Spring in Ottawa Taunts. It teases and tantalizes, offering its charms in unexpected bursts, only to pull back its promise with cruel wintry blasts that test endurance and resilience. In January, spring is merely a concept, but as the days come off the calendar, there is cause for hope, perhaps distant, but hope, nonetheless.

There is but one sound, however, that can definitively prove that renewal is at hand. Well, a few sounds actually—the crack of the bat, the pop of the mitt, and the shouts of “let’s turn two.”

It has been thus in the nation’s capital for more than 150 years, even as much of the world thinks of this northern post as a town consumed by hockey, or, intermittently, Canadian football. Baseball’s formal appearance, like early spring, has sometimes come in intermittent bursts, but baseball has been woven into the fabric of the city and, while professional players and teams have come and gone, quality hardball has always been played here, the combatants lionized and celebrated in the local press for years. A more pedestrian quality of ball continues to be played out in sandlots named Hampton (nestled behind a Food Basics), Brewer, Britannia, and Clarington. A parade of pros have come and gone through the years, but the amateurs have consistently kept the love alive.

Just don’t expect to be sliding into second during April, at least without first clearing away the remnants of stubborn, grey snowbanks and other undesirable winter detritus that may litter the basepaths late into the month. In fact, the city in 2024 asked teams to stay off the playing surface of local diamonds until May 15.1

But, oh, it’s worth the wait. History has proven that the wait has always borne fruit in Ottawa. History has also shown that while Montreal and Toronto have hit the big leagues,2 Ottawa is no poor cousin when it comes to homegrown baseball enthusiasm, even though it has never received a promotion from Triple A. Yes, early-season rain and late-season frost were unwelcome features of an Ottawa baseball season, but fans simply endured rainouts in April and May and donned heavy coats for September playoffs. Premiers, prime ministers, future prime ministers, and visiting royalty all turned up for various opening days, and Ottawans embraced their local baseball heroes, even though for much of the twentieth century that embrace was good only Monday-Saturday. Ottawa voters were determined that Sunday was no day for home runs or double plays, or sports of any kind, for that matter.

The city has witnessed extraordinary baseball skill, even if the likes of Bill Metzig, Urban Shocker, Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy, and F.P. Santangelo are today little remembered. Metzig had two major-league hits, filling his stat sheet with a single run scored and batted in,3 but excelled in Ottawa as a player-manager. Shaughnessy was simultaneously player-manager of the Ottawa Senators of the Canadian Baseball League Class-B entry, coached the McGill University football team to a championship, and was the business manager for the Ontario Hockey Association. He hit .340 for the Senators in 19134 and would go on to be president of the International League from 1936 to 1960. Shocker racked up 39 wins in Ottawa in two years before graduating to fame with the New York Yankees and St. Louis Browns, while Santangelo became an icon of the Triple-A Lynx over four years and 347 games, taking the team’s first at-bat in 1993 and scoring its first run, and winning over fans with his blue-collar style of play, becoming the first Lynx player to have his jersey retired.5 When he finally graduated to the parent Montreal Expos in 1996, he finished fourth in Rookie of the Year balloting.6

Baseball in Ottawa got off to a rather rough start, to be sure. The first nine an Ottawa side ever sent over the white lines did not particularly distinguish themselves, falling to a team from Ogdensburg in Upstate New York in 1867 by a count of 141-20.7 The Senators debuted in Ottawa as the first professional team when the Rochester, New York, Eastern League team relocated to the capital midway through the 1898 season and lost their first home game on July 15 by a score of 8-1. Nearly 2,500 enthusiastic fans filled the grandstand, “many of them ladies.”8 But the Senators finished last and decamped from the capital in November of that year, making Ottawa’s first professional foray one that could be counted in weeks. They lost 14 of their final 15 games, despite the efforts of “Quiet” Joe Knight, a .338 hitter from Port Stanley, Ontario, who went to hit .312 for the 1890 Cincinnati Reds and is enshrined in the International League Hall of Fame.9

In 1906, the Northern Independent League, an outlaw circuit which operated outside the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, became a five-team loop with the addition of Ottawa as its only Canadian entrant. Again, the professional experience in the national capital was brief and the Ottawans folded after 34 games, citing debts of at least $5,000, claiming losses of $700 per week.10 Yet fans were able to watch some extremely high caliber baseball with catcher “Red” Murray and center fielder Ray Demmitt leading the way among five future major leaguers on its roster. Murray bolted for the St. Louis Cardinals midseason.11

Another quick exit sparked a local debate: was Ottawa really a lacrosse town, not a baseball town? The debate had fierce adherents on either side, and both sides often competed for field space and playing time. But, perhaps baseball had a leg up when it came to the fanaticism of its hard core “cranks,” who go temporarily insane during the season (but they do recover).12 Still, with two very brief forays into professional baseball both over in a blink, another attempt, this time with the Ottawa Senators of the Canadian League in 1912, was greeted with some skepticism—but not by the local newspaper. “Ottawa Has Never Fallen Down as a Good Baseball ‘Town,’’’ the Ottawa Citizen proclaimed, as it assessed the prospects for the Senators.13

This time the operators had invested $5,000 in the team and expected to spend $2,500 per month, “a big outlay” as the paper noted. But those who pointed to the Eastern and Northern League failures were wasting their energy, the unbylined story protested. Everyone knew Ottawa was a lacrosse town when the 1898 Senators moseyed into town from Rochester, but still baseball drew well. The author argued the Ottawa outlaw team was a victim of incompetent management that couldn’t draw crowds on the road. This time, they would not have to pay any player more than $300, compared to the outrageous $700 in salaries in the Independent League and besides “there is a big baseball boom in Ottawa just now and the city is far more advanced in a sporting sense than it was five years ago.”14

Hopes were high. Thousands were expected to attend the Canadian League opener in 1912, with fireworks and an automobile parade scheduled, and the players were invited to a theatre opening, a horse show and a civic lunch, all part of Ottawa’s baseball “epidemic.”15 “I have been in professional baseball nine years and it has never been my good fortune to come in contact with such a gentlemanly lot of players,” manager Louie Cook declared of his Class-D squad on the eve of the opener in St. Thomas, Ontario.16 Whether it was their gentlemanly demeanor or their diamond skills, Cook was correct. This iteration of the Senators went 63-35 in its first year and only got better from there during its four-year run, winning four championships, even after the league graduated to Class-B status in 1914.

Such was the popularity of the Senators that Opening Day 1914 was attended by Prime Minister Robert Borden and the former prime minister Wilfrid Laurier. Their season opener in St. Thomas, Ontario, was attended by the Duke of Connaught.17 The Senators were led by their dominant spitballer Urban Shocker who won 39 games over the 1914-15 seasons before joining the New York Yankees and becoming an elite major-league pitcher who won 27 games in 1921 for the St. Louis Browns and became a member of two Yankees World Series champions, including the legendary 1927 team. He did not pitch in that World Series, but he won 18 games for the team while pitching through serious health concerns and tragically he died of heart disease the following year at the age of 37.

The 1914 season had been clouded by war and the Senators’ exploits were eclipsed by events of more mortal foreboding. A scaled-back league operated in 1915 and the Senators easily won their fourth consecutive pennant but when the 1916 league was suspended during World War I, the league, and that iteration of the Senators, never operated again.

In the ensuing years, professional baseball was played in Ottawa by teams called (again) the Senators (1922 Class B) and the Canadiens (with almost all home games played in Montreal, 192318), the Ottawa-Hull Senators of the Quebec-Ontario-Vermont League (1924), again the Senators of the Canadian-American League (1936), the Braves (1937-38), again the Senators (1939), and the Ottawa-Ogdensburg (New York) Senators in the 1940 Can-Am League.

Success was often elusive. The 1936 team had fallen $4,500 in the red and the team had to be disbanded on the account of the players’ hefty salaries, said manager Clair Forster.19 Forster scouted and signed 15 players and kept the former Senators in the Canadian-American League, now reconstituted as the Braves, and their first workout of the season, on May 3, 1937 was attended by a couple hundred curious onlookers.20 They didn’t draw much more than that during the season, an average of 298 per game to see the Braves finish last with a record of 32-75. The following year, they went 38-83 and entertained 410 per game (at 30 cents per adult admission, tax included).21 As many as 1,500 attended a late May doubleheader, but the Braves were shut out twice by Oswego dropping to last place and the newspaper predicted a swift drop off in attendance if the team could not turn things around. They couldn’t.22

By December of 1939, the owners of the Ottawa entrant in the Canadian-American League were preparing to move the team to Oneonta, New York, for play the following season. Although they promised to protect the Ottawa “identity” in the league and potentially play a handful of 1940 games there, they cited a lack of playing grounds in Ottawa, the “international situation,” and the exchange rate as reasons for the move.23 The plan was further revised to split games between Ottawa and Ogdensburg, New York, and the team stormed to the pennant, but drew only 718 per game in Ottawa, playing in a Lansdowne Park without lights.24 War eventually intervened and instead of baseball, Lansdowne Park was needed as a drill grounds for Canadian soldiers as World War II interrupted baseball in the nation’s capital.

