Roland Gladu

Roland Gladu was a major sports figure in Quebec for decades. His career as a professional baseball player lasted over 20 years, mainly in the outfield and at first and third base. He played as a pro in five different countries – Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and even Great Britain – and hit home runs in every one of them. Gladu’s big-league action was limited to just 21 games with the Boston Braves in 1944, but he went on to become a scout, signing a number of French-Canadian major leaguers from his home province.

Roland Édouard Gladu was born in Montreal on May 10, 1911. As late as 1993 – the year before Gladu died – the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia was showing his year of birth as 1913. At various points during his career, press articles also portrayed him as two years younger than he really was. He was neither the first nor the last player to shave a couple of years off his age for professional purposes. However, the Canadian census of 1911, which began in June of that year, shows the infant Roland, aged just one month. His baptismal certificate gave his Christian name in full as Joseph Albert Rolland Édouard; the census also had Rolland rather than Roland.

Late in his life Gladu said that he loved every minute of his baseball career – his only regret was that he didn`t stay in school longer. “I had no choice,” he confessed, “I came from a family of nine children and I had to help my father.”i Clovis Gladu was a leather cutter. He and his wife, Albertine (née Crevier), had three children before Roland. The family lived in the Maisonneuve district of Montreal.

Gladu was a left-handed batter who threw right-handed. As an adult, he was 5-feet-8½ inches tall and weighed 185 pounds. It’s little surprise that, growing up in Quebec, he played hockey as a boy; he continued to play as an adult, occasionally as a professional. He began playing baseball in the sandlots of Montreal, then started to play semipro ball as a 17-year-old for a club in Granby, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. The organizer was a man named Homer Cabana, who later became Granby’s mayor. “The statistics of this time have disappeared, but Gladu played well enough to earn a strong local reputation.”ii

Previously published accounts of Gladu’s career are hazy regarding the timeline of his early pro days. Revisiting contemporary newspapers, however, shows that the Montreal Royals of the International League signed Roland (then aged 19) in late September 1930. The Montreal Gazette wrote that he would “be farmed out to a minor league club in 1931, likely Canton, in the Central League, where he will be under the tutelage of [former big-leaguer] Heinie Groh.”iii According to another Gazette article, in August 1932, Gladu played one full game for the Royals in 1930, subbing for regular right fielder Tom Gulley.iv It has not yet been possible to pin down a box score for this game.

As it developed, for the 1931 season Heinie Groh moved from Canton (where he had been player-manager-owner) to Binghamton in the New York-Penn League (where he became player-manager-team president). The Binghamton Press reported that March that Gladu was a new recruit on the roster.v However, the Triplets released Gladu after three weeks. He then had a one-week stint with Johnstown of the Middle Atlantic League; the August 1932 Gazette report also said that he had been sent to Jackson, Mississippi, of the Cotton States League (although substantiation for this is lacking).

There was a common theme in these years: The language barrier cut the Francophone’s experience short. The Gazette wrote, “Though he hit well he failed to make good, mainly through inability to speak English.”vi Gladu later confirmed, “I couldn’t speak English when I started playing baseball in the States. They couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand them. I never had anybody to coach me.”vii Gladu sometimes had trouble fielding the ball – but his hitting was always a strength.

Gladu continued to gain experience in Quebec’s Provincial League, which was then a semipro circuit. His team was sponsored by a Montreal tobacco company, Forest Frères. His second chance with the Royals came in 1932; he had four hits in 17 times at bat, including one home run. Some stories later claimed that the homer came in his first time at bat, but that was embroidering the truth, as previous box scores show. Nonetheless, the hit had its excitement – it was a three-run shot as a pinch-hitter that put the Royals ahead, 6-5. Montreal eventually won that game, the first of a doubleheader on the season’s last day.viii

After the International League season was over, Gladu rejoined Forest Frères for the Provincial League playoffs.ix Several days later, Jean Barrette, sports editor of Le Miroir, a French-language newspaper of Montreal, named Gladu the first baseman on his league All-Star team, calling him the most dangerous slugger in the province.x

Ahead of the 1933 season, Gladu traveled with the Royals to spring training in Orlando, Florida. There the club re-engaged a major-league team, the Philadelphia Athletics, in an ongoing annual exhibition game. The Floridians were mystified to hear Roland and his French-Canadian roommate speaking their native tongue. xi Gladu did not play for Montreal early in the 1933 season, though general manager Frank Shaughnessy considered giving him a shot in June. Shaughnessy – later president of the International League – thought that “the local product, despite his inexperience, [could] hit as well or better than … the regular outfielders.”xii Later that month, Shaughnessy farmed Gladu out to York, a Brooklyn Dodgers affiliate in the New York-Penn League, for seasoning.xiii He got into ten games there and eventually took part in 20 for the Royals.

