Diamond Dynasty: The 1912-15 Ottawa Senators

The 1912 Ottawa Senators Baseball Team. (City of Ottawa Archives, MG946-3)

 

In the early decades of the twentieth century, baseball was by far the most popular sport in North America. By 1911 about 400 cities in Canada and the United States had professional baseball. But not Ottawa. Ottawa, pop. 87,000, was reportedly the only city of its size north of the Rio Grande without a pro team. That was about to change.

In December 1911 the Canadian League1 awarded a franchise to the Ottawa Baseball Club, Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy, president (as well as part owner, manager, and center fielder). The Peterborough Whitecaps were also added for the 1912 season, making the Canadian an eight-team league and bumping it up, by virtue of the total population it represented—more than 300,000—to Class C.

Over the winter Shaughnessy busied himself laying the groundwork for his new club. The first order of business was to negotiate a deal to play home games in the stadium at Lansdowne Park, 2 1/2 miles south of Parliament Hill. (Upgrades included the removal of a pesky fire hydrant in center field.) Season-ticket prices for 54 home games were set at $25 for grandstand seating and $15 for the bleachers. Single-game prices were set at 25 cents for general admission, 50 cents in the grandstand. The team would play Monday through Saturday.

Sunday was a different story. No one played Sunday ball for money in true blue Ontario. A number of sites on the lawless Quebec side offered to host the Senators on the Sabbath, but Shaughnessy declined. “Ottawas Have Yielded To Wishes Of Better Element. . .” said the Ottawa Citizen2, without specifying exactly what this better element was.

Shaughnessy’s biggest challenge was to fill the Senators’ spiffy new maroon, black, and white uniforms with capable bodies. To that end he tapped into his extensive network of baseball contacts and even took out a few help-wanted ads in the American sporting press. The results were encouraging. “Now that Ottawa is on the ball map, letters are coming in like answers to a patent medicine ad,” said the Ottawa Journal.3

Shaughnessy, however, had previously signed a deal to play for and manage the Fort Wayne Railroaders of the 12-team, Class-C Central League, and its owner insisted he honor the deal. So Shag reluctantly packed up and left for Indiana, leaving veteran second baseman Louie Cook, a University of Illinois engineering grad, in charge.

SHIPWRECK

In April 1912 candidates for a job with the Senators assembled about as far south as the club could afford—Chatham, Ontario. The training regimen called for five hours of practice a day, no booze; smoking was OK.

Dampening the considerable excitement surrounding the upcoming baseball season was the news of an unfolding maritime disaster in the North Atlantic. In one of the great Dewey-Defeats-Truman headlines of all time, the Ottawa Journal reported: “White Star Liner ‘Titanic,’ Largest Vessel Afloat, Crashes into Iceberg; 1300 Passengers Are Safe.”4

For weeks after the papers were filled with dramatic tales of the disaster. By early May people were looking for distraction, were longing for spring and baseball. The Senators broke camp on May 13 and battled a blinding spring snowstorm to get to St. Thomas for their opener. Their first-ever starting pitcher was a big farm kid from Palmyra, Illinois, named Joe McManus. He dropped a 6-4 decision to the hometown Saints.

Ottawa’s opening-day lineup was made up mostly of career minor leaguers, and entirely of American imports, except for right fielder Billy Blake, a Toronto native. There were four youngsters on the team—McManus being one of them—who would eventually play, if ever so briefly, in the major leagues.5 For the rest Class C was about as good as baseball was ever going to get. Which in Ottawa wasn’t bad at all.

The Senators arrived in the capital by train on May 16. The city welcomed their young Americans with a civic luncheon, free tickets to the 1,500-seat Russell Theatre, a visit to the big horse show, and guest privileges at the YMCA. A flag in team colors flew over downtown Sparks Street. “Everyone is talking baseball,” said the Citizen.6

OPENING DAY

Weeks earlier Shaughnessy had chosen Thursday, May 16, which was Ascension Day and therefore a civil service holiday, for the Senators’ home debut. The Ottawa Electric Railway Co. laid on specially decorated street cars. There was a parade of automobiles, a number of Members of Parliament put in an appearance, Mayor Charles Hopewell threw out the first pitch, the band of the Governor General’s Foot Guards played, and the Citizen posted out-of-town scores on big boards in front of the grandstand. Six thousand “fans” (the word still being written in quotation marks) were expected to attend.