In 1947, local sports promoter Tommy Gorman decided it was time for a return to professional baseball in Ottawa, this time a franchise in the Border League, a short run marked by success on the field and huge popularity in the city. The first-year Nationals were led by manager Paul Dean, the former St. Louis “fireball flinger” who even made a return to the mound for the Senators on June 4, 1947 against the Ogdensburg Maples.25 His debut drew plenty of advance skepticism, but he threw six innings and gave up four runs (only one earned) on four hits, but left trailing 4-0 before the Nationals rallied twice, in the bottom of the ninth and 10th, to pull out a 7-5 victory in “probably the most dramatic finish ever witnessed in local baseball.”26 Some 4,000 fans attended the game at Lansdowne Park. Dean had burst on to the major-league scene with back-to-back 19-win seasons before he was 23. At the age of 21, he threw a no-hitter and won two World Series games. He would, however, manage only 12 more wins and be out of baseball by the age of 30. In their prime, Dean, known as “Daffy,” a moniker he detested, teamed with renowned brother “Dizzy” to create one of the most famous brother acts of the day. They took their act to vaudeville and starred in a movie (playing themselves) with Shemp Howard, who would go on to fame with The Three Stooges.27

Thirteen years before his arrival in Ottawa, Paul Dean reminded reporters of 1934 when he won 20 games for the St. Louis Cardinals (he exaggerated his total by one) and his brother won 30. Dean’s squad won its opener 6-3 over the Ogdensburg Maples,28 and never really looked back, but Dean decided he had to return to Little Rock, Arkansas, in September (with the Nationals in a tense playoff tussle with the Maples) because of business concerns – according to the team, at least. As Gorman put it, Dean was “anxious to return to his home where he had trouble over his business interests that had been turned over to another individual for management.”29

Second baseman Bill Metzig, the on-field leader of the team, deemed Dean “a swell guy,” who might return the following season. But Metzig was now leading the team on and off the field and he was speaking after the Nationals won the Border League championship in Dean’s absence – and before signing a ball for the reporter.30 According to Dean’s SABR biography, however, his departure was more likely tied to editorial carping in the Ottawa newspaper about whether Lansdowne Park should be used for professional baseball. “You-all can’t run a ballclub with opposition like that from the editorial page,” he told The Sporting News.31 Indeed, debate over the use of Lansdowne Park as a venue for a pro team of U.S. players, as opposed to its use as a recreation center for amateur athletes, had played out on the editorial pages and at city council all season long. Days before Dean departed to tend to his Arkansas “business ventures,” the Ottawa Citizen had weighed in, saying professional baseball should not be played at Lansdowne. “Baseball is a popular game and there is every reason why professional baseball should be played here,” its editorialists said. “But professional ball should not be allowed to monopolize the one, big city-owned park to the virtual exclusion of the thousands of amateurs – Ottawa’s younger citizens – who could make far beneficial use of it. ‘Pro’ ball is fine – in its place. But its place is some stadium other than Lansdowne.”32 The editorial might have seemed at odds with the popularity of the team that played out of Lansdowne, but the use of that park, its condition, and its use on Sunday was an issue through consecutive iterations of professional baseball in Ottawa.

Dean’s return to Little Rock ushered in the managerial era of Metzig, another Little Rock refugee. He was no returning major-league star, but his performance in Ottawa as player-manager was astonishing. As a major leaguer, Metzig, a late-season call-up to a woeful Chicago White Sox squad that finished seventh in the eight-team American League, managed two hits and a single run batted in over five games and 17 plate appearances in 1944. His debut on September 19 of that year resulted in an 0-4 with two strikeouts against Philadelphia A’s pitchers Jesse Flores and Carl Scheib. But as manager of the Nationals, who became known as “the Metzigmen,” from 1948-50 he won 228 games and lost only 156, finishing first twice and second once, although a league championship eluded him. In four years with the Nationals, including three as player-manager, he never hit below .317 and twice drove in more than 100 runs. He also became a man about town, hobnobbing with a young Frank Sinatra, discussing the prospects for the New York Giants and receiving regrets from “The Voice” that he couldn’t stay in town to watch Metzig’s boys on the diamond.33

His squad was boosted by Doug Harvey, the hockey hall-of-famer, who in 1949 led the Border League in batting average, runs, and RBIs and ultimately chose the rink over the diamond, turning down a professional offer from the Boston Braves.34 The 1950 team had to play through the tragedy of the death in a car crash of 23-year-old Bob Larkin in July of that year. Larkin was traveling back to Ottawa from Watertown, New York, with four teammates when an army vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road hit their car.35 It injured four other Nats, the team had to endure the usual 15-game road trip while the Central Canada Exhibition took over their Lansdowne Park home, and Metzig still steered them to the pennant on the final day of the season. “It is a remarkable team achievement and Metzig, the bespectacled chap who doubles as manager and second baseman, is entitled to orchards for a job well done,” enthused Jack Koffman of the Citizen.36 The team drew more than 100,000 fans that year, but it was to be the Border League swan song in the capital. Better days were ahead, though. Baseball at the Triple-A level was coming back to Ottawa for the first time since 1898.

The Border League Nationals moved to Cornwall, Ontario (quickly leading to the demise of the league), and the Jersey City Giants were headed to the capital to become the Ottawa Giants of the International League. Poor attendance in Jersey City was blamed on TV. Too many major-league games being beamed in from New York kept fans out of the park, something that was not expected to be a problem in Ottawa. Distractions were fewer in the capital and TV was not yet “underway” in Canada, as the Citizen explained, and when it arrives, Ottawa will be out of range of any American stations.37

Ottawa typically showed its love for its Triple-A orphans, with 7,469 pouring through the Lansdowne Park turnstiles on opening day. It had been set back a day by rain, of course, but the faithful were there to marvel at the new electric scoreboard and watch External Affairs Minister (and future Prime Minister) Lester Pearson bloop a foul down the right-field line on a pitch by Ottawa Mayor Grenville Goodwin in an unorthodox opening ceremony as the Giants beat the Springfield Cubs 5-3.38 But the love was not fully returned by the parent New York Giants who provided Ottawa with a light-hitting, lackluster squad that escaped the basement that year by a scant half-game. The Giants lavished much more attention on their other Triple-A affiliate, the Minneapolis Millers, where they sent a 19-year-old Willie Mays in 1951.39 Mere weeks after opening day, rumors began circulating that the Giants would pull out of Ottawa and consolidate their top farm team in Minnesota, part of a trend of such contraction at the minor-league level already underway. When the Giants finally cut ties, they complained about the facilities at Lansdowne (inferior lighting) and a ban on Sunday baseball that had hampered Ottawa baseball entrants for years.40

With the Ottawa franchise rumored to be headed to Newark, New Jersey, capital baseball fans were thrown a lifeline when the Giants team was purchased by the American League Philadelphia Athletics. The A’s vowed stability, a competitive team in 1952 and even promised fans that, unlike the Giants, they would leave top performers on the Ottawa squad for the enjoyment of fans all season long. “We’re not here on a fly-by-night proposition,” promised Philadelphia general manager Arthur Ehlers.41 The best the “Little A’s” could do was to clinch seventh place in the eight-team league on the final day of the season, but not before police charged the team with illegally running a lottery in a “pot of gold” promotion in which an unsuspecting 18-year-old girl carted away an estimated $350 in nickels, a fitting capper on a disappointing season.42 At year’s end, the Athletics also let it be known they hoped Ottawans voted to allow Sunday sports in an upcoming vote, so the home team would not have to travel to play on Sundays for another season. But Ottawa voters had other ideas, decisively backing a Sunday sports ban in a December plebiscite, an ongoing obstacle and portent of things to come for professional baseball in the nation’s capital.43

The following year was no better for the A’s and by 1954 attendance plummeted as the team staggered to a record of 58-96. In 1952 the A’s had drawn 153,152 fans.44 In 1954 they drew 93,982.45 The club’s future was indeed clouded from early in the season. “Toronto sports writers have expressed the opinion that Ottawa fans must be the keenest in America to total approximately 120,000 for the season with a trailing team,” wrote the columnist Tommy Shields.46 (Shields inflated the attendance in his column). But there were larger issues out of Ottawa’s control. The parent A’s packed up and moved to Kansas City, Missouri,47 and after persistent rumors that the “Little A’s’’ were headed to Miami, the new Kansas City operation, citing the lack of Sunday baseball and poor conditions at Lansdowne Park, announced the Ottawa Athletics were headed to Columbus, Ohio. Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitton dismissed complaints about lack of Sunday baseball and its role in the demise of professional baseball in her city, saying the Athletics had second-rate players who couldn’t play any better on a Sunday than a weekday.48

It would take 39 long years, and a much more supportive mayor, Jim Durrell49, but Triple-A baseball finally returned in the name of the Lynx on April 17, 1993, and, of course, once more the Ottawa reception was rapturous. A capacity crowd of 10,332 packed newly-built (and not totally finished) JetForm Stadium, this time a park with good lighting that would open its gates on a Sunday.50 Some things never changed. It rained. Ottawa loved their team and set an eye-popping International League attendance record of 674,258.51 And, like every other Triple-A franchise, the Lynx eventually departed, on September 3, 2007, when 7,468 bid the team adieu. It had survived much longer than any other baseball franchise in the nation’s capital. It was a beautiful Labor Day afternoon. For once, no one shivered at a September Ottawa baseball game. As the headline read, “Another one bites the dust.”52

Soon to follow were teams with names like Voyageurs (nee Rapidz), Fat Cats, Champions, and Titans, but the spirit of baseball in Ottawa did not ebb and flow with its visiting pros. It never wavered on its ball diamonds and sandlots, or wherever some white chalk could mark the batter’s box and the foul lines.

