even taking the field?

“I’d go to see Drapeau, and he would tell me everything was wonderful. And by the way, when I went to see Drapeau, I used to do this. I used to pinch myself and say ‘He’s a salesman, he’s a salesman, he’s a salesman. Don’t believe him; he’s a salesman.’ Then I used to see [Lucien] Saulnier, Drapeau’s assistant. And Saulnier had two words that were fabulous. They were ‘Definitely not.'”14

Montréal journalists Russ Taylor and Marcel Desjardins had shown National League President Warren Giles the layout of Jarry Park, a 3,000-seat facility in the north end of the city where home plate faced west, rather than east. Giles was confident that the stadium could be upgraded to meet National League standards by April 14, 1969. Charles eventually put together a consortium supported by Lorne Webster and Hugh Hallward to finance the requisite $10 million investment.15 Montréal was getting a team, named the Expos after the World’s Fair of 1967.

Appointed to oversee the operation were President John McHale, general manager Jim Fanning, and manager Gene Mauch. Fanning remembered the strategy the Expos undertook to build the inaugural roster: “We went for the players who had a name, who could still play, and who had trading value, or they had value, period.”16 The Houston Astros saw sufficient value in the Expos’ expansion draft to offer Rusty Staub in a trade for Donn Clendenon and Jesus Alou. Controversy ensued when Clendenon refused to report to manager Harry Walker in Houston. On the eve of the regular season, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled that the trade stood, with the Expos offering Houston Jack Billingham and Skip Guinn as alternate compensation.

Charles remembered the afternoon of April 8, 1969, as Maureen Forrester sang ‘O Canada’ before the Expos’ first game versus the Mets at Shea Stadium: “I remember standing there with tears rolling down my cheeks as 40,000 Americans were standing at attention for our National Anthem. In hockey, yes, Canada was well known but in baseball[?] … suddenly, we were in the big leagues. Canada was in the big leagues, and I had helped make it happen.”17

The Expos defeated the Mets 11-10 on a trio of home runs, including one by Rusty Staub. ‘Le Grand Orange,’ as Staub was known, became as legendary in baseball during his three years with the Expos as Jean Béliveau was in hockey. Montréal also won the home opener, an 8-7 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, with Mack Jones hitting the first major-league home run on Canadian soil.

“The best part of that game,” remembered Charles, “was having my mother and father with me. My dad had given me quite a ‘what-for’ about this whole procedure and then, when he knew that I had put up the money myself, became the biggest and best Expos’ fan in Canada,” adding that “he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t up until 2 in the morning listening to baseball games the way he was.”18 Two years after the opener at Jarry Park, in 1971, Mr. Sam died at the age of 82.

The 1969 Montréal Expos finished in last place, as expected, with a record of 52-110. However, they set an expansion record by attracting over 1.2 million fans to Jarry Park. According to Peter C. Newman, the Expos drew red ink in 1969 before turning a profit annually from 1970 through 1975.19 However, on the field, not once did they breach 79 wins or finish in the first division. It was a frustrating time for Charles as owner of the Expos.

To compound matters, Canada became embroiled in a global energy crisis; in Quebec, the impact was felt even more keenly, as the movement for national sovereignty was gaining momentum. In baseball, it was only a matter of time before the reserve clause would give way to unrestricted free agency for the players. It was amid this economic climate that on December 4, 1974, the Expos felt compelled to trade two of their star players, Ken Singleton and Mike Torrez, to the Baltimore Orioles: “Every club makes lots of little mistakes, but that was a biggie. In the development stage of this club, that set us back two or three years. The fact that in effect, we got nothing for those two fine players. We got Rich Coggins, who was sick, and Dave McNally, who quit. I think we sold Coggins’ contract to the Yankees for $100,000, so that’s what we got out of Singleton and Torrez.”20

As the last-place Expos prepared to move from ramshackle Jarry Park to futuristic Olympic Stadium in 1976, baseball finally ushered in a new system of free agency. Charles and the Expos courted Baltimore outfielder Reggie Jackson to play for his former manager Dick Williams in Montréal. George Steinbrenner, meanwhile, could offer Reggie the city of New York and a contending team. In 1977 Jackson was wearing pinstripes and playing in the World Series. He would not be the last blue-chip free agent to spurn an offer to play for the Expos. They also lost Don Sutton to the Houston Astros in 1980.21

The Expos knew they had to draw attendance of 1.7 million at the 59,500-seat Olympic Stadium simply to break even, or more than that in order to turn a profit.22 After failing to reach that figure in both 1977 and 1978, and with the franchise having yet to post a winning season, Charles seriously considered divesting himself of the Expos.23 Fellow board member Lorne Webster persuaded him to stay. It was a decision Charles would not regret, as la belle époque of the franchise was about to begin.

In the words of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation anchor Knowlton Nash, “after a decade of trying” the 1979 Expos were “considered to be one of the strongest clubs in the game.”24 Led by a collection of young homegrown players, including Gary Carter, Larry Parrish, Steve Rogers, Ellis Valentine, Warren Cromartie, and Andre Dawson, the Expos were complemented by veterans from other organizations like Tony Perez, Bill Lee, and Woodie Fryman. Carter, Parrish, and Rogers represented the Expos at the All-Star Game in Seattle on July 17. At the midway point of the season, the Expos stood 2½ games ahead of the Chicago Cubs with a record of 50-35, the best in the entire National League. “You know, when you’re winning, all of a sudden the world is I think a lot better place to be,” said Charles in a 1979 interview. “Last year, we had a disappointing result [of 76-86] with a pretty good team. You try to have a winning team for the good of the city that has other added benefits.”25

When the 1979 season concluded, the Expos posted a superlative record of 95-65, drawing over 2.1 million fans to Olympic Stadium. Although the team lost the divisional title to the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Expos had cemented themselves for one brief shining moment as Canada’s team. As was reported late in the season in one telegram from Ottawa, “no matter what happens, you’ve given baseball fans across the country a thrilling summer. Bravo.”26 The telegram was signed by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whose late father Charles-Emile once owned the Montréal Royals.

The Expos and their first pennant race occurred at a time when national unity was at the forefront of the Canadian consciousness. On November 15, 1976, René Lévesque of the Parti Québécois won a majority government on a platform that included a referendum on sovereignty-association. Prior to the election, Charles was quoted in the Montréal Star as vowing “to get out if the PQ wins.”27 Three years later, he was asked to offer his remarks on any link between the success of the Expos and national unity: “This year, there is just a tremendous outflow of goodwill, and everybody is very happy. How that might translate itself politically, I wouldn’t have the vaguest idea. I would hope that it would translate itself obviously in a positive way but that’s not why we’re trying to have a winning team.”

Quebec held its referendum in 1980, with 59 percent of the province voting on May 20 to remain in Canada. Meanwhile, with Ron LeFlore added to the lineup, the Expos raced to another stellar season. Despite 81 days in first place, they lost the pennant once again during the final weekend, this time to the Philadelphia Phillies. The disappointment did not stop the Expos from being awarded a lucrative television broadcast deal. Starting in 1981, O’Keefe Ale agreed to sponsor Expos telecasts covering Canada from coast to coast for $35 million over five years.28

The broadcast deal proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Expos. After a grievance was filed by the Toronto Blue Jays, the Commissioner’s Office ruled that the television contract infringed upon the Blue Jays’ territorial rights. Expos telecasts would be blacked out in southern Ontario.29 John McHale mused that “when Montréal became a Quebec-only team, and no longer had the right to compete in Canada, that was a very telling blow to our financial picture.”30 This was the very antithesis to the philosophy behind Charles’s involvement with the Expos in the first place.

Notwithstanding the television contract, expectations for the 1981 Expos as baseball’s ‘Team of the ’80s’ were high. The team welcomed young players Tim Raines, Tim Wallach, and Jeff Reardon in the early months of the season. However, only two weeks after acquiring Reardon from the Mets, the Expos – and all 25 other teams – were shut down by a players strike on June 12. While the economic losses were significant, $500,000 in the first weekend alone, the positioning of the work stoppage actually helped the Expos in the standings.31 “We were third in our division when the strike happened,” Charles told biographer Howard Green. “Then on August 6, after a settlement was reached, the owners agreed to split the season. Playoff berths were guaranteed for the four teams who were leading their divisions …whichever teams had the best record in the second ‘half… also got playoff berths.”32

As the team leading the division when the strike began, the Phillies had already clinched a playoff spot. The Expos were leading the Cardinals by 1½ games on the morning of October 3. With the magic number reduced to one, the Expos trailed the Mets 3-2 as rookie Wallace Johnson rapped a triple to drive home two runs. That proved to be the margin of victory as the Expos clinched the division. “In our bar mitzvah year,” Charles exclaimed, “the Expos finally came of age.33

After defeating the Phillies in a five-game Division Series, Montréal went on to face the Dodgers in the League Championship Series. The series was tied, two wins apiece, on October 19, when Ray Burris faced Fernando Valenzuela at Olympic Stadium. Through eight innings, both teams were limited to one run. Jim Fanning, now the Expos’ manager, summoned Steve Rogers to pitch the ninth inning. With two away, Rogers threw a ball to Rick Monday that landed in the center-field bleachers. Charles remembered his reaction. “I wasn’t upset. John McHale looked like he was going to croak. I said, ‘John, why are you so upset?’ He said, ‘Charles, this doesn’t happen very often. And when it does happen and you don’t take advantage, it won’t happen again for a while.”34 History would support McHale’s clairvoyance, as the franchise did not return to the postseason for as long as it remained in Montréal.

More trouble was on the horizon for the Expos in 1982. Gary Carter, the reigning All-Star Game MVP and face of the franchise, who batted .438 in the NLCS against the Dodgers, was one year away from free agency. Rather than risk losing Carter at the end of the season, the Expos signed him to a contract extension prior to spring training. According to the Washington Post, the contract paid Carter $15 million over eight years.35 It was a deal Charles regretted from the moment he signed it: “We never won with Gary Carter, and when he was asking for two million dollars a season … [John] McHale and I were furious. Still, we held our noses and did the deal because we felt we had no choice.”36 While the Expos continued to set franchise attendance records in 1982 and 1983, outdrawing the Yankees both years, the large crowds were less than enthused by the third-place performances on the field. A fifth-place finish followed in 1984. Not reaping the desired return on investment on the Carter contract, the Expos traded him to the Mets on December 10, 1984. “When a team comes that close and doesn’t do it,” Charles reasoned, “eventually you have to break up the team.”37

The ‘Team of the ’80s’ was consistent if unspectacular for the latter half of the decade. In 1986, as Gary Carter won his World Series ring with the Mets and les Canadiens won yet another Stanley Cup, the Expos drew barely one million fans. Olympic Stadium, its roof finally installed in 1987, had not aged well. While the facility was originally estimated to have cost $124 million, the Canada Broadcasting Corporation reported that the actual cost was $1.5 billion.38 At a time when revenues were generated in increasingly weak Canadian dollars, escalating salaries were paid in US dollars.

The breaking point took place in 1989. In a stunning role reversal, the Expos traded three pitching prospects, Brian Holman, Gene Harris, and 6-foot-10 Randy Johnson, to the Seattle Mariners for Mark Langston. Initially, the deal was a success, as the left-hander helped to propel the Expos to the top of their division. In the final eight weeks of the season, Langsten’s impending free-agent status became a distraction as the Expos plummeted from first place to fourth. Finally, in late September, Charles suggested to club investor Hugh Hallward that they meet for dinner at an Italian restaurant instead of going to the game. When they sat down, Charles turned to Hugh and asked, “You know what this means, don’t you?”39 The Expos were for sale.

“I was very bitter,” Charles told Danny Gallagher. “I had a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C. Plan A was to sell the team to someone who would [stay] in Montréal; Plan B was to sell to someone who would … keep the team in Montréal for five years; Plan C was to sell to the highest bidder anywhere.”40 On June 14, 1991, the National League announced that the Expos had been sold to a consortium led by former Seagram’s executive Claude Brochu for a reported $100 million.41

Charles Bronfman was now 60. Now married to his second wife, Andrea, he had reached an age when most people look toward retirement. Charles’s mind, however, was headed in a different direction: philanthropy. In 1991 his CRB Foundation pioneered the ‘Heritage Minutes,’ a series of 60-second films that illustrated pivotal moments in Canadian history. In 1994 Charles and Michael Steinhardt founded Birthright Israel, an educational organization that sponsored free trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. By the time Seagram’s had been sold to Vivendi in 2000, Charles and Andrea had relocated to New York. Since 2004, Charles has awarded an annual Charles Bronfman Prize to young humanitarians whose work, grounded in Jewish values, is of universal benefit. Tragedy struck the Bronfman family on January 23, 2006, when Andrea was fatally struck by a passing vehicle in New York.

Charles married Rita Mayo in 2012, and in subsequent years they divided their time among New York, Montréal, and Florida. He is the proud grandfather of six.42 On June 27, 2021, Charles celebrated his 90th birthday by watching a virtual performance of the ‘Concert in Denim.’ It was performed by Israel Philharmonic at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv. A member of the Order of Canada, he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984. In 1992 Charles was honored by the Blue Jays, who invited him to throw out the first pitch before Game Three of the World Series in Toronto. The Expos’ Opening Day hero, Mack Jones, was once described as “one man who has not forgotten his roots.”43 That same honor may also be bestowed upon the man who brought the Mayor of Jonesville to Montréal, Charles Rosner Bronfman.

Notes

1 Peter C. Newman, Bronfman Dynasty: The Rothschilds of the New World (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart Limited, 1978), 12.