But on Ascension Day the rain descended. And kept descending into the weekend. Finally on Saturday the weather cleared enough for the Senators to take the field against the defending champion Berlin Busy Bees.7 Almost 7,000 fans, the biggest crowd in Lansdowne history save for the annual Central Canada Exhibition, jammed the park to watch the locals trounce the Berliners 7-1. In a bold marketing move, the Senators allowed 30 or 40 automobiles to park right on the field.

BASEBALL FEVER

By mid-July thanks mainly to their strong pitching, the Senators were solidly in first place. After his Opening Day loss in St. Thomas, Joe McManus won 14 straight, before finally dropping a 6-5 decision to Hamilton on July 16. After the game he confessed he’d been feeling poorly for a couple of days. A week later it was revealed that he had suffered “a light attack”8 of typhus, a common summer occurrence in Canadian cities of the day. McManus dropped 35 pounds from his 180-pound frame and was done for the season.9

Even without him the Senators kept winning. And on August 17, 1912, 4,500 fans — including the occupants of about 60 motor cars — packed Lansdowne to see the Senators clinch their first Canadian League championship. “There was such an outpouring of buzz-wagons,” reported the Citizen, “that it was necessary to agree on some ground rules and to make many line up on the east end of the field, which had hitherto not been used for that purpose. . . .”10 “Ottawa has gone baseball mad as the result of the team’s success,” the story added.

The Canadian League schedule wrapped up on Labor Day with Ottawa nine games ahead of the second-place Brantford Red Sox. A couple of days later the Journal’s baseball writer penned this classic expression of postseason letdown: “Louis Cook’s Senators have nearly all left town, the pennant will be purchased by the league, labelled ‘Ottawa’ and sent up by parcel post, and the season is ended so far as the city is concerned.”11

Despite a sputtering Canadian economy, a soggy spring, a typhus outbreak, and a pennant race devoid of suspense, the Senators made about $1,000 on the season. Shaughnessy declared the Canadian the most successful minor league on the continent. Although at least 18 circuits across North America had lost teams or folded outright that summer, most observers expressed optimism about the future of the game in the capital. “This is sure a great ball town,” said right-hander Fred Herbert (16-9).12 “It is quite evident,” said the Citizen, “that baseball has come to stay.”13

Some of the players, too. Switch-hitting infielder Artie Schwind, a Fort Wayne boy, said he liked the city so much he was going to make it his permanent home. To that end he landed an offseason job as an electrician with the Ottawa Electric Railway Co. But before he could cinch up his tool belt, Schwind found himself in Boston, playing shortstop for the National League Braves in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. The only player in Class C to be drafted by a major-league club in 1912, Schwind had one hit in two tries and acquitted himself well in the field. That was the only shot he ever got in the big time. A week later he was back in Ottawa, pinching wires for the Electric Railway and probably pinching himself.14

GLITTERING STARS AND A BRAND-NEW SUIT

For spring training in 1913 Shaughnessy, having shelled out a reported $750 to secure his release from the Railroaders, assembled more than 30 returning and prospective Senators in balmy Fort Wayne, where, should he have a position or two to fill, he had ready access to any reject Railroaders. “It is the hardest thing in the world to rebuild a ball team shot to pieces in the… draft. But fortunately we will have a small army of players to choose from,” said Shaughnessy, adding, “There are thousands of glittering stars in the bushes and we may be fortunate to pick up maybe one or two of them.”15

In the summer of 1913 baseball was the hottest sporting ticket in the country. A record 24 Canadian cities fielded professional teams, and even in Ottawa, which had long been a lacrosse town, baseball was king. On Saturdays and holidays most clubs played morning and afternoon contests (no lights, no night ball) and charged separate admissions for each. On Saturday, May 24, for instance, the Senators drew several thousand fans for a morning game against Brantford and another 6,000 in the afternoon. This included the trendy occupants of 52 on-field automobiles—about 10 percent of the cars in the entire city.16 “Some of the most fashionable people in the city are regular patrons of the Ottawa ball club,” noted the Citizen.17

But the Senators closed out May by dropping seven straight, and a frustrated Shaughnessy blew up his club. He suspended one player, made some trades, and re-signed some of the previous season’s Senators who had failed to stick at higher levels. Despite Shag’s best efforts—after 33 games he was batting .427—the revamped Senators were still mired in fifth place by mid-July.