Amateur baseball in Ottawa featured everything from excellence to “scandals.” One squad in the nation’s capital which began in 1882 before disbanding in 1887 never suffered the agony of defeat, holding the Central Canada title and vanquishing all challengers from northern New York state over the five years, at least based on the memories shared by fans years later. All players were Ottawans, except one Toronto interloper – the catcher Sam Reid – and included third baseman Billy Kehoe, who was known nationally for his football skills. Second baseman Dick Wheatley was an acrobat of some skill who thrilled his fans with a handspring as he took the field before each game (an early-day Ozzie Smith, it would seem) and road trips and equipment were financed by a passing of the hat to spectators at games. It was an era, a letter writer told the Citizen, “when good fellows got together and played games in a clean and manly way for the fun that was in it and the athletic fame of the home town.”53

In 1920, the city’s “baseball scandal,” more properly classified as a misunderstanding, erupted over the true recipient of the Lyall Cup, presented by William Lyall of the athletic association which bore his name. His team won the 1919 cup and held onto it as the league disbanded. But a rival league had not disbanded and the cup had been played for and won by the Strathcona Club. The league demanded the cup be presented to Strathcona and the dispute had led to county court while a wise Judge Gunn ruled in favor of the rival league, calling for cool heads on both sides and giving thanks that no money was found under the pillows of any of the disputants.54

And what about that bitter rivalry in the Senior League of 1925 between Montagnard and the Rideau Aquatic Club who met for the best-of-five final at Lansdowne Park in August of that year? It featured a match-up of star center fielders, the Montagnards’ Clyde Moran, who hit a lusty .571 on the season and was deemed “one of the finest judges of fly balls in the city,” and his counterpart Bert McInenly of the Rideaus, who similarly played errorless ball on the season and showcased his burning speed. But despite the hype for this heavyweight battle, the newspaper account of the day somewhat grudgingly conceded the series would end a “hard struggle” for a league that dealt with diminishing attendance – but always managed to complete their games.55 Rosters in this era were perpetually in flux when life intruded. A star pitcher might choose pro hockey, a slugger might move to the gridiron, and love for a woman might move a shortstop to another town. But some teams lost stalwarts to the pro wrestling circuit, or to the railway.56

But the constant thread to Ottawa’s baseball history are the sandlots. These leagues were populated by illustrious team names like Kerwin Realty, a number of local pizzerias, even the Slide Rulers (yes, the Slide Rulers) and the bitter rivalry between teams sponsored by two competing Westboro pubs, Whispers and Puzzles, would usually come to a dramatic climax in a late September showdown. This was the league where the home-run hitter had to retrieve the ball after his home-run trot, sometimes competing with an off-leash dog, where the definition of sheer terror occasionally awaited hitter, catcher, and umpire, all of whom would have to dive for cover as the automatic Hampton Park lights went off at 11 P.M. with a fastball in mid-route.

These were the leagues where after three consecutive home runs pinged off the roof of the change hut in the playground far beyond the left-field fence at Hampton, the little lefty hurler in the subsequent mound visit barked that the outfielders had to play deeper. There was the autumn night at Brewer Park when the veteran pitcher took a comebacker off the face on a poorly-lit diamond, spit out a couple of teeth and suggested infielders tending to his well-being get their asses back to their position and mind their own business. It was the league where a second baseman could be a national television correspondent, preparing a piece on time management, who brought a film and sound crew out to film him and the shortstop working on double plays one evening, and when that keystone duo glanced at their wide-eyed opponents watching the film crew at its work, they knew they had them, at least that night. Those Whispers-Puzzles games were never immortalized in the public prints like the Montagnard-Rideau tilts, but they took no back seat in intensity.

Ottawa, a lacrosse town, you say? Today, it is to laugh. Ottawa, a northern outpost where hockey rules? The evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Urban Shocker could have told you that.

TIM HARPER interspersed baseball coverage with a long career as a political reporter at the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star, reporting on the Montreal Expos, the Toronto Blue Jays and the birth of the Washington Nationals, successor to his beloved Expos. He covered postseason series in New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Kansas City and traveled to the Dominican Republic to chronicle the roots of Dominican stars for the Jays. Labour strife book-ended his baseball writing, beginning with a trip to West Palm Beach to cover the Expos’ training camp for the second half of the 1981 season divided by a strike, then becoming the Star’s Jays beat writer in 1994 when he was dealt the ultimate bad hop—the premature end of the season and the cancellation of that year’s World Series due to a players’ strike. Tim lives in Toronto.

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SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-Reference.com.

NOTES

1 City of Ottawa press release: https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/facilities/outdoor-recreation.

2 The Montreal Expos were in the National League from 1969 to 2004 and the Toronto Blue Jays have been in the American League since 1977. Ottawa has been home to Triple-A (or equivalent) franchises three times: 1898, 1951-1954, and 1993-2007. The 1898 team was Class A, but that was the highest minor-league level at the time.

3 “William Metzig,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/metziwi01.shtml. Accessed February 26, 2024.

4 “Who’s Who on Ottawa team of 1914, Senators Strong in Every Department,” Ottawa Citizen, May 13, 1914: 9.

5 Wayne Scanlan, “Lynx Pay Homage to Saint,” Ottawa Citizen, June 9, 1998: 26.

6 Associated Press, “Hollandsworth Adds To Dodgers’ Top Rookie Roll,” Ottawa Citizen, November 7, 1996: 30.

7 Daily Journal, Ogdensburg, New York, August 31, 1867: 3.

8 “Lost the First,” Ottawa Journal, July 16, 1898: 6.

9 “Ottawa Wanderers,” Baseball Reference Bullpen, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Ottawa_Wanderers. Accessed March 4, 2024.

10 “Baseball Club Is Disbanded,” Ottawa Citizen, August 21, 1906: 8.

11 Gary Belleville, “July 12, 1906: Frank Shaughnessy Leads Ottawa to Victory in outlaw Northern Independent League,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-12-1906-frank-shaughnessy-leads-ottawa-to-victory-in-outlaw-northern-independent-league/, accessed February 26, 2024.

12 Hugh S. Fullerton, “Baseball Fans Usually Crazy,” Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 1906: 17.

13 “Ottawa Has Never Fallen Down as a Good Baseball ‘Town’,” Ottawa Citizen, May 4, 1912: 9.

14 “Ottawa Has Never Fallen Down as a Good Baseball ‘Town’.”

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

16 “Rousing Reception Now Assured for Members of Ottawa Ball Club.”

17 “Duke of Connaught Will Likely Attend Opening of Canadian League Season,” Ottawa Citizen, May 1, 1914: 8.

18 Gary Belleville, “May 24, 1922: Ottawa Senators’ Fred Frankhouse tosses 14-inning complete-game win over Trois-Rivières,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/may-24-1922-ottawa-senators-fred-frankhouse-tosses-14-inning-complete-game-win-over-trois-rivieres/, accessed July 9, 2024.

19 “Manager Forster Replies to Larry Gardner’s Letter,” Letter to the Editor, Ottawa Citizen, June 17, 1937: 11.

20 “Fifteen Ball Players Attend Ottawa Braves’ First Workout,” Ottawa Citizen, May 4, 1937: 11.

21 Statscrew.com, https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/leaders/t-ob13563, accessed April 11, 2024.

22 Tommy Shields, “Something Wrong,” Ottawa Citizen, May 30, 1938, 10.

23 “Ottawa Club Retains Identity in Canadian-American League,” Ottawa Citizen, December 13, 1939, 10.

24 “Senators Move to Amsterdam After Monday Game Postponed,” Ottawa Journal, September 10, 1940, 17.

25 “Here Comes Paul!” Ottawa Citizen, June 7, 1947: 22.

26 Tommy Shields, “Homers By Metzig and Riley Win Thriller,” Ottawa Citizen, June 9, 1947, 18.

27 Paul Geisler Jr., “Paul Dean,” SABR Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/paul-dean/, accessed April 13, 2024.

28 Tommy Shields, “Nationals Open With 6-3 Victory,” Ottawa Citizen, May 15, 1947: 23.

29 “Dean Leaves, Metzig Boss,” Ottawa Citizen, September 24, 1947: 18.

30 Don Mackintosh, “Nationals Win Border Baseball Championship,” Ottawa Citizen, September 25, 1947: 22.

31 Austin F. Cross, “Dean’s Run-Out During Playoffs at Ottawa Laid to Editorial Rap,” The Sporting News, October 22, 1947: 25.

32 “Baseball – In Its Place,” Ottawa Citizen, September 10, 1947: 30.

33 Jack Koffman, “Joining the Sinatra Club,” Ottawa Citizen, July 9, 1949: 14.

34 Harvey’s NHL career spanned three decades. He was seven times voted the league’s top defenseman and he won six Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1973.

35 “Bob Larkin’s Tragic Death Big Shock to Baseball Fans,” Ottawa Citizen, July 31, 1950: 1.