2 Michael R. Marrus, Mr. Sam: The Life and Times of Samuel Bronfman (Toronto: Penguin Books Canada Limited, 1991), 24.

3 Newman, 70.

4 Marrus, 113.

5 Marrus, 130.

6 Charles Bronfman and Howard Green, Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball, and Philanthropy, (Toronto: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd., 2016), 4.

7 Bronfman, 4.

8 Bronfman, 52.

9 Bronfman, 59.

10 Bronfman, 19.

11 Bronfman, 76.

12 Brian Schecter, ed., Les Expos, Nos Amours, English edition (Montréal: TV Labatt, 1989).

13 Rene Durocher, “The Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille) was a time of rapid change experienced in Québec during the 1960s.” Canadian Encyclopedia article published online July 30, 2013.

14 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

15 Danny Gallagher and Bill Young, Remembering the Montréal Expos (Toronto: Scoop Press, 2005), 26.

16 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

17 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

18 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

19 Newman, 267.

20 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

21 Alain Usereau, The Expos in Their Prime (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2013), 104.

22 Newman, 268.

23 Gallagher, 27.

24 Mark Phillips, “Win Some, Lose Some,” on News Magazine (Toronto: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 1979).

25 “Win Some, Lose Some.”

26 Norm King, 7979; The Expos First Great Season (Toronto: Scoop Press, 2021), 189.

27 Jacques Doucet and Marc Robitaille, Il était une fois les Expos: Tome 1, les années 1969-1984 (Montréal: Editions Hurtubise Inc., 2009), 282.

28 Usereau, 109.

29 Brodie Snyder, The Year the Expos Finally Won Something (Toronto: Check Mark Books, 1981), 163.

30 Usereau, 109-110.

31 Snyder, 160.

32 Bronfman, 95.

33 Jeff Katz, Split Season: Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike That Saved Baseball (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015), 245.

34 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

35 Usereau, 153.

36 Bronfman, 97.

37 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

38 Bronfman, 92.

39 Bronfman, 101.

40 Gallagher, 28.

41 Jacques Doucet and Marc Robitaille, Il était une fois les Expos: Tome 2, les années 1985-2004, (Montréal: Editions Hurtubise Inc., 2011), 206.

42 Correspondence with Charles Bronfman, December 8, 2021.

43 Les Expos, Nos Amours.

She may also have been the best clutch hitter the league ever saw. Among the five sluggers with at least 400 career RBIs, nobody drove in runs at a faster rate than Callow.3 As the run-producing engine of the Rockford Peaches, Callow helped the team win three consecutive league championships from 1948 to 1950. Not surprisingly, she was one of the most popular players in Peaches franchise history.

Callow was named to an all-star team in seven of her eight professional seasons.4 But she was at her best in the postseason, hitting at a .322 clip and setting playoff records for most career RBIs, doubles, and triples. Callow would have put up even better career numbers had the league not ceased operations shortly after her 27th birthday.

A natural athlete, Callow was also an outstanding ice-hockey player and an accomplished amateur golfer and bowler.

Eleanor Margaret Knudsen (later Callow, and subsequently Litterick) was born on August 8, 1927, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.5 Eleanor was the youngest of 10 children born to Danish immigrants, Knud and Johanna (née Jessen) Knudsen. The Knudsens came to Canada in May 1904 on the steamship SS Lake Manitoba with an infant and toddler in tow, settling in the booming city of Winnipeg.6 Knud Knudsen (pronounced “Kah-nude Kah-nude-sen”) had been a farmer in Denmark,7 although he went on to own and operate a tailor shop in Winnipeg until his retirement in 1951.8 The family of five boys and five girls, raised on the modest earnings of a tailor, was far from wealthy.9

Eleanor excelled as a softball pitcher at General Wolfe High School before making the leap to the highly competitive Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League (formerly the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Softball League) in 1943 at the tender age of 15.10 Eleanor played infield on a dynamic young St. Vital Tigerettes squad that featured four future AAGPBL players, including Dorothy “Dottie” Ferguson (later Key), Audrey Haine (later Daniels), and Yolande “Yo-Yo” Teillet (later Schick).11 St. Vital surprised onlookers by winning the league championship, and Eleanor sealed the title with a two-run homer in Game Seven of the championship series.12 “Although the baby of the league, Eleanor Knudsen played good infield ball,” wrote the Winnipeg Tribune in summarizing her rookie year.13

Not only could Eleanor hit from both sides of the plate,14 but her ambidextrous abilities extended beyond the diamond. She was also a skilled artist who could accurately sketch popular cartoon characters with either hand.15

It appears that Eleanor may have left school not long after turning 16, because her occupation in the 1944 telephone directory is listed as a clerk at Macleod’s Limited, a chain of retail stores that operated in Western Canada.16

Eleanor spent the 1944 season patrolling the St. Vital outfield. But when the team’s regular catcher, Teillet, left for the AAGPBL in 1945, Eleanor took over as the Tigerettes’ new backstop.17

On April 7, 1945, with the end of World War II in Europe approaching, Knud and Johanna Knudsen announced Eleanor’s engagement to Frank Leonard Callow, a private in the Canadian military.18 Eleanor and Frank were married on June 17, 1945, at Ansgar Lutheran Church in Winnipeg.19

Four days after her wedding, the 17-year-old bride “interrupted her honeymoon,” strapped on the catcher’s gear, and led St. Vital to a lopsided victory over the league-leading St. Boniface Athletics.20 Callow slammed a pair of home runs and drove in five runs to the delight of the 1,500 fans in attendance. The crowd “gave the newly wedded Eleanor a big hand as she crashed out her first home run with one on. They went wild when she duplicated this feat a few innings later,” reported the Winnipeg Tribune.21

The Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League was proving to be the perfect training ground for the AAGPBL. On top of the stiff competition, players became accustomed to performing in front of large crowds at Osborne Stadium.22 The Winnipeg circuit’s best-of-seven finals easily outdrew the AAGPBL championship series in 1945, with over 4,500 fans witnessing St. Boniface’s Game Seven victory over St. Vital.23

Callow finished fifth in the batting race with a .382 average.24 Evelyn Wawryshyn (later Moroz, and subsequently Litwin), an infielder for the Canadian Ukrainian Athletic Club (CUAC), hit .390 and was signed to an AAGPBL contract.25 Wawryshyn turned out to be an above-average hitter with the Kenosha Comets in 1946,26 so Callow would have been good enough to turn pro at the same time. Given Callow’s prominence in the league, it is likely that she too was scouted in the summer of 1945.

Callow remained in Winnipeg in 1946, catching and playing the corner-infield positions for St. Vital.27 In late June, Johnny Gottselig came to Winnipeg on a scouting trip for the AAGPBL. “Gottselig, who stated that the glamour league is on the lookout for a number of young rookies, preferably not married, likes the playing of the Tigerettes catcher Eleanor Callow,” wrote the Winnipeg Free Press.28

Callow went on to win the batting title, duplicating her .382 average from the previous year and finishing a whopping 59 percentage points ahead of the runner-up.29

St. Vital gained a measure of revenge on St. Boniface by defeating them four games to one in the 1946 championship series.30 The victory earned the Tigerettes the right to represent Manitoba in the Western Canada championship in Edmonton, Alberta, which began on September 2.31

The Tigerettes, along with 15 team administrators and fans, traveled more than 800 miles for the tournament.32 Frank Callow was not one of those fans. According to Eleanor’s subsequent petition for divorce, Frank “deserted” her on or about September 1.33

St. Vital performed well in the four-team tournament before getting swept in the best-of-three finals by the Saskatoon Ramblers. Former AAGPBL pitcher Muriel Coben tossed a four-hitter for Saskatoon in the clinching game, with Callow recording three of the four St. Vital hits.34

Less than two weeks later, a report surfaced that the AAGPBL was attempting to sign Callow even though she had rejected previous offers.35 On October 8 – less than six weeks after separating from her husband – Eleanor “Squirt” Callow announced that she had signed her first professional contract with the AAGPBL.36

On the evening of April 18, 1947, Callow boarded a train at Winnipeg’s iconic Union Station for an epic journey.37 Accompanying her were five AAGPBL veterans, all of whom were former Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League players.38 They rode the rails for over 2,200 miles before flying the final 230 miles from Miami to Havana, the spring-training site for all eight AAGPBL teams.39

Callow made an immediate splash in Cuba. “One that impresses us especially was Eleanor Callow, a catcher who swings from the port side,” noted the Kenosha Evening News. “On Tuesday at the University Stadium she was belting them far and wide in batting practice. [Rockford pitcher] Millie Deegan, who watched her work at close hand, says the gal is going to be terrific.”40

The workouts culminated with a round-robin tournament that attracted close to 55,000 enthusiastic Cuban baseball fans.41 Esther Williams, the former competitive swimmer who had become a major Hollywood star, presented the Racine Belles with a trophy for winning the event.

As was the case with the AAGPBL, Callow did not go into spring training tied to a team, but she was assigned to the Peoria Redwings at the conclusion of the preseason. After taking the short flight back to Miami on May 2,42 the Redwings and the Fort Wayne Daisies barnstormed their way north for the start of the regular season.43

With two more experienced catchers on the Peoria roster, Callow spent the first 12 games of the regular season on the bench.44 She finally made her professional debut on June 5 in a pinch-hitting appearance against the Daisies.45 Callow eventually got more playing time as a right fielder, and she recorded the first two hits of her AAGPBL career on June 11 in Grand Rapids.46

In her rookie season, most of which she spent as a teenager, Callow hit .245 in 143 at-bats – an especially promising start considering the league batting average was a feeble .197.

In late November Callow took care of some unfinished business in Winnipeg, filing a court petition for a divorce.47 In January 1948 a judge issued a decree absolute, and six months later the dissolution of her marriage was official.48

The AAGPBL reached its peak during the 1948 season when it expanded from eight to 10 teams, drawing nearly a million fans to its games. The league also transitioned from sidearm to overhand pitching that season, which added a bit more offense.49

Callow attended spring training in Miami and was assigned to the expansion Chicago Colleens.50 The team broke camp on April 28 and barnstormed their way back to the Windy City, playing a series of exhibition games against the Grand Rapids Chicks along the way.51

Callow opened the regular season as one of the Colleens’ starting outfielders.52 Chicago’s third game of the season, a May 14 home game against the Kenosha Comets, was broadcast on WBKB – the first time that women’s baseball had been televised.53 Callow drove in three of Chicago’s four runs in the game against Jean “Cy” Cione, a tough, side-arming lefty.54

When the Colleens stumbled to a 1–13 start, the league responded by bolstering their roster with eight experienced players, including the popular Rita Briggs from the Rockford Peaches.55 The unheralded Callow was sent to Rockford as compensation for losing Briggs, and Peaches fans were not pleased – at least initially.56 Little did they know that Callow would become a potent cleanup hitter, helping Rockford win the next three playoff championships.

After spending her first two weeks with Rockford as a pinch-hitter and backup catcher, she was shifted to the outfield. Callow soon became the team’s starting left fielder, a role she retained for the rest of her career.

Callow had a breakout season, leading the Peaches with six home runs and coming in second in batting average (.251) and RBIs (52). She also set a league record by slamming 15 triples.57 It was the first of four consecutive seasons in which she led the league in three-baggers.

Rockford steamrolled the opposition in the 1948 playoffs, going 10–1 in its three postseason series. Callow knocked in 10 runs, and in three consecutive playoff games she recorded the game-winning RBI.58 No other Peaches hitter had more than four RBIs.

With offense still at a premium, the AAGPBL introduced a livelier ball and moved the mound back another five feet in the middle of the 1949 season.59 Callow, who swung one of the heaviest bats in the league, was getting along just fine before the changes. Two weeks earlier, the 5-foot-7 slugger launched a monster home run in front of a large crowd at the Peach Orchard.60 Dick Day, sports editor of the Rockford Register-Republic, was still raving about the homer two days later.61

In the playoffs, Callow hit .310 and the Peaches won seven of eight games to repeat as champions, needing only two series wins after a first-round bye. Game Four of Rockford’s opening-round series against the South Bend Blue Sox was vintage Callow. Early in the game, she made a “perfect peg” from the outfield to nail a runner at the plate and keep the game scoreless. Callow drove in the game’s only run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, giving Rockford a thrilling walk-off victory and the series sweep.62

On December 10, 1949, tragedy struck the Knudsen family when Eleanor’s mother died after a lengthy illness.63 After the funeral, a grieving Eleanor returned to Rockford and spent the Christmas holidays with a local family, likely her hosts during the previous season(s).64

Eleanor began living in the offseason with her sister Nora and brother-in-law Harry Brown in Winnipeg.65 When the Browns moved to Saskatoon in 1951, she followed.66

Callow became actively involved in the Rockford community, as shown by her participation in an Awards Night at the Booker T. Washington Center in April 1950. She joined the evening’s headliner, legendary Olympian Jesse Owens, in handing out athletic awards to local boys and girls.67

Callow reached new heights during the 1950 season. In a July 1 game against the Racine Belles, speedster Sophie Kurys hit a ball over Callow’s head in left field; Callow retrieved the ball and threw out Kurys at the plate, preventing an inside-the-park homer.68 The play had a significant impact on the home-run race, as both Kurys and Callow ended the season with a league-leading seven round-trippers.69

On July 17 Callow became the first woman to hit a ball over the fence at the Peach Orchard.70 It was also the first time Rockford fans had seen an AAGPBL player break into a home-run trot.71

The Peaches won their third consecutive championship in 1950 (again in a two-round playoff structure), this time by the skin of their teeth. Helen Nicol Fox, who tossed a shutout in Game Seven of the championship series, was Rockford’s playoff hero.72

In the winter of 1951 Callow played in the Winnipeg Senior Girls’ Hockey League. Her team made it all the way to the provincial finals before falling to the powerful Winnipeg Canadienettes.73

Callow must have been one of the best players in the league, because the Canadienettes added her to their roster for the Western Canada championship against the Moose Jaw (Saskatchewan) Wildcats.74 One thousand fans braved a Moose Jaw blizzard to watch Game One of the series, which was decided in overtime. Callow, playing forward on the Canadienettes’ second line, notched a goal and an assist in a losing cause.75 A few days later in Winnipeg, the Wildcats registered another one-goal victory to sweep the best-of-three series.76 Moose Jaw went on to easily defeat the Ontario champions and claim the national title.77

Callow had a career year in 1951, leading the AAGPBL in RBIs (84) and triples (10). She tied for the league lead in homers (4), finished fourth in the batting race with a .326 average, and stole a career-high 40 bases.