Some fans blamed Shaughnessy’s often abrasive management style, but one player who thrived under it was Edgar “Lefty” Rogers, an Arkansas native acquired from Fort Wayne for $300. In Ottawa, Rogers created a buzz by virtue of being chauffeured to Lansdowne on game days by an attractive redhead in a white roadster—and even more of a buzz for what he did when he got there. Rogers had started as a pitcher but had been converted into an outfielder because of his lively bat. Shaughnessy insisted on using him in both capacities. Behind Shag’s hitting, the pitching of returning right-hander Erwin Renfer, and a double-duty performance by Rogers, the fifth-place Senators took off.

On an early July homestand they won nine of nine to move into second place. On July 30 the Senators beat the Busy Bees 9-5 in Berlin to kick off another winning streak, this one of 13 games. On the August 4 Civic Holiday they took two from Brantford to move into first place. Renfer’s win three days later was his 17th straight and 20th of the season.18

The Senators continued to play winning ball over the final month, but they were unable to shake off the London Tecumsehs. But whenever the Senators absolutely needed a win—as they did going into the final game of the 1913 season—Shag brought Rogers in from left field. And so on Labor Day afternoon with the Canadian League pennant on the line, Lefty took the mound before 7,000 fans at Lansdowne Park and tamed the Whitecaps, 14-2.

The win enabled the Senators to snatch their second straight flag, this time by a single game over London. On the season Rogers, the Senators’ big-game player, won 13 of 17 decisions and recorded a .336 batting average. Senators first baseman and longtime Shag sidekick Frank “Cozy” Dolan also had a big year, batting .358, third best in the league. Center fielder Shaughnessy finished at .340—eighth best—along with two home runs and 37 stolen bases.

THE INTERNATIONAL PASTIME

By 1914, as historian Alan Metcalfe argues, baseball was Canada’s de facto national pastime.19 No other sport was growing as quickly—or as widely. That summer there were 19 Canadian-based professional teams spread across five minor-league circuits. The Canadian League was proving to be one of the more solid baseball ventures on the continent. But baseball, along with everything else, was about to be severely tested by events in Europe.

For the new season two of the Canadian League’s smaller centers, Berlin and Guelph, were replaced by Toronto and Erie, Pennsylvania. With its larger population base the Canadian moved up to Class B, which in those days was three rungs below the major leagues.

Shaughnessy meanwhile faced the annual challenge of piecing together a club mostly of rejects and leftovers from higher classifications. While the Senators trained in Chatham, the skipper made his annual cross-border spring shopping trip. One of the players he came back with was a youngster previously with the Windsor team of the Class D Border League. He was a catcher-turned-pitcher with just 16 mound appearances at any level under his belt and a tabloid headline for a name: Urban Shocker.20 In Ottawa everyone called him Herbie. Herbie Shocker would be the best player the Canadian League ever produced.

For their May 14 home opener, the Senators hosted Canadian baseball legend Knotty Lee‘s fledgling Toronto Beavers in front of 4,500 fans. “Clergymen, politicians, rail road magnates, civil servants, office boys, school children and people of every description were amongst the excited assembly that sat through two hours of rapid fire baseball,” reported the Citizen.21 Royalty, too. The Governor General, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and his 28-year-old daughter, Princess Patricia, of Light Infantry fame,22 watched the game from the royal limo.

Three days later the Senators, tired of sacrificing lucrative weekend dates to the wishes of the capital’s “better element,” played their first-ever Sunday game, across the Ottawa River, in Hull, Quebec. Leading up to the 3 P.M. first pitch, special streetcars departed the Château Laurier every two minutes, and more than 5,000 fans eventually squeezed into Dupuis Park, capacity 4,500. The overflow sat on the grass in front of the grandstand, and cars parked two deep down the left-field line. Toronto won 6-5.