36 Jack Koffman, “A Thrilling Baseball Jamboree,” Ottawa Citizen, September 9, 1950: 20.

37 Canadian Press, “Ottawa Gets Jersey Baseball Rights,” Ottawa Citizen, December 6, 1950: 1.

38 Gordon Ryan, “Giants ‘At Home’ on Lansdowne Diamond,” Ottawa Journal, April 27, 1951: 26.

39 Mays did not stay in Minneapolis for long, getting the call to the parent Giants after only 35 games in Minnesota, during which time he hit .477.

40 “New York Giants Cut Ottawa Link,” Ottawa Citizen, November 9, 1951: 1.

41 Jack Koffman, “A’s General Manager Says ‘We’ll Treat You Right,’” Ottawa Citizen, February 6, 1952: 9.

42 “A’s Face Lottery Charge,” Ottawa Citizen, September 3, 1952: 1.

43 “Mayor Whitton Returned in Sensational Finish, Sunday Sports Plebiscite Decisively Rejected,” Ottawa Citizen, December 2, 1952: 17.

44 statscrew.com, https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/roster/t-oa13562/y-1952, accessed May 14, 2024.

45 “1954 Ottawa Athletics,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/team.cgi?id=1d4d98ab, accessed May 14, 2024.

46 Tommy Shields, “’Round and About,” Ottawa Citizen, September 14, 1954: 23.

47 The Athletics had been in Philadelphia since 1901. The Kansas City Athletics later moved to Oakland, California in 1967.

48 Canadian Press, “Triple-A Ball Club Gone,” Ottawa Citizen, January 8, 1955: 22. Charlotte Whitton was appointed mayor in 1951 upon the death of Grenville Goodwin, then won the election in 1952 and served until 1964. She was the first female mayor of a major Canadian city, a woman known for her flamboyant and bombastic style and one who faced charges of racism and anti-Semitism.

49 Jim Durrell was mayor of Ottawa from 1985-1991 and was a huge booster of Ottawa sports, playing a leading role in landing the International League Ottawa Lynx and the NHL Ottawa Senators for the city.

50 Ken Warren, “Here’s the Pitch . . . And Baseball’s Return is a Hit,” Ottawa Citizen, April 18, 1993: 13.

51 Ken Warren, “Backtracking the Lynx,” Ottawa Citizen, September 14, 1993: 23.

52 Wayne Scanlan, “Another One Bites the Dust,” Ottawa Citizen, September 4, 2007: 13.

53 Anonymous letters to the editor, “A Real Ball Team,” Ottawa Citizen, October 12, 1921: 16 and “1883 Game Recalled,” Ottawa Citizen, October 15, 1921: 20.

54 “No Money Was Found Under the Pillows,” Ottawa Citizen, November 12, 1920: 1.

55 “Montagnards and Rideaus Start Championship Series Wednesday,” Ottawa Citizen, August 4, 1925: 7.

56 “District Baseball Delegates to Meet at Windsor Hotel for Annual Meeting,” Ottawa Citizen, April 28, 1928: 10.

It was a time of hopes and dreams. When the Ottawa Lynx played their first home game on April 17, 1993, baseball was on the ascendancy in Canada. The Toronto Blue Jays had just won the first of two consecutive World Series. The Montreal Expos, the parent team of the fledgling Lynx, were climbing the standings, a year away from having the best team and the best record in baseball.

For the players arriving in Ottawa that spring, it was less about the launch of a franchise and more the hopeful start of a new season and the penultimate step to stardom. A Triple-A prospect is always only an injury, a trade, or a prolonged slump by a major leaguer away from a phone call and a ticket to The Show. Future major leaguers including Matt Stairs and Tim Laker arrived in Ottawa with a sense that their moment had almost arrived. A few solid months in Ottawa and they would soon be with the Expos.

For the fans, it was a new chapter in a love affair with baseball and the Expos. For a generation, busloads of residents had made regular trips to Jarry Park and Olympic Stadium to watch Rusty Staub, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and Tim Raines. For Ottawa to not only have a Triple-A team but to affiliate with the Expos was perceived as nothing short of a match made in baseball heaven. Ottawa fans eagerly embraced the chance to follow the Expos of tomorrow and cast eyes on visiting prospects, including future Hall-of-Famers from Derek Jeter to Jim Thome, to join the fraternity of professional baseball towns, to relish spring and summer evenings in a brand-new ballpark.

And for a 24-year-old aspiring broadcaster, it was a dream come true. Raised on the voices of Dave Van Horne and Duke Snider carried over the airwaves and onto the portable radio I kept under my pillow and brought to my grandparents’ house for Sunday afternoon games, I was desperate to take a spot at the microphone and spin my own lyrical tales of green grass and fresh young faces, of stolen summer nights and stolen bases. I auditioned for and earned a spot on the part-time broadcast team, announcing games on both radio and television.

The arrival of the Triple-A Lynx was a new beginning, but also the continuation of a story of professional baseball in Ottawa dating back to the nineteenth century. In 1898, Ottawa played in the Eastern League. The Ottawa Senators existed in a variety of forms in the first half of the twentieth century. Ottawa had a stint in the International League in the 1950s, as affiliates of the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics playing at Lansdowne Park.

But nothing matched the excitement of the arrival of the Lynx. Though it ended in a semifinal loss and not a championship, the inaugural season was close to perfect. Dozens of games were sold out as Ottawa broke a decades-old International League attendance record. Large groups of fans gathered in the picnic area down the left-field line or watched from the restaurant next to the press box. A local country musician, Gail Gavan, recorded the team’s theme song, “The Lynx Are on the Prowl.” The field was immaculate, considered one of the best-maintained in the minors. The crowds welcomed a new mascot, Lenny the Lynx, a cat with an attitude. In between innings, the umpires had water delivered in a tiny replica of an Ottawa Citizen newspaper truck.

The team was a delight to follow. Within a few weeks of opening day there was a combined no-hitter. Flashy outfielders Cliff Floyd and Rondell White were called up from Double A. A fast-working 22-year-old left-hander from Illinois named Kirk Rueter arrived en route to a 13-year career in the majors. Curtis Pride won the hearts of fans with his compelling story of perseverance; when the minor-league season ended, he became the first deaf player in almost half a century to play in the big leagues.

And of course, there was the ultimate fan favorite, F.P. Santangelo. Santangelo was scrappy and energetic, played multiple positions, gave a great interview, and appeared in all but a handful of games for the Lynx. And when Lenny the Lynx was officially introduced, he stole the mascot’s ATV and drove it around the warning track.

Such was the magic of Triple-A baseball in Ottawa in 1993. It was light, it was fun, it was entertaining. It was everything that minor-league baseball promised to be. It filled the long spring and summer nights while Ottawa’s main professional sports franchise, the NHL’s Senators, were still losing like an expansion team and a few years away from extending their season beyond the first week of April. Ottawa became the darling of the International League.

Little did we know that the magical summer of 1993 was the crescendo rather than the opening act. The following August, the players’ strike ended not only the finest season in Expos history, it precipitated the decline and eventual demise of the franchise and with it a downward spiral in interest in the sport in Eastern Canada. The Expos went from World Series favorites to an abandoned, ownerless franchise that would eventually play some of its games in Puerto Rico. The Lynx went from hosting superstars such as Larry Walker and Moises Alou at their annual exhibition game to being joined at the hip with the worst franchise in professional sports.

After the record-setting inaugural season, the attendance for the Lynx declined steadily. At first, it seemed like a normal rationalization after the honeymoon of the first season. But the free fall never stopped. An anemic Canadian dollar didn’t help the business model, with Ottawa and other minor-league clubs north of the border having to pay most of their expenses in US funds.

Before the team’s fateful destiny became apparent, there were a few more shining moments. For the final few weeks of the 1994 season, with no major-league games to broadcast, the baseball world’s attention shifted to the minors and Van Horne covered the Lynx nightly along with his latest broadcast partner Ken Singleton. It was a small silver lining to what would become the longest work stoppage in baseball history. And in 1995, when the strike mercifully ended, a club made up of prospects and would-be replacement players captured the team’s only championship, winning the Governors Cup in front of the home crowd.

For the diehard fans who continued to follow the team during the decline of the Expos and when Ottawa eventually aligned with Baltimore and then Philadelphia, there were future stars including José Vidro, Orlando Cabrera, Michael Barrett, and J.A. Happ. But the magic of sold-out crowds and feeding the Expos’ future ambitions was over. Once lost, the magic of minor-league baseball is almost impossible to reclaim. The Lynx dwindled, other Canadian cities lost their Triple-A teams, and the inevitable finally occurred in 2007 when the team moved to Pennsylvania, never to be heard from in these parts again.

In the years that have followed, a series of semi-professional and independent baseball teams have called Ottawa home, including the Rapidz, the Fat Cats, the Champions, and now in 2024 the Ottawa Titans. There was a brief effort to bring a Double-A team to Ottawa, but that opportunity fizzled.

Like many stories that begin with hopes and dreams, the saga of the Ottawa Lynx has a melancholy ending. Nothing lasts forever. But it’s better to have witnessed the minor miracle than missed it altogether. We will always have F.P., Lenny, the summer of 1993, and a lifetime of baseball memories. And hope remains for big crowds and hot prospects in Ottawa’s future.

MARK SUTCLIFFE was elected as the Mayor of Ottawa in 2022.

Back in the early seventies, Ottawa had a baseball club (amateur) which was a real credit to the city. This club was Ottawa’s first real effort to play the game. … that pioneer team played real classy ball, which would compare favorably with any of the amateur baseball played today. — Ottawa Citizen, December 12, 1936: 2.

The Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club baseball players gather for a team photo in 1892. (City of Ottawa Archives, S1978-101, CA-15266)

Imagine the scene: anticipation hangs in the air as a clear and pleasant summer afternoon unfolds in 1872. A large crowd has gathered on this civic holiday in the newly-constructed stands of a ballpark at the southern foot of Elgin Street. They’ve come to witness the best baseball team in the world take on a group of local amateurs. As the Boston players step off their horse-drawn bus and take the field in their light brown flannel uniforms and bright red stockings, the crowd is struck by their obvious athleticism and skill. The Ottawa players never stood a chance. “The few minutes previous to the commencement of the match convinced all who were present that the Ottawa club would have no show against the professionals,” one reporter noted, adding “there were very few even of the most sanguine of the Ottawa men who would bet one to ten that our club would obtain a single run.” For the next two hours and 13 minutes, the crowd watched in amazement as the Boston Red Stockings scored run after run to win the ballgame by a lopsided score of 64–0.1

This was arguably one of the most important games—if not the most important game—ever played in this city. The visit of the Boston Red Stockings on August 27, 1872, and the rematch a year later, helped to popularize America’s pastime in Canada’s new capital.

*****

No one really knows how baseball started in Ottawa. People have been playing the game in and around the city since at least the middle of the 1860s. The earliest documented game dates back to September 13, 1865, at a Sons of Temperance picnic in the village of Metcalfe. Founded in the 1840s, the Sons of Temperance was a men’s organization that strongly discouraged alcohol consumption. Over 600 people gathered in a grove for a communal meal, followed by an afternoon of entertainment featuring music—including a bagpiper—and, notably, games that included “cricket and base ball.”2 (The sport was spelled “base ball” back then). The festivities also featured “a game of ball played by the ladies—alone.” It’s possible that the latter is also a reference to baseball, or perhaps another bat-and-ball game, but it seems more likely that the newspaper is describing some other activity altogether.

The brief mention of a baseball game at the picnic suggests two things. First, the lack of detailed explanation implies that the local readers were already at least somewhat familiar with the game’s rules. Second, including baseball in the afternoon activities indicates that people in the area knew how to play it, further suggesting that baseball was already an established pastime.

An August 1867 game report from Ogdensburg, New York, offers us another clue that baseball was still in its early stages in Ottawa during the mid-1860s. The score—Ottawa’s New Dominion Club suffered a crushing 141–20 defeat—suggests the two teams weren’t evenly matched. Maybe Ottawa simply had an off day. The local newspaper chalked up the loss to the visitors’ inexperience.

“In explanation it is proper to say that the Ottawa boys were not well posted on the rules of the game, and consequently missed making several tallies, and also got out several times when they should have avoided it,” wrote the Ogdensburg Daily Journal. “They have, however, good material to make base ball players, and will do better next time. Their pitcher and catcher are as good as average, and all will do well when they understand the game better. They did not come boasting, but requested the privilege of coming to learn the game. Another year we shall expect to see them a match for the best.”3

In August 1867, the New Dominion Club of Ottawa lost by a score of 141–20 to their more experienced opponents in Ogdensburg, New York. That city’s newspaper chalked up the lopsided loss to Ottawa’s inexperience. Credit: “Base Ball,” Daily Journal (Ogdensburg, New York), August 31, 1867: 3.

By 1868, baseball was gaining popularity in Ottawa, with the New Dominion Club emerging as the city’s leading team. The club had over 60 members, making it the largest in the city.4

At least early on, there did not seem to be many other teams to challenge the New Dominion Club. The New Dominion Club planned to play a Victoria Day game against Metcalfe.5 When that fell through, they ended up playing a game among themselves. The New Dominion first nine triumphed over the second nine with a resounding 94-25 victory. “The spectators were very numerous, including a large number of the fair sex, which gave the ground quite a lively appearance, and added to the spirits of the players,” reported the Ottawa Times. “Further interest was thrown into the game by two prizes being offered, namely, a beautifully finished bat for the highest scorer, and a regulation ball for the best general player.” Shortstop R. Wood led the New Dominion first nine with 14 runs scored and won the bat, while his teammate Walsh caught six fly balls in left field and earned the prize ball.6

The New Dominion Club held regular monthly meetings in a room at the Ottawa Skating and Curling Club,7 which opened a rink on Albert Street in 1867.8 They played their games on a field right behind the rink—which today is in the heart of the city’s downtown core.

Not content with playing games against themselves, the New Dominion Club would soon face a tougher test. During the 1868 Dominion Day festivities in Ottawa, the New Dominion Club held its own against a visiting team from Ogdensburg. By the third inning, Ottawa had built an impressive 24-run lead over their opponents. But Ogdensburg somehow rallied to win the game by a score of 57–49.9 It seems like there were no hard feelings, as the players dined together after the game, which was customary at the time. “The reception our boys met from Ottawa was princely and the supper provided most magnificent,” the Ogdensburg Journal wrote. “They all come home with the greatest admiration for the people of the Capital of the Dominion, and unable to find words to express their good feeling.”10

Back in Ottawa, the New Dominion Club dominated local baseball. A team of local mechanics fell to the New Dominion Club by a score of 109-15.11 In late July, they defeated the Ottawa Cricket Club in a game of baseball by a much-closer score of 36-27. However, the tables turned in the return cricket match, with the New Dominion Club suffering a heavy loss of 173-54. “However well the New Dominion Club may play baseball,” wrote the Ottawa Times, “they will have to practice cricket a while before playing matches.”12 They ended up playing two more times that summer, although the newspapers offered no details about the final matches.13

The score of these games was typical for the time. In the 1800s, baseball scores were often high due to primitive fielding equipment, inconsistent pitching rules that favored batters, and less sophisticated defensive strategies compared to modern baseball.

Ottawa returned to Ogdensburg for a return match in late August. This time, they lost by a score of 53-19.14 The team was disappointed to suffer such a loss to Ogdensburg after their narrow defeat earlier in the summer. But their spirits were no doubt lifted by the lavish postgame reception, where drinks flowed freely as toasts and songs filled the air well into the early hours of the morning.15

The next and final mention of Ottawa’s baseball team appears the following year in an Ogdensburg Journal article, previewing a July 4, 1869, game against the St. Lawrence Club in Ogdensburg.16 After that, the club, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.

Two years later, the fate of the New Dominion Club was revealed in a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Times, written by a member of the newly formed Ottawa Base Ball Club.

“Sir: In your issue this morning your reporter incorrectly states that the Maple Leaf Club of Ogdensburg is a newly organized one, and not the old Maple City Club. As this statement would materially lessen the credit accorded us for having beaten them, I beg leave to give you the following facts,” he wrote.

“Four years ago we played against this same club under the name of the Ogdensburg Club, for the purpose of learning the rudiments of the game, and we were beaten by some one hundred and twenty runs. The Ogdensburg Club was then organized about six years. We played against them during the following season in Ottawa, and were again beaten, but by a majority of only eight runs. Unfortunately for our old New Dominion Base Ball Club we were unable to continue practice on account of the grounds on which we played being subdivided and sold, and our club became defunct. This season a new organization was formed, with four or five of the old players as members, under the name of the Ottawa Base Ball Club, and on the 30th June we plated at Prescott against our old opponents from Ogdensburg, who had in the interval changed their club name to the more euphonious one of ‘The Maple City.’ The result of this match was that we were beaten by only one run. Our next meeting took place yesterday, when with a fair field and no favor, we had the extreme felicity of beating one of the best clubs in Northern New York.”17

*****

Two members of the New Dominion Club who went on to play for the Ottawa Base Ball Club were Harry Cluff and his brother, Tom.18 Tom Cluff has been credited with being of the most important early figures in Ottawa’s baseball history. He was born in Ottawa in 1843 (although some records list a later birth year) to Irish immigrants. His father, Isaac, worked as a carpenter at shop on Sparks Street19 and laid the city’s first wooden sidewalks.20

Tom Cluff followed his father into the trades. In the early 1860s, as a teenager, he found work at a streetcar company in Cleveland, Ohio. While living in Ohio, he also trained as a blacksmith. Before they burned down in 1916, one could see his ironwork on the original Parliament Buildings.21

The American Civil War broke out while Cluff was in Ohio. He joined the fight on the Union side, enlisting as a private, according to both his obituary22 and a booklet detailing the lives of Loyalists and their descendants buried at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery.23 Military pension records from July 1903 show a Thomas Cluff—who used the alias George Stephens—served with the 10th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, Company A.24 Since there are no other records of his military service, however, it’s not certain that this is actually the same Tom Cluff from Ottawa or someone else with the same name.

We don’t know much about Cluff’s early years in Ohio. But we do know that he was back in Ottawa by 1868 at the latest, working as a blacksmith. He and his brothers were active in many sports, and Tom Cluff’s name appears in newspaper reports about various sports, such as lacrosse and snowshoe racing.25

The Maple Leaf Base Ball Club of 1881, one of the rare youth teams to don uniforms. Note the inverted maple leaf on their crest. (Bytown Museum, P179)

He married Diantha Adelaide Clark in September 1869.26 In the summer of 1870, Cluff was once again in Ohio, where his older brother, Edward (who also went by Ned), lived. The story goes that Tom Cluff fell in love with baseball after watching three Cincinnati Red Stockings players put on a show for picnic-goers at a rural Ohio farm. The dazzling display apparently left Cluff spellbound. He sought them out afterward, eager to learn more and bring that knowledge back to Ottawa.27 The problem with this story is that we know Tom Cluff was already playing baseball in 1868 for the New Dominion Club28—two years before he purportedly saw the Red Stockings’ exhibition in Ohio. He may not have been baseball’s pioneer in Ottawa, but he was undoubtedly one of its earliest players.