After winning the first two games of the best-of-five championship series against South Bend, Rockford seemed headed for its fourth consecutive title. But a flu bug went through the Peaches’ locker room,78 and the Blue Sox roared back to win the final three games, ending the Rockford dynasty.

By 1952 the once dominant Rockford pitching staff had been depleted by the retirement of key hurlers.79 With Nicol Fox pitching in only home games that season,80 manager Bill Allington found his team short of pitching on the road. In mid-July he took advantage of Callow’s strong arm and versatility by bringing her in to pitch a scoreless eighth inning in Battle Creek.81 A few days later, she got the start in Fort Wayne against the best-hitting team in the league. Callow took a 5–4 lead into the eighth inning before she ran out of gas, surrendering a game-winning homer to Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder.82

Callow led the Peaches with eight home runs in the regular season, most of which were game-winners.83 Perhaps her biggest homer of the year came on August 21 against the Daisies when her three-run blast in the 13th inning gave Rose Gacioch her 20th and final win of the season.84

The Peaches and Blue Sox met again in the 1952 championship series. Rockford jumped out to a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series, but for the second year in a row South Bend came charging back to claim the title.85 Callow hit two homers and stole eight bases in Rockford’s eight playoff contests.86

Despite injuring her back on July 1, Callow played in every game in the 1953 season until her back stiffened up on August 11, and the team medic ordered her to take a few days off.87

Callow had another phenomenal season, leading the Peaches in almost every offensive category and setting career highs with 35 extra-base hits and a league-leading 23 doubles. In late August, the Rockford fans voted her Queen of the Peaches, an honor that 21st-century teams would call the Fans’ Choice Award.88

Rockford squared off against the pennant-winning Grand Rapids Chicks in the first round of the 1953 playoffs. With the Peaches trailing 2–0 in the sixth inning of the winner-take-all Game Three, Callow launched a clutch three-run homer, one of the longest blasts at South Field that season.89 The Rockford lead was short lived though, as Grand Rapids scored two unearned runs in the bottom of the inning and won, 4–3. It was the last playoff contest ever played by the Peaches.

The league took its final step toward playing regulation baseball on July 1, 1954, hoping to boost offense and sagging attendance. The pitching distance was increased to 60 feet, the basepaths were lengthened to 85 feet, and the baseball was reduced to nine inches in circumference, the same as in men’s professional baseball.90

Just four days before the rule changes went into effect, Callow went 5-for-9 with a grand slam in a doubleheader split with Fort Wayne.91 Although she was already hitting over .300,92 the regulation baseball helped boost her power numbers significantly.93

In a July 16 game against South Bend, Callow fell backward over the outfield fence attempting to catch a ball that went for a home run.94 The hard-nosed outfielder injured her wrist on the play, missing just over a week of action.95

Callow put on an impressive hitting display for the remainder of 1954, and she finished with a career-high 20 home runs. Coupled with her 23 steals, she became one of only two AAGPBL players to record a 20–20 season.

Rockford finished in last place, posting the worst record in franchise history. For the first time since Callow joined the team, the Peaches missed the playoffs.

The AAGPBL had been in a slow decline since 1948, and by 1954 its per-game attendance may have been half of what it was at its peak.96 Reasons for the precipitous drop in attendance included the “return to normalcy following the war, the spread of television, advances in the travel industry (including personal travel), and the rise of the nuclear family.”97

Faced with a large operating deficit, the league voted on January 30, 1955, to cease operations.98 Five months after her 27th birthday, Eleanor Callow’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt halt.

Callow finished her abbreviated career as the AAGPBL’s all-time leader in home runs (55) and triples (60), and her 407 career RBIs ranks third despite having only 2,765 career at-bats.99 Although the league batting average was below .200 during her first three years, Callow still compiled an outstanding .273 career batting average. She also stole 217 bases and played stellar defense.

Callow was even better in the postseason, hitting .322 with 32 RBIs in 171 career at-bats. She holds the AAGPBL playoff records for most career RBIs, doubles (9), and triples (3).

During her eight-year career, the league (usually) named three outfielders to one or more All-Star teams at the end of every season. Callow was selected to the first All-Star team four times (1948, 1951-52, 1954), the second All-Star team once (1949), and in 1950 she was named to the third team.100

An annual midseason All-Star Game pitting the current first-place team against the league’s best remaining players was held between 1952 and 1954.101 Callow, who had three RBIs in the 1954 All-Star Game, was one of only nine players to appear in all three games.102

With her professional baseball career over, Callow returned to competitive fastball as the catcher of the Saskatoon Ramblers – the same team that had defeated her St. Vital squad in the finals of the 1946 Western Canada championship. As luck would have it, Winnipeg hosted the 1955 Western Canada tournament and Callow led the Ramblers to the title.103

Although Callow played with the Ramblers for only one season, she continued to participate in other competitive sports for the remainder of her life. Callow was an avid golfer at the Saskatoon Golf and Country Club,104 and in 1962 and 1964 she played in the qualifying round of the Canadian Open tournament.105 She also became an accomplished amateur bowler, participating in the Western Canada five-pin roll-offs in 1966.106

Callow held a variety of jobs in Saskatoon, including one driving a Red Cross mobile blood bank in the offseason of 1952-53.107 After her pro career ended, Callow worked as a salesclerk at Eaton’s department store, a position she held until approximately 1964.

According to a March 1962 article in the Rockford Morning Star, Callow had been diagnosed with cancer.108 Carl Glans, former business manager of the Peaches, urged her friends and fans in Rockford to help cheer her up with a card or letter.109

Callow moved to Melfort, Saskatchewan, late in 1964 before spending approximately two years in Regina.110 She was employed in Regina as a clerk at Macleod’s, the same chain of retail stores that she had worked for in Winnipeg as a teenager.111 Callow returned to Saskatoon early in 1968, working as a salesclerk at Macleod’s and living at the same address as the Browns.112

In the summer of 1971, Eleanor married James Glendenning Litterick, an electrician with the Canadian National Railway.113 The couple relocated to the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona. According to the 1974 federal voters list, James continued to work as an electrician and Eleanor was a housewife.

Eleanor golfed competitively after her return to Winnipeg, and in July 1974 she took part in the Manitoba Senior Ladies Championship.114

Eleanor Litterick died on October 28, 1974, at the age of 47.115 Her modest obituary, which requested donations to the Canadian Cancer Society, made only a passing reference to her illustrious AAGPBL career. “For a time, she also played professional baseball in Rockford, Ill.,” it noted.116

By the time of Eleanor’s death – and for the next two decades − few sports fans were even aware of the existence of the AAGPBL. That changed in 1992 with the release of A League of Their Own, a hit Hollywood movie based on the league and its pioneering women ballplayers.

“If it had not been for that movie, we would all be dead and buried and nobody would have known about us,” said Terry Donahue, who played in the league for four seasons and was Callow’s teammate on the 1947 Peoria Redwings. “I worked at my job for 38 years, and I never told anyone about playing professional baseball. They probably wouldn’t have believed me. People found it hard to believe that girls played baseball when the movie came out.”117 Donahue’s experience was not out of the ordinary for former AAGPBL players.

After the movie’s release, there was a flood of media coverage and suddenly AAGPBL veterans were sought out for interviews, shedding light on their achievements. Since Eleanor died in 1974, no media interviews of her could be found.

She also never had an opportunity to reconnect with former teammates at AAGPBL reunions, which began in 1982.118

Recognition of Callow’s accomplishments on the diamond has come slowly.119 She was one of 12 Manitoba women to play in the AAGPBL, and in 1998 they were inducted as a group into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame.120 That same year the 68 AAGPBL players from Canada collectively entered the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.121 In 2016 the Manitoba Softball Hall of Fame became the first organization to induct Callow as an individual, 42 years after her death. She was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame in 2024.

Author’s note

Surprisingly, little information about Eleanor Callow was available when I began the research for this biography. Basic facts like her maiden name, married name(s), and the date and place she died were not widely known. To make the initial research even more difficult, her birthdate on Ancestry.com was off by 11 years. Special thanks to Bonnie Dahl and Ken Dahl at the City of Saskatoon Archives for going above and beyond to help me solve these mysteries.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for assisting with his research: Bonnie Dahl and Ken Dahl at the City of Saskatoon Archives, Pascale Hutton at the Archives of Manitoba, Andrea Keyes at the Peoria Public Library, Lorne Lee at the Regina Public Library, Jean H. Lythgoe at the Rockford Public Library, Harriet Minuk at the Winnipeg Public Library, Jeff O’Brien at the City of Saskatoon Archives, Carol Sheldon from the AAGPBL Players Association, and Rick Walker at the Manitoba Genealogical Society.

Thanks also to Eleanor Callow’s nieces, Carole Pettypiece and Joanne Knudsen, for answering my questions via phone and email, and Cassidy Lent of the Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for providing a copy of Callow’s Hall of Fame file.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Howard Rosenberg and fact-checked by Steve Ferenchick.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted AAGPBL.org, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book, Ancestry.com, and the Henderson telephone directories for Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Regina.

Notes

1 Callow hit a career-high 20 homers and stole 23 bases in 1954. Her career high for stolen bases was 40 in 1951. Joanne Weaver of the Fort Wayne Daisies was the other AAGPBL player to record a 20–20 season. She slammed 29 home runs, stole 79 bases, and hit .429, earning the 1954 Player of the Year Award.

2 Branch Rickey coined the term five-tool player in his 1965 book The American Diamond. He defined the five tools as hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills/speed, throwing, and fielding.

3 Callow had 407 RBIs in 2,765 career at-bats. The four other women who drove in at least 400 runs in their career were Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder (431 RBIs in 4,129 at-bats), Inez “Lefty” Voyce (422 RBIs in 3,047 at-bats), Elizabeth “Lib” Mahon (400 RBIs in 2,903 at-bats), and Lavonne “Pepper” Paire (later Davis, 400 RBIs in 3,164 at-bats).

4 At various points in its 12-year history (1943-54), the AAGPBL named All-Star team(s) in the middle and/or the end of the season. No All-Star teams were named in 1944 or 1945. Details on Callow’s All-Star selections are described near the end of this biography.

5 As of May 2022, Ancestry.com incorrectly showed Eleanor Margaret Knudsen’s birth year as 1916. According to the Manitoba Vital Statistics Branch, Johanna Knudsen gave birth to a daughter, Eleanora Kirstine Knudsen, on April 4, 1916. Eleanora was only five months old when she died on September 15, 1916. The Knudsens later used a variation of Eleanora when they named their daughters Nora (born in 1918) and Eleanor (born in 1927). The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website and Eleanor’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame both list her birthdate as August 8, 1927.

6 The Knudsen family at the time of the voyage to Canada included two sons, Christian (1 year, 11 months old) and Ejnar (three months old). A flood of immigration boosted Winnipeg’s population from 20,000 in 1886 to 150,000 in 1911. Erica Gagnon, “Settling the West: Immigration to the Prairies from 1867 to 1914,” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/settling-west-immigration-to-prairies, accessed May 9, 2022.

7 Knud Knudsen’s occupation in Denmark is shown on the passenger list of the SS Lake Manitoba. Prior to 1945, immigration to Canada for those who were not either British subjects or United States citizens was restricted to “agriculturalists with sufficient means to farm in Canada.” Knud and other family members were proud of their heritage; they were not shy about correcting Winnipegers on the proper pronunciation of the family name. Halena Jauca, “From Denmark to Canada in 1955: A Story of Immigration,” The Seed: UBC Canadian Studies Undergraduate Journal, Volume 13: 4; Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022.

8 “Knud Knudsen,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 1, 1964: 19.

9 For instance, to improve the household’s finances, Eleanor’s two eldest brothers, Christian and Ejnar, were taken out of school as teenagers and sent to work on a farm near Beausejour, Manitoba. Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022; Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

10 Winnipeg newspapers began referring to the league as the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League in 1945. Previously it had been called the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Softball League. Based on the ages of the players, a more accurate name would have been the Greater Winnipeg Womens’ Senior Fastball League. “Pro League for Eleanor Callow,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 9, 1946: 18.

11 St. Vital was established as a rural municipality before it became part of the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg in 1960, later becoming a ward and neighborhood in the city of Winnipeg. Eleanor went on to play next to Ferguson in the Rockford Peaches outfield from 1948 until 1954. Haine compiled a record of 72–70 as an AAGPBL pitcher between 1944 and 1951. Teillet was a catcher and outfielder in the AAGPBL from 1945 to 1947. “Rally in Sixth Beats St. Vital,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 27, 1943: 12; “St. Vital Takes Series, Win 3-2,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 30, 1943: 14.

12 “St. Vital Girls Win Softball Championship,” Winnipeg Tribune, September 27, 1943: 14.

13 Grace Todd, “Women in Sport,” Winnipeg Tribune, October 2, 1943: 17.

14 Callow’s profile on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website lists her as a switch-hitter, although the author found no evidence in newspaper reports that she ever batted from the right side in an AAGPBL (or Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League) game. Her file from the Baseball Hall of Fame lists her as both a left-handed hitter and a switch hitter. The AAGPBL website and her Baseball Hall of Fame file indicate that she only threw from the right side.