On Saturday, June 27, 1914, the Senators celebrated the raising of the 1913 pennant with a 3-2 win over Hamilton at Lansdowne Park, Shaughnessy, as he had done the previous year, belting the Senators’ first home-field homer of the season to win the game in the bottom of the ninth. Shag’s heroics were reported on page 8 of the Citizen. Buried on page 12 was a dispatch from Sarajevo: “Austrian Heir Apparent and Wife Meet Death at Hands of Young Serb Student May Seriously Affect European Peace.”23

GATHERING CLOUDS

In July, unrelated to the death of the archduke, the Senators went into a tailspin. By mid-month they had fallen far behind arch-rival London, managed by former major-league pitcher and offseason dentist Carl “Doc” Reisling.24 But Shag, being Shag, was not about to roll over. “London’s lead is big,”—it had, in fact, grown to 8 1/2 games, with seven weeks left in the season—”but there’s plenty of time, and I’m confident I can overtake them,” he declared.25 He told the press he was willing to spend $5,000, if that’s what it took to turn his club around.

Skipping a series in Hamilton, Shaughnessy set off, checkbook in hand, on a scouting expedition to Michigan. In Adrian he caught up with Jack Mitchell26, a hotshot 19-year-old shortstop whom the Senators had faced in a spring-training game. Shag went all in. The $1,000 he coughed up for Mitchell was reportedly the most ever paid for an infielder by a Class-B club. But Mitchell more than justified the hefty price tag, solidifying Ottawa’s infield defence and running up a gaudy .344 batting average. As one writer later noted, “This change put reverse English on the playing of the champions, and they inaugurated a winning streak seldom seen in organized baseball.”27

Shaughnessy made another key midseason adjustment. Novice pitcher Herbie Shocker had struggled to find a reliable breaking pitch. Shag suggested he experiment with a spitball. The day after Mitchell’s July 18 debut, Shocker unveiled his spitter in a Sunday game in Hull. He won, and pretty soon scouts from higher leagues were salivating over him. Thanks to the miracle of slippery elm, Shocker was on course to becoming the pitcher who won 187 games for the Yankees and the St. Louis Browns.28

With Mitchell and Shocker leading the way, the Senators went on a tear. On the August civic holiday they took two one-run, extra-inning games from Hamilton. The gap with London now stood at 4½. But excitement over the improved play of the Senators was run over the following day by the real-world news that Canada had joined Britain in declaring war on Germany. Despite the darkening skies in Europe the schedule proceeded without a hiccup, and the Senators kept on winning. Mitchell continued his hot hitting down the stretch, and Shocker dominated, winning four games in a single week in August.

On August 18 Ottawa beat Brantford 8-3 at Lansdowne to close within half a game of the Tecumsehs. For this game the players had a new obstacle to contend with—soldiers camped on the edges of the outfield. “Hits into volunteers went for two bases only,” said one game report.29 The war had become a ground rule.

With a week and a half to go, Ottawa traveled to London for a crucial series. After chasing the Tecumsehs for 57 days, the Senators took three of four games to finally overtake them. But it wasn’t over yet.

LET’S PLAY THREE!

The battle again came down to the final day of the season. Following a remarkable 40-13 run the Senators, with a record of 75-45 (.625), claimed a precarious hold on first place. London, plagued by an inordinate number of rainouts, ties, and the absence of Sunday ball in Ontario, sat at 69-43 (.616), two games but only .009 percentage points behind. What happened next was one of the most bizarre pennant finishes ever, and it was decided as much by long division, meteorology, and subterfuge as baseball.

Both clubs were scheduled to play a pair at home on Labor Day, the Senators against sixth-place Peterborough, the Tecumsehs against fifth-place St. Thomas. A sweep would give Ottawa the pennant no matter what London did. But beyond that, especially with a cold, low-pressure system blanketing the province from Western Ontario to the national capital, things got very cloudy.

An Ottawa split and a London sweep, to consider one possibility, would hand the flag to Ottawa by the slimmest margin in baseball history, .6229 to .6228. On the other hand, a pair of Ottawa losses, coupled with a pair of London wins, would create a virtual tie atop the standings, but hand the pennant to the Tecumsehs on the basis of superior winning percentage, .623 to .615.