Cluff was back in Ottawa by 1871, alternating between shortstop and first base for the newly formed Ottawa Base Ball Club, playing alongside another one of his brothers, Harry, who was the catcher.

The Ottawa Base Ball Club was one of several amateur teams in the city at the time, and probably the most ambitious. They built new baseball grounds on a 10-acre plot of land at the southern foot of Elgin Street near the Rideau Canal,29 the city limits at the time, which featured a grandstand as well as concession booths that did not serve alcohol.30 This is where Ottawa played their August 1872 game against the Boston Red Stockings (which they lost by that score of 64–0).31 Tom Cluff managed to hit a single off future Hall of Fame pitcher Albert Spalding, while his brother Harry hit a double. Ottawa lost a rematch against Boston a year later by a score of 44–4.32

*****

By the early 1870s, baseball fever had gripped the nation’s capital. Newspapers of the day are filled with a kaleidoscope of colorful names like the Clippers, Unions, Nationals, Hurons, Pastimes, Capitals, Victorias, Olympics, Merchants, Electrics, and Diamonds. Like many other cities in this era, Ottawa had a team called the Mutuals—a moniker commonly associated with volunteer fire companies. This may have been a nod to the city’s own volunteer firefighters, which had a hand engine called the Mutual in 1848.33

Other clubs, like Brittania and Billings Bridge, drew inspiration from their local neighborhoods. Workplaces, fraternal associations, and Ottawa College (now the University of Ottawa) all fielded teams. So did several government departments. It seemed like everyone was playing baseball in Ottawa.

Even the young messengers of Parliament, the House of Commons pages, fielded their own baseball team. Fast-forward to 1900 and the most notable player on the Pages was a 14-year-old named Thomas Patrick “T.P.” Gorman—who went on to become an Olympic gold medalist34, a sports journalist, and a hockey general manager who hoisted multiple Stanley Cups, ultimately earning his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Teams from the surrounding towns and villages came to Ottawa to compete against the city’s amateur teams. Baseball was one of the city’s most popular pastimes.

However, this passion wasn’t universally embraced. Grumbling letters to the editor documented residents’ discontent. Some lamented the boisterous youth who turned their streets into makeshift diamonds. Sunday games, seen as a disruption of the traditional day of rest, faced particular scorn.

Local leagues—which only ever lasted a season or two—offered a platform for competition, but issuing open challenges in newspapers was another popular way for these clubs to prepare to face off. Typically, a team would declare themselves unbeatable, and inevitably, a rival would rise to the challenge, with local journalists covering these exchanges in great detail.

The teams played all around the growing city. Venues like the Metropolitan Grounds on Jane Street (later Pretoria Avenue) between O’Connor and Metcalfe streets, the grounds of Rideau Hall, and the parade ground by the military drill hall at Cartier Square (where Ottawa City Hall now stands) were all popular places to play.

Ballclubs that wanted to play at Cartier Square faced the bureaucratic hurdle of first having to seek written permission from the Department of Militia and Defence to use the grounds, which were used mainly for drilling and training by two infantry regiments, the Governor General’s Foot Guards and the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa. This practice is documented as early as 1872. Senator Robert William Weir Carrall petitioned the Department on behalf of the Victoria Base Ball Club, requesting permission to play at the parade grounds. A week later, written permission was granted, provided the Victorias “will not interfere with the privilege already granted to other similar clubs.”35 Library and Archives Canada has many similar requests on file, spanning nearly three decades.

A young Tommy Gorman poses with his House of Commons Pages team in 1900. (Thomas Patrick Gorman / Library and Archives Canada / C-079945)

One thing about living in a city like Ottawa in the late nineteenth century that made it fertile ground for baseball was that it featured a growing middle class of politicians, government officials, business owners, and other professionals who had the disposable income and ample free time to devote to leisure activities.36

The Ottawa Amateur Athletic Association provided a platform for mostly young men (women could join for $2 a year as “lady associate members” with far fewer privileges37) to engage in a variety of athletic and recreational pursuits, promoting physical activity and social interaction. The association catered to the city’s elites; you could become a life member by paying $100 (a lot of money at the time) or by being a member for 15 years. Otherwise, privileged members paid $10 a year, or $2 a month, for the use of its clubhouse at the corner of Elgin and Maria (now Laurier Avenue West) and to join its sports teams.

To manage the building, the association created a new entity in 1889 known as the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club. Funded through memberships and fundraising initiatives, the club served as an umbrella organization for the city’s major sports teams.38

One aspect of the athletic club’s legacy endures to this day. Notably, it embraced the red, black, and white color scheme—first worn by the Ottawa Hockey Club in 188440—that has become synonymous with Ottawa sports.41 This iconic palette was adopted by the forerunner of the original Ottawa Senators hockey team, which was affiliated with the club, and continues to be worn today by, among others, the modern Senators franchise, the Ottawa RedBlacks of the Canadian Football League, the Ottawa 67s junior hockey club, and the city’s Frontier League baseball team, the Titans.

Despite a thriving amateur baseball scene in the latter half of the 1800s, the professional game wouldn’t arrive in Ottawa until nearly the turn of the century. The Eastern League’s struggling Rochester franchise relocated to Ottawa midway through the 1898 season. That team—which local sportswriters referred to as the Senators, and not the Wanderers as they are now often called—finished with a record of 53-70 and disbanded after the season ended. The most notable thing about this team might just be the tartan uniforms they wore. In fact, if you go to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, you can see a photo of the players in these outfits. This photo is also readily available online.

Baseball continued to thrive in Ottawa after the city’s first professional team folded. Ottawa competed in the outlaw Northern League during the early 1900s, while another team called the Senators found success in the Canadian League. Just six days after clinching the 1928 World Series with the New York Yankees, baseball legends Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig brought their talents to Ottawa for a barnstorming exhibition at Dupuis Park in nearby Hull.42 For a brief stint in the 1950s, Ottawa served as a Triple-A affiliate, first for the New York Giants and then for the Philadelphia Athletics. The 1990s and 2000s saw Triple-A baseball return to Ottawa with the Lynx. Since then, the city has witnessed a revolving door of teams from independent leagues.

But what lies ahead? With so many entertainment options vying for attention, the future of professional baseball in Ottawa remains an open question. Will the independent leagues continue to provide a platform for the city’s love of the game? Only time will tell.

However, one thing is clear: those formative years of the nineteenth century laid the groundwork for generations of baseball fans in this city. Ottawa’s baseball story is far from over.

STEVE RENNIE is a former journalist now working in the Canadian government. He grew up in the village of Osgoode, which is now part of the city, and got to see the Ottawa Lynx in their heyday. His baseball writing includes articles for the SABR Team Ownership Histories Project and an upcoming piece on the short-lived Eastern International League of 1888. In the spring of 2024, he presented on Ottawa’s early baseball history at the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, New York. He is the president of SABR’s Ottawa-Gatineau and Eastern Ontario chapter.He has a particular interest in nineteenth-century baseball in Canada and enjoys unearthing forgotten games and teams from the sport’s early history for the Centre for Canadian Baseball Research and Protoball. He lives in Ottawa with his wife Joanna and their two children.

NOTES

1 “The Civic Holiday, The Great Cricket Match, The Boston Red Stockings,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

2 “Sons Of Temperance Pic-Nic,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, September 21, 1865: 2.

3 “Base Ball,” Daily Journal (Ogdensburg, New York), August 31, 1867: 3.

4 “Local News,” Ottawa Times, August 7, 1868: 2.

5 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, May 23, 1868: 3.

6 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, May 27, 1868: 2.

7 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, June 4, 1868: 2.

8 “Club History,” Ottawa Curling Club, Accessed October 21, 2024. https://ottawacurlingclub.ca/index.php/about-the-club/28-club-info/151-club-history

9 “Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Times, July 3, 1868: 2.

10 “Base Ball at Ottawa,” Ogdensburg Journal, July 3, 1868: 3.

11 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, August 5, 1868: 2.

12 “Base Ball vs. Cricket,” Ottawa Times, August 7, 1868: 2.

13 “Cricketers at Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, August 18, 1868: 2.

14 “Base Ball Match,” Ogdensburg Journal, August 22, 1868: 3.

15 “Base Call Club,” Ogdensburg Journal, August 24, 1868: 3.

16 “Local and Miscellaneous,” Ogdensburg Journal, June 4, 1869: 3.

17 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, July 28, 1871: 2.

18 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, August 5, 1868: 2.

19 Cluff & Campbell advertisement, Ottawa Daily Citizen, June 25, 1853: 3.

20 “Pioneer Of Bytown Is Fatally Injured,” Ottawa Citizen, May 11, 1925: 16.

21 United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton Branch. “Descendants of Loyalists in Beechwood Cemetery: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Dominion Association.” September 14, 2014, 21.

22 “Pioneer Of Bytown Is Fatally Injured.”