Gladu joined Richmond of the Piedmont League (Class B) in 1934, hitting .258 in 72 games. That season featured an experiment to convert him into a catcher. He then came home, joining Lachine-Consols of the Provincial League in 1935. Passport trouble was a big factor – he couldn’t get back into the US because he hadn’t kept his documents in order after crossing the border the previous season.xiv That July, reportedly the Boston Red Sox organization was interested in obtaining the Lachine first baseman.xv

Lachine wanted to make Gladu manager for the 1936 season.xvi Instead, a new and unusual opportunity beckoned. During the economic depression of the 1930s, Gladu was recruited to play baseball in London’s West Ham Stadium. (Pro baseball flowered briefly in England during the mid-1930s.) He remained in London through the 1936 and 1937 seasons and had tremendous success as a batter (he also managed the West Ham team). Indeed, a picture of “The Babe Ruth of Canada” at bat is the most prominent feature on the cover of the 2007 book British Baseball and the West Ham Club. Authors Josh Chetwynd and Brian A. Belton devoted extensive coverage, including a separate chapter, to Gladu’s life and career.xvii Another book, The Blokes of Baseball by Harvey Sahker (2011), also provides much detail about this period, during which Roland was joined by his younger brother Eddie.

As a 1938 feature in The Sporting News by Montreal sportswriter Lloyd McGowan noted, Gladu enjoyed his time in England, except for the chilly, damp weather that caused him to wear two sweaters under his baseball shirt most of the time. He traveled around England teaching baseball to British children, and his popularity meant that he played at least one game for the Sheffield Dons in the Yorkshire League in 1937 (that team featured brother Eddie at shortstop). Roland also played hockey in Belgium during the offseasons.xviii

In 1938 Gladu returned to Canada once more. He got another tryout with the Montreal Royals, but manager Rabbit Maranville cut him in April.xix In 1945 another longtime Montreal sportswriter, Dink Carroll, quoted a fellow writer named Harold McNamara, who covered the Royals’ camp in Florida in ’38. “The Rabbit announced that Gladu would never be a ball player, that he couldn’t field and couldn’t even hit. … [He] proceeded to ignore him as studiously as anybody can be ignored. … I always thought he didn’t get a square shake.”xx

Gladu then played for Quebec City, becoming a popular and storied hitter in the Provincial League. He switched to third base in 1940 to accommodate first baseman, player-manager, and former Brooklyn Dodgers star Del Bissonette. He followed the team as it moved from the Provincial League to the Canadian-American League in 1941 – note also that he took over as manager for Bissonette partway through that season.

Starting in 1940, Gladu also faced fellow Montreal native Jean-Pierre Roy, a pitcher whose own long and winding pro career began that year. Roy also appeared briefly in the majors, in 1946. Aged 92 in early 2013, he retained strong memories of Gladu “from the time that I played with him in Montreal, Mexico, and Cuba too.”

Gladu remained with Quebec City in 1942, but he enlisted in the Canadian Army that year. In 1943, with the rank of sergeant, he was player-manager of the baseball team for Military District No. 5, also in Quebec City. The squad included Jean Pusie, a comical hockey defenseman/pro wrestler, and Larry Moquin, also better known as a pro wrestler.xxi Also known as the Garrison Club, they became champion of Quebec’s Provincial Baseball Association that year.xxii Gladu was discharged from the Army in the winter of 1943.

Gladu’s opportunity in the majors came courtesy of Del Bissonette, who had become manager of Hartford in the Eastern League, a farm club of the Boston Braves. Roland had an impressive spring training and made the big club. Boston sportswriter Bill Grimes told Dink Carroll that Gladu hit “with tremendous power to all fields,” adding, “He has as fine a pair of wrists as I’ve seen in a long time. … He’s a very quiet and nice-mannered kid, one you would pull for to make the grade.”xxiii

Gladu made his major-league debut on Opening Day, April 18, 1944. He played third base and batted cleanup for the Boston Braves against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. According to the New York Times, “Roland Gladu, young Boston third-sacker, wearing a neat shiner from a throw that had struck him in the eye during the preliminary exercises, suddenly burst forth with two plays that for a time promised to leave him the hero of the day.