15 Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022; Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

16 Macleod’s Limited was a retail chain of farm supply, hardware and building supply stores in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. “Macleod’s Limited,” Archives of Manitoba, http://pam.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/PAM_AUTHORITY/AUTH_DESC_DET_REP/SISN 2990?sessionsearch, accessed May 10, 2022.

17 “Pro League for Eleanor Callow.”

18 “Engagement Notices,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 7, 1945: 10.

19 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

20 “Eleanor Callow Too Much for A’s,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 22, 1945: 19.

21 “Eleanor Callow Too Much for A’s.”

22 Osborne Stadium was the home of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League and the future home of Winnipeg’s entry in the Manitoba-Dakota (Mandak) League. According to author Barry Swanton, the Mandak League was a haven for former Negro League ballplayers from 1950 to 1957. “The First Time Satchel Paige Pitched in Winnipeg,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 4, 2015, https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/our-communities/column/The-day-Satchel-Paige-pitched-in-Winnipeg-320674652.html, accessed May 10, 2022; Jeff Hamilton, “Thrill of a Lifetime,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 21, 2015: 28.

23 In the 1945 championship series between St. Vital and St. Boniface, attendance at two of the seven games was greater than 4,000 fans. Four games in the series drew at least 3,300 fans, and six games had attendance of at least 2,500 fans. Game Three, which was played in threatening weather, still drew 1,700 fans. Game stories for all seven contests are available in the Winnipeg Free Press and Winnipeg Tribune between August 21, 1945, and August 31, 1945.

24 An article providing details on the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League batting race was found in the August 9, 1945, edition of the Winnipeg Tribune on Newspapers.com in April 2022. As of May 10, 2022, that article had been removed from that website. Both NewspaperArchive.com and the Winnipeg Public Library are missing the August 9, 1945, edition of the Winnipeg Tribune and the author was unable to track down the article title or page number.

25 Wawryshyn was single when she signed her first AAGPBL contract. She played in the league from 1946 until 1951 when she left the league and got married. She was named to the first All-Star team in 1950 and the second All-Star team in 1949 and 1951. “Evelyn Litwin Moroz,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/evelyn-wawryshyn-litwin-moroz-evie/197, accessed May 10, 2022; “Writers Place Shollenberger, Petras on Second Selections,” Kenosha Evening News, October 26, 1949: 16; “Shollenberger Rates All-League Team,” Kenosha Evening News, September 21, 1950: 34; “Jean Faut of Blue Sox Named Girls’ Loop ‘Most Valuable’,” South Bend Tribune, November 15, 1951: 30.

26 Wawryshyn hit .217 in 1946 for the Kenosha Comets. The league batting average that season was only .203.

27 “Callow Wins Batting Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 12, 1946: 14.

28 Gottselig, a former star player in the National Hockey League, had managed the Racine Belles in 1943 and 1944. Roughly two weeks after he scouted Callow in Winnipeg, he was recalled by the league to take over the managerial duties for the expansion Peoria Redwings. The floundering Redwings had been managed by former major-leaguer Bill Rodgers; Thelma “Tiby” Eisen managed the team for several games until Gottselig took over. Callow was managed by Gottselig in Peoria in 1947. “Johnny Likes ’Em,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 26, 1946: 17; “Peaches Back Home Thursday; Morris Wins 12th Game of Year,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 10, 1946: 16; “Back in League,” Racine Journal-Times, July 12, 1946: 14.

29 “Callow Wins Batting Title.”

30 Johnny Buss, “St. Vital Annexes Girls’ Senior Fastball Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 30, 1946: 12.

31 Jimmy Coo, “St. Vital Girls Play Today,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 2, 1946: 12.

32 Coo, “St. Vital Girls Play Today.”

33 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

34 “Ramblers Beat Winnipeg 2-0 for Title,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 10, 1946: 7.

35 Jimmy Coo, “Cherchez La Femme,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 19, 1946: 17.

36 Callow got the nickname “Squirt” before she turned pro, although it stuck with her for the duration of her AAGPBL career. The term “squirt” was commonly used to refer to a small or young person, so it is possible that she picked up the nickname not long after joining the St. Vital Tigerettes as a 15-year-old in 1943. “Pro League for Eleanor Callow.”

37 Union Station in Winnipeg and Grand Central Station in New York were both designed by architects Warren and Wetmore. Peter Morrell, “Winnipeg – City of Iconic Buildings,” Huffington Post, June 5, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-morrell/the-museum-for-human-righ_b_4787627.html, accessed May 11, 2022.

38 The five players traveling with Callow were Ferguson, Wawryshyn, Haine, Teillet, and Doris “Dodie” Barr. They were accompanied by AAGPBL scout Joe Mathewson. “Girl Stars Head South,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 21, 1947: 14.

39 “Off to Havana,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 22, 1947: 26.

40 “Training Camp Notes from Girls Loop at Havana, Cuba,” Kenosha Evening News, April 29, 1947: 8.

41 W.C. Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000), 38.

42 According to the flight manifest on Ancestry.com, Callow and her new Peoria Redwings teammates flew back to Miami together on May 2.

43 The barnstorming tour included stops in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Gadsden, Alabama. Callow homered in the May 6 game in Gadsden. “Ft. Wayne and Peoria Playing Speedy Ball,” Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, May 9, 1947: 13.

44 The two experienced catchers on Peoria’s Opening Day roster were Joyce Hill (later Westerman) and Saskatchewan native Terry Donahue. The author reviewed the box scores for the first 12 Peoria games in various newspapers to confirm that Callow did not appear in those games. “AAGL Team Rosters for 1947,” Racine Journal-Times, May 7, 1947: 16.

45 “Daisies Score Another Win Over Wings by 10-4,” Fort Wayne News Sentinel, June 6, 1947.

46 Callow recorded two singles, one of which was a bunt single. It is unclear if her first career hit was the bunt single. “Redwings Lose 5–3 to Grand Rapids,” Peoria Star, June 12, 1947: 23, 34.

47 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

48 She continued to play under the Callow name for the duration of her AAGPBL career. Court decree issued by the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba on July 29, 1948, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

49 The new pitching style was not the only major rule change adopted by the AAGPBL in 1948. The mound was also moved from 43 to 50 feet from home plate and the basepaths were increased from 70 to 72 feet. A slightly smaller ball was also used: 10⅜ inches in circumference instead of 11. “Rules of Play,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-play, accessed May 17, 2022.

50 Canadian Press, “Girl Softballers Hitting for Camp,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, April 8, 1948: 16; “Allocation Not Rawlings’ Fret,” Grand Rapids Press, April 17, 1948: 26.

51 “Colleens to Arrive in City Today,” Daily Calumet (Chicago), May 7, 1948: 6.

52 “Peaches Triumph Over Colleens, Temperature,” Rockford Register-Republic, May 12, 1948: 2.

53 WBKB also televised Chicago Cubs baseball in 1948. Carolyn M. Trombe, Dottie Wiltse Collins: Strikeout Queen of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005), 134; “Colleens Games to be Televised, Broadcast,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1948: 40; “Listeners’ Choice,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1948: 36.

54 The game was called because of rain with the score tied, 4–4, after 10 innings. “Comets – Colleens Play 4 to 4 Tie in 10,” Kenosha Evening News, May 15, 1948: 6.

55 The AAGPBL reserved the right to reassign players from one team to another whenever it was in the league’s best interests. “Peaches Lose Rita Briggs,” Rockford Morning Star, May 30, 1948: 37.

56 Rockford also received rookie infielder Barbara “Bobbie” Liebrich from the Kenosha Comets as compensation for losing Briggs. Liebrich finished with only four at-bats in her AAGPBL career. She became a team chaperone for five seasons. “Peaches Lose Rita Briggs”; “Peaches Need One More Win as Play-off Switches to Racine,” Rockford Register-Republic, September 14, 1948: 14.

57 Callow’s single-season record for three-baggers was broken when Betty Weaver Foss slammed 17 triples in 1952.

58 Callow recorded the game-winning RBI in the final game of the Peaches’ first-round sweep of the Kenosha Comets and the first two games of their second-round sweep of the Racine Belles. Both series were best-of-five affairs. “Rockford Blanks Comets to Take Series, 4–0,” Kenosha Evening News, September 13, 1948: 8; “Peaches Shut Out the Belles, 2 to 0,” Racine Journal-Times, September 13, 1948: 13; “Belles Bow to Peaches, 3-1; Play 3d Game Here Tonight,” Racine Journal-Times, September 14, 1948: 11.

59 On July 16, 1949, to boost offense, the league introduced a ball with a circumference of 10 inches and moved the mound from 50 to 55 feet from home plate. The ball had previously been 10⅜ inches in circumference. Men’s professional baseball used a 9-inch ball. “Sox vs. Chicks at Playland with New Ball,” South Bend Tribune, July 22, 1949: 29; “Girls’ Loop Starts New Ball Saturday,” South Bend Tribune, July 12, 1949: 16.

60 The Peach Orchard was the commonly used nickname for Rockford’s Beyer Stadium. Callow hit the long home run in a June 30 game against South Bend in front of 3,260 fans. The majestic blast was the first home run of the season at Beyer Stadium. The homer earned Callow $45 from the Peaches fan club ($25), management ($10), and another friend of the team ($10). The $45 prize was worth over $500 in 2022 (US) dollars. “Callow Hits 4-Base Blow,” Rockford Morning Star, July 1, 1949: 25.

61 Dick Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 2, 1949: 10.

62 “Peaches Win, 1–0, Sweep 4-Game Set,” Rockford Morning Star, September 11, 1949: 51; “Faut Drops Fourth Tilt 1–0 in Ninth,” South Bend Tribune, September 11, 1949: 41.

63 “Mrs. K. T. Knudson (sic),” Winnipeg Tribune, December 12, 1949: 23; Dick Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day,” Rockford Register-Republic, December 27, 1949: 11.

64 Callow stayed with “the Elmer Burkes at 2222 Jackson Street.” Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day.”

65 Nora was almost nine years older than Eleanor. It is unclear exactly when Eleanor began to live at the same address as Nora and Harry Brown. Eleanor was listed in the Winnipeg phone directory for the first time in her AAGPBL career in 1951 (her mother died in December 1949). Her 1951 address was the same as the Browns’ address.

66 Nora and Harry Brown were listed in the Winnipeg telephone directory in 1951 and the Saskatoon directory in 1952. According to the 1951 Winnipeg directory, Callow was living at the same address as the Browns. A Rockford Morning Star article reported that Callow was living in Saskatoon in the 1952-53 offseason. Callow appeared in the Saskatoon telephone directory for the first time in 1955, the year after the AAGPBL ceased operations. “Deaths (Nora L. Brown),” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, July 17, 1973: 8; Oliver L. Cremer, “The Sports Coop,” Rockford Morning Star, December 21, 1952: 49.

67 In an article in the Rockford Register-Republic, Callow was second on the list of celebrities who took part in the sports banquet, behind only Jesse Owens. Others in attendance included sports promoter Tommy Cancelose, WROK broadcaster Morey Owens (no relation to Jesse Owens), and former boxer Elwood McReynolds. As of 2022, Booker Washington Community Center in Rockford was Illinois’ oldest African American Community Center. “Jesse Owens Speaks at Booker Sports Banquet,” Rockford Register-Republic, April 25, 1950: 17; “Owens to Talk Here April 24,” Rockford Morning Star, April 16, 1950: 49; “AARC at Booker Washington Community Center,” Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau website, https://www.gorockford.com/listings/aarc-at-booker-washington-community-center/666/, accessed May 12, 2022.

68 “Scheer Hurls, Peaches Beat Racine Belles,” Rockford Morning Star, July 2, 1950: 37.

69 Callow finished in a tie for the home-run crown in both 1950 and 1951. In 1951 her four homers tied her for the league lead with Betty Weaver Foss and Alice Pollitt (later Deschaine).

70 Callow also tripled off the scoreboard in the July 17, 1950, game. That blast was hit almost as far as the earlier home run that cleared the right-field fence.

71 International News Service, “Blue Sox Lose Doubleheader to Rockford,” South Bend Tribune, July 18, 1950: 12; “Peaches Win Moose Night Double Bill,” Rockford Morning Star, July 18, 1950: 13.

72 Callow went 3-for-5 with 2 doubles and 2 RBIs in Game Seven of the 1950 championship series, won 11–0 by Rockford over Fort Wayne.

73 Callow played on the Winnipeg Doodlebugs alongside another AAGPBL player, Doris “Dodie” Barr. Both Callow and Barr were added to the Winnipeg Canadienettes roster for the 1951 Western Canada championship. The Canadienettes had won the national championship in 1950. “Canadienettes Rule Puck Roost; Eliminate Doodlebugs Three Straight,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 1, 1951: 22; “Girls’ Hockey Test Friday,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 21, 1951: 24.

74 Canadian Press, “Wildcats Nip Winnipeg 5-4,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 19, 1951: 20.

75 “Canadienettes Are Beaten at Moose Jaw,” Winnipeg Tribune, March 19, 1951: 26; “Girls’ Hockey Test Friday.”

76 “Moose Jaw Gals Cop Hockey Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, March 24, 1951: 20.

77 Moose Jaw defeated the Port Arthur (Ontario) Bear Cats by a combined 12–1 score in their two-game total-goal series. “Wildcats Cop Title,” Regina Leader-Post, April 2, 1951: 15.

78 Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek played the final game of the series with a temperature of 101 Fahrenheit. Madden, 152; “Blue Sox Nine Evens Series with 6–3 Win,” South Bend Tribune, September 13, 1951: 31.