23 “Descendants of Loyalists in Beechwood Cemetery: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Dominion Association.”

24 “United States Civil War and Later Pension Index, 1861-1917,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NHNF-TYZ: March 24, 2016), Thomas Cluff, 1903.

25 “The Lacrosse Match At Prescott,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, October 2, 1868: 3; “Lacrosse March,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, May 26, 1869: 2; “The Ottawa Cup,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, February 22, 1870: 3.

26 Thomas Cluff and Diantha Clark. “Marriage Record,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, September 8, 1869.

27 David McDonald. “Aug. 27, 1872: The Day the Tide Turned in Ottawa,” Ottawa Citizen, August 27, 2005.

28 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, August 5, 1868: 2.

29 “International Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 21, 1872: 4.

30 “Manly Sports,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 12, 1872: 1.

31 “The Civic Holiday, The Great Cricket Match, The Boston Red Stockings,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

32 “The Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 27, 1873: 4.

33 City of Ottawa, Centenary of Ottawa, 1854-1954: “The Capital Chosen by a Queen” (Ottawa: City of Ottawa, 1954), 25.

34 The medal he won was as a member of the lacrosse team. Olympic.ca. “1908 London – Canadian Olympic Team.” https://olympic.ca/games/1908-london/. Accessed June 13, 2024.

35 Canada. Library and Archives Canada. Hon. R.W.W. Carrall Senator – Ottawa – Requests the use of “Cartier Square” for the Victoria Base Ball Club. RG9-II-A-1, Volume 42, File 6733, 11 June 1872.

36 Paul Kitchen, Win, Tie, or Wrangle: The Inside Story of the Old Ottawa Senators, 1883–1935 (Manotick, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 2008), 41.

37 Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club, Constitution and By-Laws of the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club (Ottawa: J.D. Taylor, printer, 1890), 5.

38 Kitchen, 41–42.

39 “Affiliated With The O.A.A.C.,” Ottawa Citizen, May 18, 1894: 8.

40 Kitchen, 44.

41 Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club, Constitution and By-Laws of the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club (Ottawa: J.D. Taylor, printer, 1890), 3.

42 Kelly Egan, “Capital Facts: That time Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig came to Ottawa,” Ottawa Citizen, May 1, 2017. Accessed May 14, 2024. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/capital-facts-that-time-babe-ruth-and-lou-gehrig-came-to-ottawa

“On their arrival at the grounds, the Club at once proceeded to practice with their ball, pitching and catching with an expertness that opened the eyes of the spectators. The sinewy arms of the players sent the ball almost with the velocity of a musket shot, without describing a curve, but straight and true to the hands of the catcher. . . . The “Red Stockings” are all heavy men, very strong and active, in fact, picked men. They are paid regular salaries of from $1,800 to $2,500 per annum each, by the Boston club, to do nothing else but to play base ball, and they go from one city to another through the United States and Canada, playing matches for the gate money and for large stakes.” — Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872.1

Juice Latham, Utica, New York. January 1875. (The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library)

The Ottawa Senators sport their unique tartan uniforms, custom-made by local tailor J.R. McNeil in 1898. While these outfits were a source of pride in Ottawa, they received mixed reactions elsewhere. Though the photo is dated 1897, it was actually captured in 1898 during the team’s first and only season in the city. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, BL-3270.71)

The summer of 1898 was a turbulent time for professional baseball. Ballpark attendance figures plummeted across the United States as the Spanish-American War raged, and the Eastern League was not immune to this downturn. Rochester, back in the league after losing its franchise to Montreal a year earlier, was once again in bad shape. Something had to be done.

So on July 10, 1898, the Eastern League’s power brokers gathered in Syracuse, New York, to discuss the future of the organization. The league faced potential dissolution as its president, Pat Powers, considered drastic measures. Rather than fold the league, the owners agreed to slash player salaries by 20 percent. They also decided that Rochester needed a new home. Two cities— Ottawa and Worcester, Massachusetts—quickly emerged as potential landing spots, with Newark, New Jersey, and Hartford, Connecticut also in the mix.1

The owners preferred Ottawa over Worcester. It certainly helped Ottawa’s case that in the weeks leading up to the Syracuse meeting, a local newspaper had been waging a public campaign to bring an Eastern League franchise to the city.

“Baseball has never been really given a first-class trial in this city,” the Ottawa Citizen wrote in its June 23, 1898 edition.

“True, we can boast of several good amateur teams; in fact, they are second to none in the district, but baseball is a game requiring great training and the devoted attention of the men, and, therefore it has to be professional to be played scientifically. It is a game of science and a fame requiring study. To play it a man can do nothing else.”2

In a series of editorials in the days that followed, the Citizen championed the idea of a professional baseball team for Ottawa. The paper argued that competing against teams from larger markets like Toronto, Montreal, and Buffalo would elevate the city’s profile. The argument struck a chord with Ottawa mayor Samuel Bingham.

“I’m not very conversant with baseball as a game,” Bingham said, “but I think the proposal to bring Ottawa into the Eastern League circuit a very good one. You may rest assured that I will do everything in my power to promote the enterprise, if it is found, after a careful canvass, to be at all feasible. I never yet went back on anything that was calculated to benefit Ottawa locally or make her more widely known in the outside world.”3

The public pressure paid off. Two days after Eastern League owners met in Syracuse, a group of Ottawa investors—led by local brickmaker Alex Graham4—bought the struggling Rochester franchise for $2,500.5 The Citizen proudly patted itself on the back, claiming it had “single-handed, took up the cause of the game in Ottawa and was instrumental in bringing the matter before the attention of the league.”6

Finding a place to play was the next hurdle facing Ottawa’s new owners. Lansdowne Park was their first choice, but the baseball schedule conflicted with that of the city’s lacrosse club, the Capitals, who held a lease to the grounds.7 Even if the ballclub could somehow coordinate its schedule with the lacrosse team, Sunday games posed a problem. Strict observance laws forced Sunday games to be played across the river in Hull.8 Ottawa’s owners decided the team would play its first two games at Lansdowne Park, on July 15 and 16, before relocating to the nearby Metropolitan Grounds on Jane Street (later Pretoria Avenue) between O’Connor and Metcalfe streets, with the exception of Sunday games played in Hull.

Meanwhile, the former Rochester players had to scramble to make it to Ottawa for their first home game on July 15. Hastily throwing together whatever belongings they could carry, they found themselves on a steamship with their Syracuse rivals, departing Ogdensburg, New York, for Prescott, Ontario. What should have been a short journey turned into an odyssey. The connecting train to Ottawa, plagued by frequent stops, stretched what should have been a relatively brisk 45-mile trip into an ordeal lasting hours. When the train finally pulled into the Ottawa station, the players were met by a large crowd of excited fans.9

On the afternoon of Ottawa’s first home game, 2,500 people converged on Lansdowne Park from every corner of the city and its neighboring towns, paying a quarter (or 50 cents for a seat in the grandstand) for the chance to be a part of history. Samuel Bingham, the mayor, threw out the game’s first pitch. After a chaotic few days, the Ottawa team took the field in their Rochester uniforms. The jerseys, victims of travel’s wear and tear (or perhaps a botched attempt to erase their past city), sported a bewildering array of misspellings across the players’ chests. The Ottawa Citizen poked fun at this alphabet soup of mismatched letters, saying “It might be gathered from the smatterings of literature on the bosoms of the Ottawa team that they belonged to the ‘Roche,’ ‘R Este,’ ‘OT,’ ‘Chester’ and various other clubs.” Taking the field for their home opener with a quirky assortment of lettering on their jerseys, the Ottawa team appeared understandably nervous facing their hometown crowd for the first time. Just days removed from a nasty illness that confined him to bed for over a week, pitcher George Harper lacked control on the mound. Ottawa dropped their debut game to Syracuse by a score of 8–1.10 The next day offered a brighter spot. Though still a loss, Ottawa pushed Syracuse to a much closer 10-7 defeat.11

While the Ottawa team continued to jell on the field, their mismatched uniforms remained a source of amusement. “The Ottawa boys must have played hot ball somewhere to melt all those letters off their shirts,” the Citizen cracked after the club’s opening weekend.12 Thankfully, a fresh set of uniforms was already in production, and they would be unlike anything Eastern League fans had ever seen. Sparks Street tailor J.R. McNeil presented the team with a bold design: tartan uniforms.

“The Ottawa baseball team will appear in the new suits presented to them by Mr. J.R. McNeil for the first time on Monday morning,” the Ottawa Citizen wrote on July 29.

“The club’s colors are red, white and tartan. The shirts and knickerbockers are made out of the McNeil tartan, the former having red collars and cuffs, with smoked pearl buttons. The players will wear a white peaked cap with red band, and red stockings. The costume is said to be unique, striking and attractive. Mr. McNeil is to be congratulated upon his generous gift.”13

The unique uniforms got mixed reviews outside Ottawa. “It was the general impression in the Eastern League circuit that the late Rochester uniform was the most hideous the ingenuity of man could devise,” the Montreal Gazette wrote. “The new Ottawa outfit, however, knocks it into a cocked hat.”14 Added another Montreal newspaper, the Daily Star: “Long dissertations were published on the appearance of the Ottawas, when they were known as the Rochesters, but if anybody wants to see a sight, it is worthwhile going to the ball grounds to see the awful uniforms the men are now rigged out with. It is a wonder that they don’t refuse to wear them.”15 The Sporting Life called them “the most ridiculous that were ever seen on ball players,”16 while the Buffalo Commercial published this commentary from the Providence Journal: “Nothing can be funnier than the coaching of Wheels Clymer, unless it is the ludicrous appearance of the Scotch plaid of the Ottawa team in a baseball uniform.”17 Ouch.