“First, Roland closed the Giant third with a spectacular stab of Johnny Rucker’s low liner just inside the foul line and then, as the first batter in the Boston fourth, Gladu rammed a triple to right center field.”xxiv The Times may have thought Gladu was young because he was a rookie. In fact, he was almost 33 years old when he made his debut.

Bill Voiselle, a right-hander who would win 21 games that year, was the Giants’ pitcher. Gladu struck out his first time at bat. After his fourth-inning triple, he scored on an infield out. The Giants won 2-1.

Two weeks later, on May 3, 1944, Gladu hit his only major-league home run. It came at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn against Fritz Ostermueller of the Dodgers. In 21 games with Boston, Gladu batted .242. He appeared in 18 games in the field, 15 of those at third, and made five errors in 47 chances. Gladu said that a sore arm contributed to his problems in Boston. “I tried to help by pitching batting practice,” he said, “but I wound up with a sore shoulder and could hardly throw the ball.”xxv However, a misadventure in left field on May 24 may well have ended his stay in the majors. In the top of the first at Braves Field, he misplayed opposing pitcher Rip Sewell’s drive into a two-run double, and Pittsburgh scored five runs in the inning. Gladu was lifted after his first turn at bat in the bottom of the first.

The Braves soon optioned Gladu to Hartford, where he was reunited with Del Bissonette. “I wish I had met him when I was younger,” Gladu said. “Del Bissonette was the only one who taught me anything. I had trouble with left-handed curve ball pitchers but Del gave me a few tips and after that I was O.K.”xxvi Roland had no trouble at Hartford. He batted .372, with 155 hits in 119 games, and was runner-up for the batting championship.

After the 1944 season Gladu’s contract was sold by Boston for $10,000 to Montreal, which had become a farm club of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The team also included two other city natives, Jean-Pierre Roy and shortstop Stan Bréard. As the Associated Press wrote in June 1945, “The Montreal Royals now have two good reasons for popularity with their Canadian fans. In addition to being probably the first Montreal club that has boasted three French-Canadian players … the Royals are now leading the International League.”xxvii They went on to win the regular-season pennant but lost the Governor’s Cup championship trophy to Newark in the seventh game of the playoff finals.

The Royals led the IL in attendance in 1945, but several years later the gate had diminished greatly. In 1954 Dink Carroll quoted a fan: “Guys like Roy, Gladu, and Bréard … built up interest in the club. The Royals never drew more than 250,000 a season until they came along. Even after they left, the club continued to draw on the momentum they gave it.”xxviii In 2008 longtime Montreal Expos broadcaster Jacques Doucet added, “They put the seed in the ground for the next generation of major-leaguers from the province, guys like Claude Raymond and Ron Piché. There had been French-American ballplayers in the majors before, but not many French-Canadians.”xxix

Gladu played in 153 games for the Royals in 1945 and set a club record with 204 hits. He was again runner-up for the batting championship with an average of .338 and led the league with 45 doubles. In a feature that August in The Sporting News, Lloyd McGowan described Gladu, then still a bachelor: “Gladu now is almost perfectly bilingual, but he says little. He is a serious player, always in peak condition. He doesn’t know the meaning of ‘brew,’ and smokes very sparingly. [He has a] wide lefthanded batting stance, good right arm, average speed.”xxx

Nearly 70 years later, Jean-Pierre Roy echoed this description almost exactly, but added with a chuckle, “Roland loved gambling – at the racetrack, where it was permissible. He was a very good handicapper for someone who didn’t make a living at it.”

In July Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey took a look at Gladu but decided to leave him in Montreal until the end of the season.xxxi The Dodgers actually purchased the contracts of both Roy and Gladu late that September, but the Canadians didn’t go to Brooklyn because the IL playoffs were still going. When the season ended, Gladu went to Havana, batting .288-4-31 in 233 at-bats for Cienfuegos in the Cuban winter league. One of his teammates was Roy, who said, “I recommended him to the people in Cuba.” Roy remembered, “He used to get up in the morning, get a bunch of Cuban kids, and hit balls to them for an hour, an hour and a half.”