The picture got even hazier if the dodgy weather were to wipe out one or both games in either city. And even more so when London manager Doc Reisling hatched a plan to play three games against the Saints on Labor Day, the extra contest ostensibly a makeup for an earlier rainout.30 A third game would provide Reisling with an extra piece in this most intricate of pennant endgames. If the Tecumsehs won three (.626) and the Senators were completely rained out (.625) or lost at least once (.624), London would squeak by.

In London the weather cleared in the morning, and the Tecumsehs beat the Saints 4-1 to move to within a game and a half of the leaders. In Ottawa the showers eased long enough for the Senators to take the field against the Whitecaps. But in the second inning the skies opened up and the tarps were rolled out again. Finally in the early afternoon the rain in the capital subsided. Shaughnessy, knowing he had to win at least one game to guarantee the pennant, sent his groundskeeper out for a 20-gallon can of gasoline. It was sloshed over the soggy infield, and someone tossed a match in to burn off some of the damp. When the smoke cleared the umpire gave the go-ahead, and Shaughnessy’s prize discovery, Herbie Shocker, took the mound on one day’s rest in search of his 20th win of the season. Shocker delivered, and the Senators won 6-2.

Now, with Ottawa’s victory in Game One, three things would have to happen for London to prevail. The rain would have to hold off in both cities, the Tecumsehs would have to beat the Saints for a second and a third time, and Peterborough’s ace, the ex-Phillie Louis Schettler (20-12), would have to shut down the Senators in Game Two in Ottawa. In the end all three conditions were met: no rain, London victories in Games Two and Three, and Schettler’s continued mastery of the Senators – and yet Doc Reisling’s gambit failed.

What happened was this: After a couple of chilly and scoreless innings in Ottawa, Shaughnessy and Whitecaps manager Curley Blount persuaded the umpire to call the game on account of the cold. That snuffed any hopes of London catching the Senators.

“In view … of the fact that Frank Shaughnessy and his Senators have come from behind within four weeks and have overhauled London’s ten game lead, no one will dispute them the honours,” said the Citizen.31 Well, not exactly no one. “Probably the Cold Was in Shaughnessy’s Feet,” said the London Advertiser. “Maybe it was too cold to play ball and maybe it wasn’t, but, at any rate, it is a peculiar fact that the cold was not noticed until after the second game had been started.”32

The London Free Press concurred, complaining about the appearance of “fix up baseball” in Ottawa. The cancellation of Game Two, they surmised, came only “upon the discovery of what a loss to Peterboro [sic] in the second game meant.”33 The Advertiser nonetheless paid Shaughnessy some grudging respect. “Shag is a foxy boy and if you want to win any pennants from him you have to sit up nights and dope out a fancy line of stunts to get ahead of him.”34

Whether the cancellation of the second game was due to Shag’s cunning or simply to a confluence of nasty weather and dumb luck is not known, although it is hard to imagine that the skipper wasn’t fully aware of all the permutations and combinations on that day, and catching a telegraphic whiff of a third game in London, decided to quit while he was ahead.35 Regardless, Shaughnessy and the jubilant Senators adjourned to a hotel to get warm and celebrate. The Shagmen, as the papers called them, had won 42 of their final 55 games to grab a third straight flag for Ottawa.

Shaughnessy himself had another strong season in 1914. In 119 games he batted .289 with 37 stolen bases and a team-leading six homers. But perhaps his most significant contribution to Ottawa’s success was his indomitable personality. “The continued success of this shrewd Irishman smashes all idea of luck,” said one baseball writer. “That commodity might land him a winner once, but when success is spoiled on success there is something in the man himself above ordinary.”36

Baseball, on the other hand, did not have a good season. The editor of Sporting Life designated it “the universal wreck of the minor leagues.”37 Forty-three minor leagues started the year; 36 finished in some form or other. Organized Baseball, involved in a territorial war with the upstart Federal League, had spread itself perilously thin. Too many clubs made too little economic sense, especially in the second year of a North American economic recession.