79 Rockford lost two of its top three hurlers when Lois “Flash” Florreich and Louise “Lou” Erickson (later Sauer) retired after the 1950 season.

80 Nicol Fox retired after the 1952 season. “Fans Get First Glimpse of 1952 Peaches Here Tonight,” Rockford Morning Star, May 11, 1952: 46.

81 “Peaches Head for Ft. Wayne,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 12, 1952: 9.

82 “Peaches Bang 12 Hits, Lose; Callow Drops First Start on Mound, 7–5,” Rockford Register Republic, July 15, 1952: 15.

83 Although the author found a newspaper account or box score for only seven of her eight home runs in 1952, Callow hit at least five game-winning homers that season: July 4 (first game of doubleheader, 10th inning), July 26 (9th inning), August 4 (second game of doubleheader, 8th inning), August 8 (10th inning), and August 21 (13th inning). Because of a discrepancy in the game stories, it is unclear if her homer on July 25 was a game-winner. Of the seven home runs found by the author, her homer on August 1 was the only one that was clearly not a game-winner. “Peaches Split, Slip to Fourth,” Rockford Register Republic, July 5, 1952: 13; “Peaches Win; Callow Stars,” Rockford Morning Star, July 27, 1952: 48; “Gacioch Wins 17th; Peaches Take Twin Bill,” Rockford Morning Star, August 5, 1952: 13; “Loop Playoffs Start Sept. 2,” Rockford Register Republic, August 9, 1952: 9; “Gacioch Gets 20th victory; Callow’s 3-Run Homer Wins in 13th,” Rockford Register Republic, August 22, 1952: 39.

84 “Gacioch Gets 20th victory; Callow’s 3-Run Homer Wins in 13th.”

85 The Peaches also held a two-games-to-none lead in the series before a successful protest erased Rockford’s victory in (the first) Game Two.

86 Callow scored the winning run with Rockford facing elimination in Game Two of its first-round series against Fort Wayne. She went 3-for-4 with an RBI and two stolen bases in the game. The Peaches went on to upset the Daisies in the best-of-three series. Callow stole six more bases in the championship series against South Bend. “Peaches Nip Daisies to Even Series,” Rockford Morning Star, September 5, 1952: 15.

87 “Jittery Peaches Open Road Card,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 12, 1953: 28.

88 “Crown Peaches Queen Tonight,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 26, 1953: 21; “Callow Queen of ’53 Peaches,” Rockford Morning Star, August 27, 1953: 18.

89 “Local Girls Semi-Finals Victors Over Rockford,” Grand Rapids Press, September 11, 1953: 40.

90 In a July 1, 1954, article, the South Bend Tribune reported that the mound was being moved back to 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Most sources list the distance at 60 feet. The same South Bend Tribune article also listed the previous ball as being 9¾ inches in circumference, although most sources list it at 10 inches. “Blue Sox Shift to Small Ball,” South Bend Tribune, July 1, 1954: 27; Ralph S. Hart, “As We See It,” Streator (Illinois) Daily Times-Press, June 22, 1954: 10; “Rules of Play,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-play, accessed May 17, 2022.

91 “Peaches Split with Daisies; Callow’s Grand Slam Leads 12-8 Win,” Rockford Register-Republic, June 28, 1954: 19.

92 “Big Day Helps as Callow, Three Others Pace Peaches,” Rockford Register-Republic, June 29, 1954: 14.

93 The Peaches played 34 games with a 10-inch baseball and 58 games with a 9-inch ball in 1954, and Callow appeared in 86 of Rockford’s 92 games. She hit 4 home runs with the 10-inch baseball and 16 homers after the transition. Callow’s home-run pace with the 9-inch ball is the equivalent of hitting 42 round-trippers in a 154-game schedule. “Peaches Split Final 2 Games with Old Ball,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 1, 1954: 23; “Russo Rips New Ball, Hikes Average 53 Points to .320,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 6, 1954: 15.

94 “Peaches Open Home Stand Tonight; Take 7–6 Win but Two Key Players Hurt,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 17, 1954: 11.

95 “Russo Regains Batting Lead on Rampage of Home Runs,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 3, 1954: 15.

96 Reliable attendance figures for 1954 are not available. AAGPBL board meeting minutes from February 29, 1954, indicated that each team needed to draw 45,000 fans to break even that season. The league had a combined operating loss in 1954, but even if they drew fans at that rate, league attendance would have been only 225,000 or 957 fans per game (235 regular-season games were played). Average attendance in 1948 was approximately 1,444 per game (910,000 divided by 630 games). Fiddler, 137.

97 Leslie A. Heaphy and Mel Anthony May, Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006), 237.

98 The AAGPBL suffered an operating deficit of $22,500 in 1954, which is over $240,000 in 2022 dollars. “Girls’ Baseball League Suspends 1955 Operations,” South Bend Tribune, January 31, 1955: 17.

99 Some have referred to Eleanor Callow as the Babe Ruth of the AAGPBL. But given her speed, defensive abilities, and her penchant for triples, Tris Speaker would be a better comparison.

100 Second and third All-Star teams were not named every season. In 1948 the league also named two utility infielders and two utility outfielders to the first All-Star team, and Callow finished in a five-way tie for the second utility outfielder spot. The author could not find any newspaper reports on the end-of-season All-Star teams from 1952 to 1954. Callow (.303 BA, 8 HRs, 58 RBIs, 37 SBs) had the statistics to easily justify a spot on the second All-Star team in 1953. “Wagner Tops All-Star Team With 105 Out of 110 Votes,” Kenosha Evening News, September 30, 1948: 16; “Writers Place Shollenberger, Petras on Second Selections”; “Shollenberger Rates All-League Team”; “Jean Faut of Blue Sox Named Girls’ Loop ‘Most Valuable’”; Madden, 6.

101 The league also held a mid-season All-Star Game in 1943, which was the first night game played at Wrigley Field. Merrie A. Fiddler, The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006), 139.

102 The nine players to appear in all three All-Star Games between 1952 and 1954 were Rita “Maude” Briggs, Eleanor “Squirt” Callow, Betty Weaver Foss, Rose Gacioch, Maxine Kline (later Randall), Ruth Richard, Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder, Fern Shollenberger, and Joanne “Jo” Weaver. Jane “Jeep” Stoll would have played in all three games had she not been severely injured just before the 1954 game. “Blue Sox Bow to All-Stars in Ninth, 7-6,” South Bend Tribune, July 8, 1952: 16; “Homer in 11th Wins All-Star Game for Ft. Wayne,” South Bend Tribune, July 15, 1953: 37; “Daisies Whip All-Star Nine,” South Bend Tribune, July 10, 1954: 16; “Rumsey Only South Bend Player on Girls’ Star Team,” South Bend Tribune, July 7, 1954: 33.

103 “Saskatoon Girls Western Winners,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, September 12, 1955: 16.

104 “Women’s Section of SGCC Reports Successful Season,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 22, 1964: 8.

105 The 1962 Canadian Open was in Winnipeg, while the 1964 tournament was in Calgary. Saskatoon is a lengthy, yet reasonable drive from both cities. Callow may not have participated in the 1963 Canadian Open because it was held in Ottawa, which is over 1,800 miles from Saskatoon. “Ladies Open Draw,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 13, 1962: 46; “Ladies’ Golf Draw,” Calgary Albertan, August 3, 1964: 12.

106 Five-pin bowling is a Canadian version of ten-pin bowling. A smaller, lighter ball without any finger holes is used. Each pin is approximately 25 percent smaller than those in ten-pin bowling. “Regina Representatives,” Regina Leader-Post, April 4, 1966: 26.

107 Cremer, “The Sports Coop.”

108 Callow was battling breast cancer. Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

109 Bill Walsh, “Two Former Peaches Ill with Cancer,” Rockford Morning Star, March 8, 1962: 5.

110 Callow appeared to move to Melfort, Saskatchewan, sometime between October 22, 1964, and December 1964. She spent Christmas 1964 with Nora and Harry Brown in Saskatoon. “Women’s Section of SGCC Reports Successful Season”; “Social and Personal,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, January 4, 1965: 9; Ned Powers, “Bowlers Keep Pins Flying,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, April 24, 1968: 29.

111 According to Lorne Lee, a Reference Assistant at the Regina Library, Callow’s occupation is listed in the Regina telephone directory as a clerk at Macleod’s during this period.

112 Eleanor’s occupation was taken from the 1970 and 1971 Saskatoon telephone directories. Her surname in the 1971 directory was Litterick. Powers, “Bowlers Keep Pins Flying.”

113 A wedding photo of James and Eleanor on Ancestry.com is dated July 17, 1971. The author was unable to locate an official marriage record.

114 “Ladies’ Team Spots on Line,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 5, 1974: 53.

115 Her sister Nora had died in July 1973 in a Saskatoon hospital at the age of 55. The obituary of both sisters requested donations to the Canadian Cancer Society. Eleanor had lived at the same address as Nora and Harry Brown for close to 20 years. “Deaths (Nora L. Brown).”

116 “Eleanor Margaret Litterick,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 30, 1974: 51.

117 Jim Sargent, We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews with Players of the AAGPBL, 1943-1954 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2013), 161.

118 Fiddler, 8.

119 As of 2022, the National Women’s Baseball Hall of Fame, which did not include Callow, was no longer active. As of 2022, no female baseball players had been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (but one female executive was, Effa Manley). However, a permanent AAGPBL exhibit was added to its museum in 1988.

120 The other 11 Manitoba women to play in the AAGPBL were: Doris Barr, Dorothy Ferguson (later Key), Audrey Haine (later Daniels), Dorothy Hunter, Olive Little (née Bend), Ruth Middleton (later Gentry), Joan Schatz, Mary Shastal (later Kustra), Doris Shero (later Witiuk), Yolande Teillet (later Schick), and Evelyn Wawryshyn (later Moroz, and subsequently Litwin). “Inductee Spotlight: MB All American Girls,” Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame, https://mbhof.ca/2021/08/03/inductee-spotlight-mb-all-american-girls/, accessed September 12, 2022.

121 The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame began inducting former AAGPBL players individually in 2021. Helen Callaghan Candaele (later St. Aubin), mother of Casey Candaele, was the first of the group to be inducted on her own.

Paul Leo Emile Calvert was born in Montreal on October 6, 1917. He was the eighth of nine children. His father was John Calvert, a carpenter who had emigrated from England in 1892. As a result, the surname was pronounced the English way, with a hard ‘t’ as opposed to the French Cal-VAIR. His mother was Maria Bélanger, a French-Canadian.1 Calvert spoke both of the city’s languages but grew up primarily speaking in French. He kept his French accent, and occasionally reported some difficulties in making himself understood in English.2

Paul Calvert was immersed in baseball from an early age, acting as a mascot for his older brother’s teams. He began playing in a church-sponsored league at age 7. By age 15 he was already a good enough to pitch for senior teams. Spotted by former major leaguer Ed Wingo, he moved in 1936 to the Federal League, a semipro circuit, after being recommended to Charlie Culver, player-manager in Chambly, a Montreal suburb.3

After setting multiple strikeout records in the Federal League, Calvert was recruited by Sherbrooke (Quebec), which played in the Provincial League. Although officially semipro, this league, which had some players that had been suspended from Organized Baseball, was considered “outlaw.” It had a dozen players who had already played in the major leagues or who would reach the majors. Calvert finished the season with a 10-5 record, and he opened many eyes with his explosive fastball and a league-leading 127 strikeouts. He cemented his prospect status by striking out 14 in a playoff game.4

The right-handed pitcher attracted the attention of legendary scout Paul Krichell of the New York Yankees, who made him a contract offer that would have seen him finish the season with the Newark Bears of the Class AA International League. The bonus attached was rumoured to be as much as $10,000.5 At the suggestion of his teammates, he rejected it, a decision he still regretted decades later.6 Instead, Calvert joined the local Montreal Royals of the International League. He signed a contract for the remainder of the season, allowing him to become a free agent afterwards.7

Calvert made an impressive debut on September 4 in a doubleheader against Rochester in Montreal. In relief of Oad Swigart in the second inning, he gave up only two hits in five and 1/3 innings. However, he yielded five walks and three runs. He struck out three batters and got his first win as a professional. It was reported that his speed was giving opposing batters trouble, and that he had more velocity than anyone else on the Royals.8

He pitched in two more games with the Royals, finishing with a 1-1 record and a 4.15 ERA in 13 innings. He was later invited to New York City by the Giants, who could have added him to their roster immediately. Unfortunately, the trip was a disaster. The Montreal Gazette and the Montreal Daily Star offer different versions, but agree that rain postponed the tryout for three days before Calvert could throw for 15 minutes in front of manager Bill Terry and his staff, possibly during batting practice. It soon became apparent that Terry was no longer interested, in part after Calvert expressed his desire to obtain his college degree. The Giants’ offer was reported to include a $700 signing bonus, with yearly bonuses of $1,000 in 1939 and 1940 if he remained in the organization. 9

Calvert’s prospect status would soon be derailed. Sometimes before the 1939 season, Calvert began experiencing arm pain, which would follow him for the rest of his career. Many years later, Calvert would trace the origin of his pain to that off-season, as he forgot to put on his long underwear after emerging from a YMCA swimming pool on a chilly day.10 The cold did enough damage to afflict him with a lifeless arm almost every spring, as well as eating up several miles per hour off his fastball.11

Back with Sherbrooke in the Provincial League, the injury delayed Calvert’s start to the season and slowed him down well into the summer. To alleviate the pain, Calvert put his arm through several heat treatments. When he finally returned, Calvert was left on the mound for 13 innings in his second game. In all, he would pitch only 10 games, having to take the entire month of July off. He had a 4-3 record with 52 strikeouts.