Despite his strong hitting, age was against Gladu. On February 24, 1946, the New York Times quoted Branch Rickey: “Gladu’s case is different from [Luis] Olmo and Roy. Gladu is not, nor will he be, a major league player. He is 32 years old [he was actually nearly 35 by then] and the offer he received was very tempting. I don’t blame him for accepting it.”xxxii

Montreal’s general manager, Mel Jones, also believed that diluted wartime competition was part of Gladu’s success in 1945. On his side, “Gladu was displeased with his [Brooklyn] contract, which just equalled what he made with Montreal last year [1945], including bonuses.”xxxiii The money was more attractive in Mexico, where Jorge Pasquel was trying to bring the Mexican League up to the level of the majors. While major-league players were then earning between $5,000 and $10,000 per year on average, the Mexican League owners offered up to $20,000 to stars. Gladu signed a contract paying him $25,000 over three years.xxxiv

St. Louis Browns shortstop Vern Stephens hit a home run his first time at bat in Mexico but returned to the US when Baseball Commissioner A.B. Chandler threatened to suspend anyone who played in Mexico. Gladu and 12 other players, including catcher Mickey Owen and pitchers Sal Maglie and Max Lanier, were suspended for five years when they remained south of the border.

“Compared to what they were paying in the National League, salaries in Mexico were good,” said Gladu. “But the playing fields in some cities were bad; especially at night. The lights were weak and it was hard to see the ball. Batting against Maglie and Lanier was no picnic,” he said.xxxv

Gladu hit .322 for Nuevo Laredo in 1946, good for fifth in the league, with 4 homers and 62 RBIs. He returned to Cienfuegos in the winter of 1946-47, hitting .245-1-28 in 229 at-bats. Going back to Mexico in 1947, he played for San Luis Potosí. Again he hit .322, with 6 homers and 79 RBIs in 115 games. He tied for the league lead in triples with 13. “He was also very well liked in Mexico,” said Jean-Pierre Roy.

Finally, Gladu played his third and last season in Cuba in 1947-48. He was with the team called “Cuba” in the Liga Nacional, or Players Federation, an “alternative” league featuring ineligible players. (By contrast, the longstanding Cuban Winter League had allowed suspended US players to participate the previous winter.) It was a good season; Gladu won the batting title with a .330 mark (97-for-294), to go with 3 homers and 21 RBIs. However, that league lasted just the one year.

After his Latin American experiences ended – the pay had sharply decreased in Mexico after the Pasquel bubble burst – Gladu returned to Quebec. He was a player-manager for Sherbrooke in the Provincial League from 1948 through 1951. In those days the league was a haven for black and Latin players, as well as ineligibles. “In 1951, we had about eight Cubans and we won the championship,” Gladu said.xxxvi

On September 19, 1951 – just one day after the Athletics had won the Provincial League title – a “spectacular blaze” (as the Associated Press described it) destroyed the Sherbrooke baseball stadium. The loss of the ballpark forced the franchise to become inactive for the 1952 season. Gladu’s playing career ended after a final year as player-manager with Thetford Mines of the Laurentian League in 1952. His star player, Hall of Famer Ray Brown, came along with him from Sherbrooke.xxxvii

Gladu then became a scout for the Cleveland Indians. In September 1953, his family suffered a sad loss when their 4-year-old son, Roger (who had been sickly since birth), died.xxxviii This echoed a previous family tragedy. Roland’s brother Roger, for whom the little boy had been named, died in a fire during the International League playoffs of 1945. He was trying to save some girls trapped in a burning building.xxxix

Starting in 1954, Gladu then moved on to scout for the Milwaukee Braves.xl In 1951, though – even before he’d become an official scout – he’d signed pitcher Georges Maranda for the Braves, then still in Boston. Maranda eventually made it to the majors in 1960. In 1954 Gladu signed pitcher Claude Raymond, who had a successful career with Atlanta, Houston, and the Montreal Expos. Another big-league pitcher from Quebec whom Gladu signed was Ron Piché (1955). In addition, he helped focus the Braves’ attention on other players they had in the Provincial League, such as Humberto Robinson, Carlton Willey, and Ed Charles.xli Plus, as one might expect, he turned up a number of other prospects who did not advance beyond the minors.