Despite a nail-biter of a pennant race and a Canadian League monopoly on Sunday ball, attendance at Senators games reportedly took a 40 percent attendance hit over the final month of the season. The club reported a $2,700 loss. Shag’s gamble on baseball in the capital was beginning to look a little less secure.

TO SHREDS

In 1910 there were 52 minor leagues in operation, the most in any year until after the Second World War. By the spring of 1915, the number was down to 32, only 23 of which staggered through the season. A no-frills, bargain-basement, six-team, Class-C Canadian League was one of them. So stripped down were the teams that star pitcher Herbie Shocker was assigned to prepare the diamond for the Senators’ abbreviated spring training in Chatham.

Few, however, paid much attention to the petty compromises of baseball. In the spring of 1915 Canadians of ball playing age were being gassed at Ypres, and the government was contemplating conscription. On May 7, a German U-boat torpedoed the Cunard liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland; 1,193 passengers and crew were killed, including 128 Americans.

The Senators, hobbled by injuries, got off to their usual sluggish start. By the King’s Birthday holiday, June 4, they were mired in fifth place, and for the rest of the month they hovered around .500. But in July they took off. They played at a .705 clip for the rest of the way, leaving 1915 pretenders Hamilton and Guelph in the dust. The season played itself out without much excitement, the Senators eventually stretching their lead to 12½ games over the Maple Leafs of Guelph. “…Ottawa had the championship clinched so early this year that the enthusiasm fell to shreds,” said the Citizen.38 Attendance dropped by half.

A $750 draft fee from the New York Yankees for Herbie Shocker, who had tossed 303 innings and won 19 games, helped the club’s bottom line. But the future of baseball in the capital—and the future of minor-league baseball itself—remained uncertain. Rumors and speculation swirled all fall and winter: Shag would manage Toronto in the International League. Or maybe a team in the upstart Federal League. The Senators would replace Richmond in the International. Or they would join the New York State League. Or maybe there would be another iteration of the Canadian League, which might or might not include Ottawa.

But even professional athletes were not above the European fray. A couple of Ottawa hockey players, including scoring star Harry “Punch” Broadbent, announced they were enlisting. Guelph Maple Leafs pitching ace Bobby Auld, a Toronto boy, announced he, too, would sign up.

FROZEN IN TIME

On Valentine’s Day 1916, the Parliament Buildings burned down. It would serve as an apt metaphor for Ottawa baseball that season. In March, St. Thomas resigned from the Canadian League. The remaining clubs debated the wisdom of carrying on, but the discussion ended when a new battalion, the 207th, moved into Lansdowne Park in April. There was now no place for the perennial champion Senators to play. And with that, the team and the league suspended operations for 1916. It never resumed. The Senators’ peerless record—four pennants in four seasons—remains frozen in time.

Long-time SABR member DAVID McDONALD is a writer, filmmaker and broadcaster with a particular interest in Ottawa baseball history. He has contributed to a number of SABR publications, including Our Game Too, Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings, and The Babe, as well as The Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and SABR’s Bio Project. Other baseball writings have appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, the Globe and Mail, and the Canadian anthology All I Dreamed About Was Baseball. He has also presented papers on left-handed catcher Jack Humphries and on communications guru Marshall McLuhan at the Canadian Baseball History Conference.

 

NOTES

1 The presumptuously named Canadian League operated only in Ontario.

2 “No Sunday Ball to Be Played Here in Canadian League,” Ottawa Citizen, April 23, 1912: 8.

3 “Ottawa Ball Club Sign Up a Star Catcher,” Ottawa Journal, March 2, 1912: 5.

4 Ottawa Journal, April 15, 1912: 1.

5 They were pitchers McManus (Cincinnati Reds, 1913); Fred Herbert (New York Giants, 1915); Erwin Renfer (Detroit Tigers, 1913); and shortstop Artie Schwind (Boston Braves, 1912).

6 “Rousing Reception Now Assured for Members of Ottawa Ball Club,” Ottawa Citizen, May 9, 1912: 8.

7 Formerly the Berlin Green Sox. The city itself was rebranded Kitchener in the midst of World War I.

8 “Expect McManus to Recover Quickly,” Ottawa Journal, July 26, 1912: 5.

9 The following spring, still feeling the lingering effects of his illness, McManus failed in his only big-league audition, with the Cincinnati Reds.