Despite the shortened season, Calvert did enough to impress the Cleveland Indians. General manager C.C. Slapnicka sent him an offer for the 1940 season.12 When his signing was announced, he was listed as 20 years old, when in fact he was 22.13At his first spring training, he impressed manager Ossie Vitt, who liked how his fastball “sang,”14 but the arm pain soon caught up with him. Nevertheless, the Indians saw in him a good prospect. He was sent to Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) in the Class A Eastern League. After only four games, in which he gave up 12 earned runs and walked 16 in 21 innings, he was demoted to Cedar Rapids, in the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League. He did much better at that level, with a 6-4 record and a 2.57 ERA in 91 innings.

The 1941 season was similar to the previous one, as Calvert was optioned to Cedar Rapids before the season began. He pitched well (6-3, 2.30 ERA) but was plagued by injuries, which limited him to 82 innings. His usual arm pain was compounded by tonsillitis and dental problems early in the season.15

It was finally in 1942 that Calvert took the step forward the Indians had been waiting for. Changing his winter and spring routines, he decided not to push his arm until he was fully fit. He did only a few indoor sessions in Montreal during the winter, then ramped up his pitching regimen slowly during spring training. Back with Wilkes-Barre,he started his season a little late, but when he got going, he had his first long run of success since 1938. He won 10 straight to start his season, allowing him to momentarily eclipse teammate and star-in-the-making Allie Reynolds.16Calvert concluded the best season of his career with a 17-7 record and a 2.22 ERA in 207 innings. His good performance was rewarded: He was recalled by the Indians at the end of the season, along with Reynolds. Otherwise, he would have been eligible for the Rule V draft.17 Calvert was used only once, making his debut against the White Sox on September 24. He did well, giving up two bases on balls but no hits or runs in two innings of relief in a 3-1 loss. As he confided to the Montreal Gazette after the season, “There are no corners on the plate they use in the majors.” 18

After spending the offseason in a winter league in Cuba with fellow Montrealer Jean-Pierre Roy, Calvert reported to the 1943 Indians’ camp, where he managed to carve out a spot in the bullpen. He was not used much, however, and in early June he was sold to the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. He had pitched five times for the Indians, mostly in doubleheaders.

Barely a week after transferring to Baltimore, Calvert was involved in an off-field incident, a fight that left him with a broken left wrist and a sprained right thumb. According to his story, Calvert didn’t appreciate the foul language used by an individual while he was walking a young lady down the streets of Baltimore. Although he said he was not a fighter, he could not help but mention that he won his fight.19

When he returned, Calvert had his worst moments in Organized Baseball, and even thought about quitting. His manager, former major-league pitcher Tommy Thomas, helped him hang on. After changing his motion, raising his arm, Calvert finished the season with four good performances, bringing his record to 4-11 with a 4.55 ERA.20

By 1944, the war had taken its toll on the player pool. Calvert’s poor vision prevented him from being drafted, even though he was single, but he had difficulty obtaining his visa. Calvert was college educated, having graduated from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal before signing with the Indians. Because of his training as a chartered auditor, the Canadian government felt he could be useful to the war effort. He argued that like other apprentices he had to complete 12 months of training but had only completed seven in the off-seasons. It took the intervention of businessman and sports promoter Léo Dandurand, through whom he could explain his story directly to the Minister of Labour in Ottawa.21

He still arrived at the Indians’ camp early enough to earn a spot. While he made his first career start on April 29 against the Tigers, he was used primarily in relief early in the season. Through May 21, he had given up one earned run in 12 and 2/3 innings. He then moved into the rotation and had a breakout performance on May 28 against the A’s, limiting them to two earned runs in eight and 1/3 innings for his first win in the majors. In his next two starts, he gave up four runs in six and 2/3 innings against the Yankees, then failed to make it past the fourth inning against the Tigers, before returning to the bullpen. The rest of his season was up and down. By the end, his arm was in bad shape. Shortly after the season, he was back in Montreal for treatment.22 Still, a year after almost giving up on his career, he spent the entire season in the majors, posting a 1-3 record and a 4.56 ERA in 77 innings.

In the spring of 1945, Calvert arrived at the Indians camp with virtually a job in hand. Unfortunately, arm pains returned, preventing Calvert from showing what he could do. He didn’t make his debut until May 11, giving up three hits and two runs in an inning and 1/3 against the Red Sox. A few days later, at the deadline to trim rosters, the Indians sent Calvert back to Baltimore.23 In addition to his sore arm, the Indians criticized his lack of control and inconsistency. Because he had been optioned to the minors three times in the past, he was sold to the Orioles.24

His season with the Orioles was unremarkable. The highlight of his season came on June 12, when he defeated Buffalo and had four hits, including a home run.25

The end of the war brought back dozens of players. Calvert’s chances of returning to the majors were reduced and he predictably returned to Baltimore for the 1946 season. It was a memorable season in the International League, as Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Montreal Royals. When the Royals visited Baltimore early in the season, Calvert became the first pitcher in Organized Ball to hit Robinson with a pitch. A resulting sore wrist kept Robinson on the shelf for a few days.26 While some doubted Calvert’s intentions, given Calvert’s own minority status, lack of control and personal history, it would be very surprising if this was anything more than a pitch that got away.

After 16 games — four starts — with the Orioles, his contract was transferred to the Toronto Maple Leafs, also in the International League, where he pitched in five games, all starts. Seeing himself on a downward slope, Calvert joined fellow countrymen Jean-Pierre Roy, Roland Gladu and Stan Bréard in Cuba in the winter of 1946. For these players facing a professional dead end, the idea was to monetize their skills as much as possible while trying, perhaps, to open some eyes and turn things around. Calvert joined the Marianao team in the Cuban Winter League. Unfortunately, there was a high price to pay. The league had signed several players suspended from Organized Baseball a few months earlier for signing contracts with the Mexican League, a new professional league that wanted to compete with the major leagues. Notably, Calvert played with Max Lanier and Roberto Estalella in Marianao.27 This earned Calvert an indefinite suspension from Organized Baseball.

Calvert, who did well in Cuba, leading the league with three shutouts, was left with little choice but to join the Mexican League for the 1947 season. He played with San Luis Potosi and Tampico, with whom he had a 6-9 record and a 4.02 ERA.

After the season, he returned to Cuba, joining the Santiago team of the newly formed Cuban Players League, organized by the Mexican League ‘jumpers.’ Pointing out that he was not under contract with a major-league club when he had joined the jumpers the previous year, Calvert was able to convince Organized Baseball officials that his suspension had gone on long enough. In mid-January 1948, he regained his eligibility. He immediately switched to the Cuban Professional League, approved by Organized Baseball.28

With his contract still owned by Toronto, Calvert returned for the 1948 season. After only four games in relief, he left the club without warning, dissatisfied with his usage. Manager Eddie Sawyer was acting under the direction of the parent club, the Phillies, to give youngsters a chance.29 Meanwhile, in Quebec, the Provincial League was becoming baseball’s premier “outlaw” league, having attracted several of the suspended players. Stan Bréard was manager in Drummondville and Roland Gladu in Sherbrooke. Calvert ended up in Sherbrooke. A few weeks later, Toronto traded him to Atlanta in the Southern League. Calvert had no intention of reporting and did not even answer the telegrams. As a result, the trade was cancelled, and Calvert was suspended again by Organized Baseball.

Meanwhile, Calvert made a triumphant return to Quebec, obviously getting the starts he was denied in Toronto. On May 30, he pitched a sensational game at home against Saint-Hyacinthe. In nine innings, he gave up no hits, striking out six against four walks and a hit batter. However, the opposite pitcher, Armand Saulnier, was also doing very well, so it was still scoreless when Calvert came to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two runners in scoring position. Calvert beat out a bunt between third base and shortstop, ending the game, giving him a feat that may be unique in professional baseball, throwing a no-hitter and getting the game-ending hit.30

Calvert continued his dominance throughout the year, finishing the season with an 11-1 record and helping his team to playoff honors. Calvert wanted to return to Cuba for the winter, but with the Players League no longer in operation, his suspension was preventing him from signing with the Cuban Professional League. He managed to get reinstated by personally buying out his contract from the Toronto Maple Leafs for $1,500. While pitching for the Habana Leones, he caught the attention of Joe Cambria, the scout for the Washington Senators. Manager Joe Kuhel remembered Calvert and his sinkerball and offered an invitation to spring training. The pitcher took advantage of a few injuries in camp to earn a spot with the big club.31

The Senators, defeated 97 times in 1948, needed all the help they could get. With injuries ravaging the club, Calvert found himself starting the third game of the season, although he had only pitched in relief in training camp. In a complete game, he gave up only five hits to the Yankees but lost, 3-0. He did make an impression, though. In mid-season form thanks to the trip to Cuba, he was a major factor in the Senators’ surprising early-season performance. From April 30 to May 11, he won all four of his outings, including three starts. On June 3, after pitching a complete game in a 12-3 win over the Browns, he found himself with a 6-3 record and a 3.90 ERA in 62.1 innings. The Senators, meanwhile, were the surprise of the American League with a 24-19 record, putting them in second place.

Calvert then found himself in the spotlight. In May, The Sporting News called him “undoubtedly the strangest man ever to come to the major leagues,” describing how he got his teammates to talk at length about something other than baseball or women by innocently asking if the days seem longer or shorter when you’re young, leaving Eddie Yost and Ray Scarborough to argue. He was also able to talk for hours about the emerging cold war, becoming the expert on the subject even though his teammates Buddy Lewis and Sam Dente were the ones who had been in actual combat.32 In addition to French and English, Calvert had learned Spanish during his stays in Cuba and Mexico. In mid-July, a United Press feature labeled him as the most intellectual player in the majors and as the successor to Moe Berg.33

Unfortunately, the success was not to last. In fact, Calvert would not win again all season. Fatigued after pitching all winter, blisters affecting his drop ball, the Senators’ return to reality, and the adjustment made by American League hitters would all contribute to his downfall. After that June 3 game, Calvert went 0-14 record with a 6.50 ERA in 98.1 innings. That losing streak was at the time the third longest in MLB history, and, as of 2013, was still tied for 10th longest.34 Calvert’s fall from grace was so steep that when the Senators sent him to the mound against the Red Sox in late September, Casey Stengel complained that Washington was doing everything it could to help the Red Sox hold off the Yankees.35A few weeks earlier, Stengel had seen Calvert set, with three of his teammates, a record with 11 walks allowed in an inning.36 Calvert finished the season as the American League leader in losses with 17.

Having just spent the year in the majors, Calvert was ineligible to return to the Cuban Professional League and instead returned to Montreal for the winter. He confided to the Montreal Gazette that he did not see a future with the Senators anymore and had asked Clark Griffith to send him elsewhere.37 Rumours flew all winter, with Calvert ending up with the Detroit Tigers after being claimed on waivers.

The Tigers were hoping to make Calvert their ace reliever, believing they had found the missing piece to lead the team to the playoffs. Manager Red Rolfe thought that Calvert’s sinker would wreak havoc in relief. Also, after being bothered by blisters in 1949, short outings seemed like a better way to limit the damage.38

Despite the Tiger’s confidence in him, Calvert had a rough start. Early in training camp, he suffered from back pain that slowed him down.39 Then, a few weeks later, he raised the ire of his manager when he tried to skip a drill. Rolfe’s response was unambiguous: “Get the hell in there and pitch!”40 Despite this, Calvert did start the season as the ace reliever they were looking for. In the first 10 games of the season, he was used six times, including in four consecutive games, in which he gave no earned runs in six and 2/3 innings. On April 26 in St. Louis, he was the winning pitcher against the Browns, ending his losing streak.

Calvert’s season, if not his career, was then tainted by an unfortunate incident. On June 9, pitching against the Yankees in New York, he hit pitcher Bob Porterfield in the face. Porterfield lost consciousness and was evacuated on a stretcher. He did not regain consciousness until 45 minutes later in the hospital. In addition to a broken jaw, Porterfield suffered a significant concussion that kept him in the hospital for several weeks and off the field for most of the season. Calvert describes the pitch as a sinker that didn’t sink.41 Fortunately, Porterfield would still have a good career ahead of him. Calvert, however, was not out of the woods. On June 12, as the Tigers were playing the Reds in an exhibition game, Calvert sent another player to the hospital by hitting him in the head, this time outfielder Danny Litwhiler. It was a strange sequence for Calvert, who hit just one other batter that season.

While never offered as an excuse, these incidents might have been a factor in Calvert’s season, which did not live up to expectations. In mid-July, he was bothered by elbow pain. His control suffered, leading to a series of poor performances. He lost the confidence of his manager and was only used sporadically thereafter.42 He finished the season with a 6.31 ERA in 51 and 1/3 innings over 32 games, as the Tigers finished three games behind the Yankees, despite winning 95 games.

Hardly used at the end of the 1950 season and no longer seen as a key player, Calvert remained with the Tigers at the beginning of the 1951 season but was not used in the first dozen games of the season. In an 11-6 loss to the Yankees on May 6, he was sent to the mound in the ninth inning, giving up one hit and no runs. A few days later, on the eve of the deadline to cut rosters, his contract was sold to the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, managed by Rogers Hornsby.43 Calvert would never see the major leagues again.

However, Calvert returned to the minor leagues in grand fashion. After a few games in relief, he got his first start on May 27. His sinker worked wonderfully, allowing him to pitch a no-hitter against Sacramento. He needed only 71 pitches to get through nine innings. He retired the final 11 batters to face him.44

Calvert maintained a good level of effectiveness throughout the season, although his blister problems came back. He bounced around between the rotation and the bullpen and won the championship-clinching game in relief for the Rainiers.