Gladu worked for the Cubs for a while in 1957, but The Sporting News showed him as a Milwaukee scout until at least 1963. That July Dink Carroll wrote about how the amateur baseball scene in Quebec was flourishing and attracting scouts from quite a few big-league teams. He quoted two for the New York Yankees, Arthur Dede and Al Todd. Todd – the catcher on Gladu’s 1945 Montreal Royals team – said, “I think Rollie Gladu had something to do with the development around here.”xlii

Gladu remained an active athlete. Though knowledge of other occupations during his last three decades has not surfaced, he apparently remained active in youth sports programs in Montreal into the 1990s.xliii

In late August 1968, a couple of weeks after it was confirmed that the Montreal Expos would be a major-league franchise, there was a story that Gladu would be part of a baseball clinic for children at Jarry Park with Jim Fanning and Jean-Pierre Roy.xliv From that point on, though, Gladu’s name was not associated with the team in any visible capacity. There is a photo in which former big leaguers from Quebec posed for the inauguration of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, and Gladu is the only one not in it. It is not known what may have caused this possible falling-out, or if this was the quiet man’s own choice. Even Roy, who was with the Expos as a broadcaster for many years, could only speculate.

Gladu’s wife was named Mignonne Chamberland; they were married on May 12, 1948. She was born in Laval, near Montreal. Jean-Pierre Roy remembered, “She was very quiet and clean-living, as Roland was. They were a good team.” The Gladus had two surviving sons named Yvan and Denis; one became a chartered accountant; the other, a doctor. They also had a daughter, Christiane.

Gladu was retired and living in Laval, Quebec, when he died of cancer on July 26, 1994, at the age of 83. Alas, his death was not big news in Montreal because he had been out of baseball circles for a long time. In fact, it was barely news at all. None of the city’s papers carried a proper obituary; there was only a tidbit in Le Soleil and Le Journal. Patrick Carpentier, a member of SABR’s Quebec chapter, said, “I think the funeral was also a private affair with only family attending. Furthermore, he is buried in the family plot at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery in Montreal but his name was not engraved on the marker. His sister died after him and her name was. It’s as if Roland Gladu, Quebec’s mightiest ball player, had ceased to exist after the 1960s.”

As of 2012, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame had not inducted Roland Gladu, though one could make a strong case for him both as player and contributor to the game. However, the British Baseball Hall of Fame (established in 2009) inducted Gladu as part of its third class in 2011. And as Jean-Pierre Roy said, “He was a good man and a very good hitter wherever he played. We had a great deal of respect for each other on and off the field.”

This biography was adapted from the chapter “Montreal’s Roland Gladu, A Hitter Ahead of His Time” in SABR member Jim Shearon’s 1994 book “Canada’s Baseball Legends” (Kanata, Ontario: Malin Head Press).

Continued grateful acknowledgment to Jean-Pierre Roy for his memories (telephone interview, January 27, 2013). Thanks also to SABR members Patrick Carpentier and Alexandre Pratt.

Last revised: September 6, 2021 (zp)

Photo Credit

Courtesy of the Boston Braves Historical Association (the BBHA makes no claims as to ownership or public domain status)

Sources

Books

Josh Chetwynd and Brian A. Belton, British Baseball and the West Ham Club (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2007)

Harvey Sahker, The Blokes of Baseball (Dundalk, Ontario: Free Lance Writing Associates Inc., 2011)

The Baseball Encyclopedia (10th edition) (New York: Macmillan, 1993)

Merritt Clifton, Disorganized Baseball, Vol. 1, The Quebec Provincial League (Richford, Vermont: Samisdat Press, 1982)

Jorge S. Figueredo, Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2007)

Pedro Treto Cisneros, ed., Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano (Mexico City: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V., 11th edition, 2011)

Periodicals

Sporting News Official Baseball Guide, 1945-46-47

Internet resources

SABR Québec website, quebec.sabr.org

www.baseball-reference.com

www.hockeydb.com

Canadian census data: automatedgenealogy.com/census11; www.ancestry.ca

Correspondence

Jim Shearon, interview with Roland Gladu in Laval, Quebec, June 1993

Notes