10 “Canadian League Pennant Comes To Ottawa,” Ottawa Citizen. Aug. 19, 1912: 8.

11 “Watch the Race,” Ottawa Journal, September 4, 1912: 4.

12 “Ottawa Baseball Team Disbands, Kind Words for Local Friends,” Ottawa Citizen, September 4, 1912: 8.

13 “Ottawa Didn’t Play Yesterday, All Games Off Because of Rain,” Ottawa Citizen, August 20, 1912: 9.

14 Schwind’s residency in Ottawa was short-lived. In 1913 he landed with San Antonio of the Texas League. He played the next four seasons in Texas.

15 “Ottawa and Brantford Teams Open Local Season Month from Today,” Ottawa Citizen, April 15, 1913: 8. The Senators had lost three key players to higher classifications in the 1912 draft: Schwind (Boston Braves) and pitchers Fred Herbert and Frank Kubat (Toronto Maple Leafs).

16 Later that year Shaughnessy, as he had done when he played and managed in Roanoke, bought into an Ottawa automobile dealership.

17 “Great Pitching Duel Expected at Lansdowne Park Today,” Ottawa Citizen, May 17, 1913: 8.

18 Renfer finished with 21 wins. He was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and joined them in the fall of 1913. After a four-week layoff, he started – and lost – a game against the Washington Senators. That was the extent of his major-league career.

19 Alan Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play: The Emergence of Organized Sport in Canada, 1807-1914 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987).

20 Shocker was born Urbain Jacques Shockcor, in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1890.

21 “Toronto Broke Ottawa’s Winning Streak in First Game of Canadian League Season, Bullock’s Error Paved Way for Defeat,” Ottawa Citizen, May 15, 1914: 8.

22 A Canadian Arrny regiment formed in 1914 and named for Princess Patricia, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. It was the first Canadian infantry unit to serve in France in the First World War.

23 Ottawa Citizen, June 29, 1914: 12.

24 Reisling and Shaughnessy both played with Coatesville/Shamokin in the Tri-State League in 1905.

25 “Ottawas Have Chance to Make Fresh Start Against St. Thomas Team This Afternoon,” Ottawa Citizen, July 16, 1914: 8.

26 Mitchell (born Kmieciak) went by the name Johnny Mitchell during a five-year major-league career, 1921-25.

27 “Champs. Caught London after Stern Chase of 57 Days,” unattributed newspaper clipping, 1914. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

28 Shocker would be the last legal spitballer on the Yankees after the pitch was outlawed in 1920.

29 “Ottawas Scored 8 Runs in Two Innings and Easily Disposed of Brantford,” Ottawa Citizen, August 19, 1914: 8.

30 A triple header was not unprecedented. There had already been two at the major-league level. On September 1, 1890, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Pittsburgh Alleghenies three times on their way to the NL title. On September 7, 1896, the pennant-bound Baltimore Orioles swept a Labor Day triple header from the Louisville Colonels.

31 “Canadian Ball League Pennant Comes to Ottawa; Champions Downed Peterboro and Won Flag Again,” Ottawa Citizen, September 8, 1914: 8.

32 “Probably the Cold Was in Shaughnessy’s Feet,” London Advertiser, September 8, 1914: 7.

33 “London Trounces Saints Three Times but Loses Pennant by Two-Point Margin to Ottawa,” London Free Press, September 8, 1914: 6.

34 “Probably the Cold Was in Shaughnessy’s Feet.”

35 In any event Canadian League president J.P. Fitzgerald, citing an obscure Organized Baseball prohibition against playing more than two games on one day, subsequently ruled that the third game of Doc Reisling’s tripleheader would not count in the standings. Thus the official final standings had Ottawa at 76-45 and London 1 1/2 games back, at 71-43. Despite the alleged prohibition, the Reds and Pirates played a tripleheader on October 2, 1920, that counted in the standings.

36 Unattributed clipping from summer 1915. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

37 M.H. Sexton, “By the Editor of ‘Sporting Life’,” Sporting Life, December 12, 1914: 13.

38 “Hard to Prove Ottawa Broke Limits,” Ottawa Citizen, September 22, 1915: 9.