Back with the team in 1952, the highlight of his season was a 17-inning outing on May 17. He surrendered only one run but ended with a no-decision as Seattle won in the 19th inning.45 Shoulder problems plagued him soon after46 and his role diminished, making just five starts.

In the spring of 1953, he was traded to the Charleston Senators of the American Association, for whom he never pitched.47 Instead, he resurfaced in the Quebec Provincial League, with Granby, for whom he pitched a few games. However, the league had changed significantly since his last stay in 1948, now being affiliated with Organized Baseball and focused on development. Veteran players were moving to the unaffiliated Laurentian League, and so Calvert joined his old friend Jean-Pierre Roy in Saint-Jérôme, QC for the 1954 season. Franco-American and former major leaguer Ralph LaPointe was also on the team.48

Calvert attempted a return to Organized Baseball in the spring of 1955 but was cut by the American Association’s Omaha Cardinals in spring training. The following year, at age 38, he tried his luck with Modesto in the California League. He made the team but ended up playing only three games with the club before being released.49

These would be Calvert’s last official appearances, but the newly retired pitcher remained in California for six years, working as an accountant. He also spent a year in Florida before returning to Quebec, accepting a position as a property appraiser for Revenue Canada, in Sherbrooke.50 He transferred his athletic talents to the golf course, even though his right arm had permanent damage from his playing days. He won an amateur tournament in Modesto in 1957 and participated a few times in the National Baseball Players’ Golf Championship.51

Calvert mostly refused to talk about baseball after his retirement, claiming that it was in the past and that he now preferred talking about golf.52

Calvert had married Carmen Bello in Cuba in the 1940s. The couple had a daughter, Micheline, born in 1948. They divorced when Calvert resettled in Canada in the 1960s. Calvert then wed his high school sweetheart, Lucille Houde, in 1966. She died in 1993, and Calvert remarried soon after, to Laura-May Delorme. Suffering from cancer, Paul Calvert died at age 81 on February 1, 1999, in Sherbrooke. His ashes were laid to rest in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery, in Montreal. 53

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Darren Gibson and Andrew Sharp and fact-checked by James Forr.

Sources

Baseball-reference.com

Retrosheet.org

Much information about Paul Calvert’s personal life was obtained from 2010 discussions with members of the Calvert family, including his nephews Harry, Raymond and Russ Calvert, and his daughter Micheline.

Notes

1 Library and Archives Canada, 1921 Canadian census.

2 Ed McAuley, “First English Lesson: Wanna Fight? Pitcher Paul from Montreal,” The Sporting News, April 6, 1944, 4.

3 “ ‘Je lancerai pour le club qui paiera le mieux déclare.’ le jeune Calvert, ”La Patrie (Montreal, QC), September11, 1938,70.

4 “Début prometteur du jeune Paul Calvert, ”La Patrie (Montreal, QC), September 6, 1938,23.

5 Simon Kretz, “Flashback: Leo Paul Calvert, 1950,” Sport Magazine (Montreal, QC), October 1994, 66.

6 Denis Messier, “Regards sur le passé,” La Tribune (Sherbrooke, QC), October 11, 1975, 27.

7 “Calvert, Sherbrooke Mound Ace, To Play Out Season with Royals,” Montreal Gazette, September 3, 1938, 14.

8 “Début prometteur du jeune Paul Calvert,” La Patrie (Montreal, QC), September 6, 1938, 23.

9 “Giants Drop Calvert After Short Practice,” Montreal Gazette, September 23, 1938, 16, and Lloyd McGowan,

10 “Riddels Solves Grid Riddle…Calvert Tells of Terry Trial,” Montreal Star, September 30, 1938, 30.

11 Associated Press.“Montreal Rookie with Indians,” Ottawa Journal, April 5, 1943, 17.

12 “Reynolds and Calvert Setting Double Quick Pitching Pace as Wilkes-Barre Win Twins,” The Sporting News, July 30, 1942, 2.

13“Brief Bits of Gossip,” The Sporting News, February 1, 1940,10.

14 Associated Press, “Training Camp Briefs,” Wilkes-Barre (PA) Times Leader, March 6, 1940, 20.

15 “Marquardt, the Home Stretch Kid, Keeps Raiders at .500,” The Sporting News, May 29, 1941, 16.

16 “Reynolds and Calvert Setting Double Quick Pitching Pace as Wilkes-Barre Win Twins,” The Sporting News, July 30, 1942, 2.

17 “Tribesmen Choke Up and Lou Turns Blue,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942, 3.

18 Dink Carroll, “Playing the Field,” Montreal Gazette, November 18, 1942, 16.

19 McAuley, “First English Lesson: Wanna Fight?” (see note 2).

20 McAuley.

[21] McAuley.

22 Jean Barrette,“Autour des buts,” La Patrie(Montreal, QC), October 15, 1944, 90.

23 “Paul Calvert Sent to Baltimore Birds,” Montreal Gazette, May 15, 1944, 16.

24 McAuley, “5 Indians Wait For ‘Greetings’,” The Sporting News, May 24, 1945.

25 “International League,” The Sporting News, June 21, 1945, 22.

26 Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s great experiment: Jackie Robinson and his legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 122.

27 Isaac Rives, “Lanier Routed in Cuban Debut with Gonzalez’ Havana Team,” The Sporting News, November 20, 1946, 22.

28 Pedro Galiana, “Calvert Changes Cuban Uniform to Rejoin O.B.,” The Sporting News, January 21, 1948, 20.

29Associated Press, “Calvert Buys His Way to the Front of Nats’ Mound Staff,” Evening Times (Sayre, PA), April 22, 1949, 8.

30 Jean-Paul Lainé, “Paul Calvert lance une partie parfaite contre les Saints,” La Tribune (Sherbrooke, QC), May 31 1948, 6.

31Associated Press, “Calvert Buys His Way to the Front of Nats’ Mound Staff,” Evening Times, April 22, 1949, 8.

32 Bob Addie, “Calvert, Scholarly Nat Hurler, Studies Languages, Batters,” The Sporting News, May 18, 1949, 2.

33 United Press, “Intellectual Rating Given Paul Calvert: Bespectacled Pitcher Rivals Moe Berg for Linguistic Ability,” Hartford Couran), July 15, 1949, 14.

34 Vin Getz, “MLB: Most Losses in a Row by a Pitcher in History,” https://sportsweeksportslist.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/.

35 United Press, “Stengel Wants Nats to Use Weik, Sox Raps A’s Naming Marchildon,” St. Albans (VT) Daily Messenger, September 28, 1949, 5.

36 Bruce Harris, “September 11, 1949: Four Senators pitchers set major-league record with 11 walks in one inning,”SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-11-1949-four-senators-pitchers-set-major-league-record-with-11-walks-in-one-inning/

37 Dick Carroll, “Playing the Field,”Montreal Gazette, December 6, 1949, 18.

38 “Rolfe Sees Calvert as Two-Inning Ace for Tigers,” The Sporting News, March 22, 1950, 5.

39 Associated Press, “Paul Calvert Develops Sore Back Ligament,” Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA), March 4, 1950, 13.

40 Oscar Ruhl, “From the Ruhl Book,” The Sporting News, April 5, 1950, 22.

41Associated Press, “Yank Batter Left Unconscious When Tiger Sinker Didn’t Sink,” Ottawa Journal, June 10, 1950, 25.

[42]Jean Barrette, “Autour des buts, »La Patrie, August 27, 1950, 109.

43 Watson Spoelstra, “Wertz Aims for Third 100-RBI Mark,”The Sporting News, May 23, 1951, 15.

44 Royal Brougham, “No-Hitter by Paul Calvert in Debut for Seattle,” The Sporting News, June 6, 1951, 15.

45 “19-Inning ’Frisco-Seattle Marathon Ties S.F. Mark,” The Sporting News, May 28, 1952, 24.

46 “Pacific Coast League,” The Sporting News, July 2, 1952, 30.

47 “Deals of the Week – Majors-Minors,” The Sporting News, March 4, 1953: 33.

48 Robert Desjardins, “En Pleine Lumière, ”Le Petit Journal (Montreal, QC), May 23, 1954, 59.

49 “Nos Joueurs à l’Étranger, ”Le Petit Journal, June 17, 1956, 75.

50 Denis Messier, “Regards Sur le Passé, ”La Tribune, October 11, 1975, 27.

51 Jimmy Burns, “Jim Hearn Stumbles in Stretch, Hangs on to Cop Links Crown,” The Sporting News, March 2, 1963, 29.

52 Simon Kretz, “Flashback: Leo Paul Calvert, 1950,” Sport Magazine (Montreal, QC), October 1994, 66.

53 André Laroche, “Le lanceur Paul Calvert s’éteint à 81 ans,” La Tribune, February 3, 1999, C3.

Earl “Flat” Chase, ca. 1947-1954. (Archives and Special Collections, Leddy Library, University of Windsor)

Earl “Flat” Chase (1913 – 1954) was skilled as a batter, pitcher, catcher, and any field position he was asked to play. Chase was nicknamed Flat for his running style, and his skills on the field and charismatic athleticism earned him a reputation as one of the most exciting players to watch in Southwestern Ontario in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. He is perhaps best known for outpitching Phil Marchildon in the 1934 Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship series and thus helping his team, the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, defeat Penetanguishene. The Chatham Coloured All-Stars were the first Black team to win this provincial series.

Chase was born on August 16, 1913, in North Buxton, Ontario, a community founded in 1849 by and for Black settlers, many of whom were former slaves. Chase was one of nine children born to George Chase, a laborer, and Elva Gambril. His siblings were Arthur, Viola, Lloyd, Harold, Edith, Richard, Ileen, and Ione. Early in his life, Earl moved with his family to Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. The Chases lived in the McDougall Street corridor, the center of Windsor’s traditional Black neighborhood and business district. The Chases’ house was on Mercer Street, which was the eastern edge of Wigle Park, the geographic and social heart of the McDougall Street corridor. The park offered a range of social and recreational facilities, including a baseball diamond.

Chase spent most of his days playing baseball, honing his skills, watching and then competing against the many teams that visited from the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent regions, as well as from Detroit. Chase’s eldest son, Earl Jr., reflected that his father “grew up in the park across the street.”1 The McDougall Street corridor was less than five miles from downtown Detroit, and the Windsor newspapers of the 1930s document a steady flow of regional Black baseball teams into Wigle Park.2 These teams included the Saginaw Michigan Colored Baseballers (1930), the Ecorse Colored Giants (1930 and 1936), the Hamtramck Colored Stars (1931), the Philadelphia Colored Giants (1931), the Wolverine Colored Stars (1933), Quinn’s Colored Stars of Detroit (1935 and 1939), and the Detroit Colored Stars (1936), among others. It has proved difficult to locate formal documentation about these teams, but it is highly probable that they were not part of formal leagues, but rather informally organized pickup teams with crossover players playing exhibition games against teams around the area.3

Around the age of 15, Chase started playing for church league teams in both Windsor and Detroit. While there appears to be no extant record of these games, it is safe to assume that in playing for church teams in Detroit, Chase was regularly playing with and against a wide range of Black baseball players, some of whom likely played on more formalized Negro Leagues teams in and around Detroit. It is also likely that playing with and against such teams in Detroit helped push the young Chase’s innate skills to the next level.

In 1933 the Windsor newspapers document Chase playing for the Windsor Stars, along with another future Chatham Coloured All-Star, Ferguson Jenkins Sr.4 It may have been through playing for the Stars at Wigle Park that Chase and Jenkins got to know Wilfred “Boomer” Harding and his brother Len Harding from Chatham.5 It’s not surprising that in 1933, when the All-Stars were looking for talent to round out their team for the Chatham City League playoffs, they sought out Chase.

A story in the August 24, 1933, Chatham Daily News describes how “Chase[,] a hurler from Windsor who has been working in the Riverside league,” had signed on to play with the All-Stars.6 The All-Stars would go on to win the Chatham City League’s Wanless Trophy that year, and Chase’s contributions on the mound were a large part of the team’s success. Describing the final game of the series, the Chatham Daily News writes, “It was simply a case of too much Chase, who worked on the mound in both games.”7 Chase would stay in Chatham for the rest of his life, playing for a number of teams in and around Chatham.

The All-Stars’ home field, Stirling Park, was not unlike Wigle Park in that it was located in the heart of Chatham’s predominantly Black neighborhood. Like the McDougall Street area, the East End has a long-standing tradition of baseball. Most of the Black teams prior to the 1930s were informal teams like the Chatham Giants from the 1920s, who played some league games but also pickup and exhibition games at church homecomings and other weekend events. In 1932 a group of young players from the East End formed a team that, with the assistance of Archie Stirling, a neighborhood business owner and local baseball advocate, would be formally recognized in 1933 as the Stars and later be known as the Chatham Coloured All-Stars. Most of the players grew up in the East End and lived within a few blocks of the ball diamond, and hundreds of residents would turn out to watch baseball on summer evenings and weekends.

The crowd who showed up for the All-Stars’ season opener on May 17, 1934, would have seen that Chase’s 1933 playoff performance was not a fluke but rather indicative of the career he would have in Chatham. Playing second base for the first four innings and then pitching the final three innings, Chase is listed in the box score as getting one run and one hit. In the second inning, Chase turned a 4-3 double play, “nipping what appeared to be a start of a rally in the bud.”8 Of his pitching, Chatham Daily News sportswriter Jack Calder commented, “Chase went to the mound in the last three frames and effectively checked any intentions the Duns might have had to fatten their batting averages by allowing only one hit.”9 This one article hints at why Chase would go on to become a Chatham legend: He was a formidable pitcher, fielder, and hitter.

As the 1934 season progressed, Chase showed Chatham fans just what kind of a powerhouse he would become, and the local newspaper recounted the details of his on-field skills. On June 12, Calder wrote:

“With Chase hurling three-hit ball over the abbreviated route, the Stars took advantage of seven errors made by the opposition and seven hits allowed by Belanger to win going away. Chase himself led in the hitting attack with two doubles and a single in four times at bat, while his battery mate, Washington, accounted for two of his team’s other hits. Belanger and Depew worked on the mound for the Braggs and turned in good games but the free-swinging bats of Chase and Washington led to their defeat.”¹⁰

In this game and the game on June 20, Chases contributions were as both an intimidating pitcher and a strong batter: “Chase worked the entire game [against] the Duns and allowed only seven hits while striking out ten. Wright and Thompson opposed him, the former being chased after two and two-thirds innings. Boomer Harding and Chase each accounted for three of the Stars’ safe blows.”11 It is difficult to ascertain precisely how many games Chase’s pitching won for the All-Stars since stats for ERA, wins, saves, and losses were not recorded. One thing that is certain, however, is that much of the success of the 1934 team was reliant upon Chase’s ability to pitch hard throughout the games, his unstoppable bat, and his competitive spirit.

Throughout the 1934 season, Chase would be described in phrases such as the “smoke-ball artist of the Chatham Nine”12 and “the speed ball demon.”13 By September of 1934, Jack Calder of the Chatham Daily News would call Chase the “mainstay of the All-Stars’ pitching staff” and “one of the hardest hitters in amateur ball.”14 Teammate Boomer Harding commented on Chase at the plate. He

“… could hit a ball low and he could hit it high … there’s no weak spot. He could hit the ball where it was pitched. If they thought, well, we’ll pitch him outside, he’d hit it hard, he’d hit it out of the park, in left field just as easy as in Stirling which was small. But he’d still hit it further out of the park than a right hand batter would hit it out. So he was strong in any field and he’d hit it like it was pitched.”¹⁵

Chase not only awed spectators with his skills, he was also entertaining to watch as this notice in the Chatham Daily News reveals: “Flat Chase does something of a rumba every time he goes to bat, not quite the same as Dick Porter’s classical toe dance. Chase’s little act should have been set to the music of Ferde Grofé’s ‘Grand Canyon Suite.’ It’s good but there’s something weird about it. But how Chase can leather that apple. He is the hardest hitter in amateur baseball in this part of the province. That’s covering some territory.”16 For the rest of his life and beyond, his skills as a player would be talked about with superlatives and awe.

On the field, the All-Stars were challenged by some strong opponents, and they became known for fast, exciting, and occasionally aggressive play. Boomer Harding’s son Blake offered this description of the team: “And when it got nasty, they were just as nasty and aggressive and tough as anybody else out there. And if you wanted to play to hurt one of them … they gave what they got.”17 Off the field, the team also met challenges. The farther the team got from Chatham, the more they encountered hostile crowds and difficulties finding restaurants and hotels that would serve and house them. In the 1934 final series in and against Penetanguishene, the team could not find accommodations in town and had to stay in a neighboring town. In Canada discrimination based on race was not as fully codified as it was in the United States, but it was still deeply pervasive.

Sometimes the All-Stars’ athleticism, skill, and exciting style of play would win over hostile crowds. Other times having a Black team beat the local team led to events that the players remembered in vivid detail for the rest of their lives. In 1980 Kingsley Terrell, longtime teammate of Chase, recalled how

“… there was never a place that we played baseball that we couldn’t go back and play again, except one place and that was in West Lorne. We beat West Lorne and they run us out, they run us out of the town. They had clubs, and hoes, and rakes, and everything else. We got everything all packed up before the game was over because we knew there was something going to happen anyways. So, we just got the game over. When that last man was out we all got in the cars and took off and we never went back. And we couldn’t go back to play ball there no more.”¹⁸

In 1984 fellow All-Star Ross Talbot shared his memories of West Lorne: “One time in West Lorne we caused a small riot. … Boomer was going home and knocked down their catcher and people snatched boards off the fence, but we came out of that all right.”19 “As for heckling,” Talbot reflected, “we just had to take it. … At that time we had to live with it.”20 In the same interview Talbot recalled playing in Strathroy: “They wrote on the sidewalks, ‘the n___s are coming’ and the ‘black clouds are moving in,'” Talbot said, a tear coming to his eye.21 “That was the worst thing we ever came across.” An interview with Ferguson Jenkins Sr. suggests that Chase specifically was targeted in some of the things written and drawn on the sidewalks.22 In their interviews with the Breaking the Colour Barrier project,23 however, Earl Chase Jr. and Horace Chase said their father never really talked about those memories. Instead, they said, his love for the game always won out over whatever threats or hostilities he encountered.24

Chase, Boomer and Len Harding, Guoy Ladd, and Kingsley Terrell formed a core group of players who stayed with the Chatham Coloured All-Stars until they disbanded in 1939. Chatham fielded a competitive team for the remainder of the 1930s but they never won another OBAA championship. The All-Stars made it to the OBAA finals in 1939 but withdrew when conflicts regarding payment of expenses and location of the final games could not be resolved. Although the print record is vague about these controversies, oral histories have suggested there were racial undertones to the unfair travel expectations put on the All-Stars, and the lack of proper compensation for expenses. When the 1940 baseball season began, World War II was underway and several All-Stars had enlisted to serve.

Chase remained in Chatham during the war. By this time, he and his wife, Julia (Black) Chase, whom he married in November 1934, had four children, Earl Jr., Horace, Marilyn, and Gladys. Chase worked for the City of Chatham’s sanitation department and eventually was hired in a supervisory role. Work and family were a priority for Chase, but so was baseball. As Horace Chase recalled, “most of the time my dad actually played ball, tell you the truth. His love of the game was phenomenal because that was his sport. In fact, when all four of us children was born he wasn’t there for the birth, he was playing ball. That’s how much he played.”25

The Chases were a baseball family, Horace commented: “We weren’t what you’d call a much outside baseball family. We liked our baseball.”26 Chase “didn’t get into soccer or hockey, golf or any of those things. I think because my dad was used to working, and times were tough. And like I say, having four young kids with mouths to feed. I think that was his only thing, was to play ball. Live to play ball, eat, sleep, and enjoy life.”27 The centrality of baseball is a recurrent theme in Chase’s sons’ descriptions of their father’s life.

As was the case when he lived in Windsor, Chase played baseball for a range of community and regional teams, playing whenever and wherever he could. In 1938 and 1939 Chase appears to have played with the London Majors, a predominantly White team in the Intercounty Baseball League, as well as with the Chatham Coloured All-Stars. In 1944 Chase was a key part of the London Majors’ winning the Canadian Sandlot Congress Championship. In 1943-1945, there are records of Chase playing for the Chatham Arcades, who won the OBA Intermediate Championship in 1944. In 1946 a number of former All-Stars reunited to play for the Taylor A-Cs. There were enough All-Stars on the team that the Chatham Daily News‘s sports page had a headline that said, “Chatham Coloured Stars Return Under New Name.”28

From 1947 until his death in 1954, he also played with the Chatham Shermans and Chatham Hadleys. Very little formal documentation from those leagues exists today but the Chase family scrapbook documents his career, with notes and mostly undated clippings. In the scrapbook, it suggests that Chases batting average ranged from .447 while playing for the Shermans in 1947 to .525 in the City League to .786 partway through an Industrial Baseball League season. My own calculations for all the games Chase played in 1934 have him batting .488 in 127 at-bats.29 No statistics were kept for his pitching.

In the absence of official statistics, much of what we know of Chase comes from newspapers and oral histories. One of the recurrent stories of Chase is that over the course of his career he would hold the record for hitting the longest home-run balls in Sarnia, Strathroy, Aylmer, Welland, Milton, and Chatham. Whether these are official records or not, those who saw Chase play are unwavering in their description of him as a fierce competitor. All-Stars scorekeeper Orville Wright commented, “Flat hit one in Chatham I don’t think they’ve found yet. It cleared the center field fence at Stirling Park, [it] went over the trees and a house on Park Street, cleared the road and the houses on the other side and landed in a back yard on Wellington Street.”30 In 1980, King Terrell described Chase’s skills in this way:

“He could run. He was a power hitter. He could hit home runs just about as easy as the rest of us could hit singles and doubles and triples. Because at Stirling Park it didn’t seem like it took him very much of a swing to get a double over [by] the right field fence, or a home run over the center field fence. He was a spray-hitter. That means that you can hit a ball in any park over the field.

Nine times out of ten if he hit a ball south, the ball would be going direct over right field because he was a power hitter. A spray-hitter means that you can spray a ball in the outfield. Because that’s when you don’t know where it’s going to go. He was one of those kinds of guys: you didn’t know where the ball was going to go. It’s the same as his pitching. Because lots of times, Donise would ask him for a fast ball and he’s liable to throw him a curve. And ask him for a curve and he’s liable to throw you a fast ball, which I know all about – his fast balls and his curves – because he darn near killed three of us in one night.”³¹

Virtually every retrospective of the All-Stars’ 1934 victory features commentary like that about the legend of Flat Chase.

With all the talk about Chase’s undeniable talent, the question is always whether he could have played major-league baseball. While we will never know if Chase thought he could have played in the major leagues, everyone who saw him play was convinced he could have had there not been a color barrier. Teammate Don Washington told the Chatham Daily News that “Chase should have been a big league pitcher”32 and King Terrell told an interviewer, “Flat Chase, he could’ve been in the big leagues. There was not a better second baseman around than he was. And he was a good pitcher. God-all knows that there was nobody around in the country that could hit a ball any better or any further than he could.”33 Archie Stirling – frequently referred to as Chatham’s Mr. Baseball – wrote in 1960: “Today if Flat Chase were as good as he was when he first came to Chatham, the Detroit team would pay him thirty thousand dollars to sign with them.”34 Whether Chase could have made it to the big leagues is, of course, conjecture. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we consider the impact of the color barrier on the careers, lives, and legacies of players like Earl “Flat” Chase, and on the ways in which Canadian baseball history is written.

Notes

1 “Interview With Earl Chase Jr. and Shyla Chase,” Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/722; “Interview with Horace Chase,” Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/725.

2 I am grateful for Linda Bunn’s research assistance in locating these notices in the Windsor-Essex County newspapers.

3 The mention of these teams in the Windsor papers might help further what is known about the rich and active Black baseball tradition in the Detroit area in the 1930s, and offer new avenues of inquiry into the ways in which the influence of Negro League baseball may have moved into Canada.

4 Ferguson Jenkins Sr.’s son is Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins Jr.

5 Box scores from the Windsor newspapers show the Hardings and other Chatham players competing at Wigle Park against each other.

6 “R.G. Funs and Stars Will Open Championship Series,” Chatham Daily News, August 24, 1933: 13.

7 “Stars Win Wanless Trophy in Two Straight Games,” Chatham Daily News, October 10, 1933: 8.

8 Jack Calder, “1934 Inaugural Indicates Real Battle for Honors,” Chatham Daily News, May 18, 1934: 11.

9 Calder, “1934 Inaugural Indicates Real Battle for Honors.”

10 Jack Calder, “Braggs Defeated in City Baseball Games Last Night,” Chatham Daily News, June 12, 1934: 11.

11 Jack Calder, “Duns Defeated in a Hard Fought Game Last Evening,” Chatham Daily News, June 21, 1934, section 2: 5.

12 Jack Calder, “Chase to Be on Hill for Chathamites,” Chatham Daily News, July 20, 1934: 11.

13 Jack Calder, “Sarnia Red Sox Beaten at Home in OBAA Contest,” Chatham Daily News, September 10, 1934: 8.

14 Jack Calder, “Stars Begin OBAA Playdowns Thursday,” Chatham Daily News, September 5, 1934: 11.

15 Dan Kelly, “Interview with Wilfred Boomer Harding,” Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/719. Accessed July 15, 2021.

16 Jack Calder, “Stars Will Draw Them,” Chatham Daily News, September 12, 1934: 11.

17 “Interview With Blake and Pat Harding (Part 1),” Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/716.

18 Interview with Kingsley Terrell by Wanda Milburn, Multicultural History Society of Ontario, August 6, 1980.

19 Bill Reddick, “From the Bullpen: Chatham Colored All-Stars,” Chatham Daily News, October 4, 1984: 9.

20 Reddick.

21 Reddick.

22 Interview with Ferguson Jenkins Sr. by Vivian Chavez and Wanda Milburn, Multicultural History Society of Ontario, October 3, 1980.

23 Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars is a website that tells the story of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars. It features oral histories with players’ families, newspaper clippings from the 1934 season, player biographies, and curricular resources for K-12 teachers. Breaking the Colour Barrier is a partnership between the Harding family, the University of Windsor’s Department of History, the Leddy Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship, and the Chatham Sports Hall of Fame. It was generously funded by an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant in 2016-2017.

24 “Interview with Earl Chase Jr. and Shyla Chase.”

25 “Interview With Horace Chase,” Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/725.

26 “Interview with Horace Chase.”

27 “Interview with Horace Chase.”

28 Doug Scurr, Chatham Daily News, June 12, 1946, np.

29 Elsewhere, Chase’s average has been listed as .525 for 1934 but the source for this figure isn’t clear. My calculations are based on every game for which I could find a box score in 1934, including exhibition games, various league games, and playoff games.

30 “Chatham’s First Champs Played the Game for Fun,” London Free Press, October 20, 1967, np.

31 Interview with Kingsley Terrell.

32 Bill Reddick, “’34 Champions Denied Opportunity in Pro Ball,” Chatham Daily News, October 10, 1984: 9.

33 Interview with Kingsley Terrell.

34 Archie Stirling, “A Brief History of Baseball,” in “Official Program: Chatham’s Victoria Day (1960), Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, http://cdigs.uwindsor.ca/BreakingColourBarrier/items/show/957.