The team is often referred to as the Wanderers. But there is ample evidence they were actually called the Senators. The city’s daily newspapers published at least five articles over the summer of 1898 in which the team is called the Senators. A Toronto sportswriter first suggested the moniker days after the team relocated from Rochester.

“In a signed article in the Toronto News J. Hay has the following: ‘When a new team comes into the baseball world there is always a big hustle among the various sporting writers on the circuit to give the new team an appropriate name. For a short time the club is provided with names to cremate, but one appellation finally meets with the approbation of all concerned, and the team is put to the necessity of carrying this title while they stay with the league. What name can be inflicted on the Ottawa club? The Washingtons in the National are known as the Senators, and wouldn’t it be appropriate to call the Capital City’s team by the same name?’”20

It seems Ottawa sportswriters liked the suggestion. On August 13, the Ottawa Citizen refers to the team as the Senators when describing their game against Montreal (“Two more [runs] were made in the fifth by the Senators”).21

The Citizen calls the team the Senators three times in an August 17 article: “The Senators played good ball this afternoon and won a splendid ten innings game from the Habitants [Montreal] … An error by Butler, who did such good work yesterday, gave the Senators the game. … Ottawa is playing gilt-edged ball these days, and the home public here have the assurance of some excellent sport when the Senators meet the Toronto club on Thursday.”22

The Ottawa Journal referred to the team by this name days later when talking about their victory over Toronto: “But joking aside—aren’t the Senators playing nice ball—real pennant winning ball. The score yesterday by the way was Ottawa 3: Toronto 2. Looks close, but the game wasn’t quite as narrow as that. Toronto never looked as good a team as Ottawa in yesterday’s contest. They aren’t either and Willie Clymer has just about the warmest outfit in the league.”23

Two days later, the Citizen once again used the Senators moniker. “The man that presented that Black Watch tartan uniform to the Senators ought to have added a bagpipes. Perhaps Harper would march up and down the coach line and supply the music to cheer them on to victory.”24

The fact that two of the city’s daily newspapers use the name multiple times strongly suggests that the team was called the Senators, at least unofficially. But maybe not by everyone. It seems that Toronto sportswriters had not quite settled on a nickname. Two days after the Toronto News suggested the Senators moniker, the Toronto Evening Star made its own bold proclamation: “The Ottawas are called the Lumbermen.”25 There are no other references to Ottawa being called the Lumbermen, so it appears that the Senators name won out in the end. As for the “Wanderers,” it’s likely that the moniker was applied later by historians, reflecting the team’s midseason relocation.

The club finished last in the Eastern League with a 53-70 record. Despite only playing for two months in the Eastern League, the Ottawa Journal (citing a Toronto newspaper’s report) revealed the team owners had already lost $4,000.26 The club disbanded in November 1898, ending Ottawa’s brief stint in professional baseball.

STEVE RENNIE is a former journalist now working in the Canadian government. He grew up in the village of Osgoode, which is now part of the city, and got to see the Ottawa Lynx in their heyday. His baseball writing includes articles for the SABR Team Ownership Histories Project and an upcoming piece on the short-lived Eastern International League of 1888. In the spring of 2024, he presented on Ottawa’s early baseball history at the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, New York. He is the president of SABR’s Ottawa-Gatineau and Eastern Ontario chapter.He has a particular interest in nineteenth-century baseball in Canada and enjoys unearthing forgotten games and teams from the sport’s early history for the Centre for Canadian Baseball Research and Protoball. He lives in Ottawa with his wife Joanna and their two children.

NOTES

1 “A Ball Team,” Ottawa Citizen, July 11, 1898: 1.

2 “Is Sport Here On The Decline?” Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 1898: 8.

3 “Will Ottawa Get Into Line?” Ottawa Citizen, June 24, 1898: 8.

4 “The Ottawa Ball Team,” Ottawa Citizen, July 14, 1898: 1.

5 “Left ‘Em All,” Ottawa Citizen, July 12, 1898: 8.

6 “Left ‘Em All.”

7 “Sporting,” Ottawa Journal, July 13, 1898: 7.

8 “Fever Raging,” Ottawa Citizen, July 13, 1898: 8.

9 “Clymer Was Reminiscent,” Ottawa Journal, December 8, 1898: 6.

10 “Ottawa Lost,” Ottawa Citizen, July 16, 1898: 6.

11 “Beaten Again,” Ottawa Citizen, July 18, 1898: 6.

12 “Beaten Again.”

13 “New Baseball Uniform,” Ottawa Citizen, July 29, 1898: 1.

14 “Base Hits,” Montreal Gazette, August 15, 1898: 5.

15 “Downed By Ottawa,” Montreal Daily Star, August 13, 1898: 15.

16 “News And Comment,” Sporting Life, September 17, 1898: 5.

17 “Baseball Brevities,” Buffalo Commercial, September 3, 1898: 4.

18 “More Money Is Necessary,” Ottawa Journal, August 5, 1898: 7.

19 “Comment,” Ottawa Citizen, August 19, 1898: 4.

20 “To Call Us ‘Senators,’” Ottawa Journal, July 19, 1898: 6.

21 “Eastern League Games,” Ottawa Citizen, August 13, 1898: 6.

22 “The Sporting World,” Ottawa Citizen, August 17, 1898: 6.

23 “Ottawa Did The Trick Again,” Ottawa Journal, August 20, 1898: 6.

24 “The Sporting World,” Ottawa Citizen, August 22, 1898: 6.

25 “Baseball Notes,” (Toronto) Evening Star, July 21, 1898: 7.

26 “Looking For Sympathy,” Ottawa Journal, September 10, 1898: 6.

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.

ONCE AND FUTURE OTTAWA SENATORS MAJOR LEAGUERS

• Joe McManus, 1912; Cincinnati Reds, 1913.
• Fred Herbert, 1912; New York Giants, 1915.
• Artie Schwind, 1912; Boston Braves, 1912.
• Erwin Renfer, 1912-13; Detroit Tigers, 1913.
• Frank Shaughnessy, 1913-15; Washington Senators, 1905; Philadelphia Athletics, 1908.
• Frank Smykal, 1913-15; Pittsburgh Pirates, 1916.
• Jack (Johnny) Mitchell, 1914; New York Yankees, 1921-22; Boston Red Sox, 1922-23; Brooklyn Dodgers, 1924-25.
• Rabbit Nill, 1914; Washington Senators, 1904-07; Cleveland Indians, 1907-08.
• Herbie Shocker, 1914-15; New York Yankees 1916-17, 1925-28; St. Louis Browns, 1918-24.
• Al Bashang, 1915; Detroit Tigers, 1912; Brooklyn Dodgers, 1918.
• Fred Payne, 1915; Detroit Tigers, 1906-08; Chicago White Sox, 1909-11.
• Frank Rooney, 1915; Indianapolis Hoosiers, 1914.

A true Ottawa baseball legend, Frank Shaughnessy’s impact on the Senators is undeniable. (Courtesy of Honora Shaughnessy)

In a multisport career that spanned more than half a century, he was a player, a coach, a manager, an owner, and an executive. And with four pennants in four years at the helm of the Canadian League Senators, “the big, bowlegged and domineering pilot of the Ottawas”1 was almost certainly the preeminent character in local baseball history, and perhaps even, as long-time Montreal sportswriter Tim Burke asserted, “one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of sport.”2

NOTRE DAME

Francis Joseph Shaughnessy was born in 1883 in Amboy, Illinois, the seventh child of parents from Limerick, Ireland. His father, Patrick, emigrated to Canada as a boy. But after an unsuccessful attempt at farming near Montreal, Patrick, now 25, moved to the United States and spent the next 35 years with the Illinois Central Railroad. Two of his sons, William and John, also worked for the Illinois Central. Youngest son Frank was determined not to.

Smart, ambitious, and perpetually in motion, Shaughnessy worked in a pharmacy while attending high school. “I got up at six to open the drug store at seven, then ran three or four miles to school,” he recalled. “At noon I hurried back to the store to give the boss time for lunch, got my lunch at home about two blocks away, and dashed back to school. When school let out, I ran again to be at the store by 4 P.M. I got a half-hour off for supper, and, at 10 P.M., I could walk home. It’s no wonder I always could run fast—I had to!”3

Young Frank could also hit a baseball, and it earned him a partial scholarship to study pharmacy at Indiana’s Notre Dame College, then little more than “a farm, and the nuns made our meals and washed our clothes.”4 “Shag,” as he was called, also excelled at track, and especially at football.5 In 1904, his final season at Notre Dame, he captained the Fighting Irish.6

“It seems like I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t working hard,” he said in later years. “While at Notre Dame, I also ran the campus newspaper, a confectionery concession and was the correspondent for several Chicago newspapers.”7

Using the nom de guerre “Shannon” to protect his collegiate athletic eligibility, Shag spent his summers playing professional baseball in outposts like Sioux City, Iowa, and Cairo, Illinois. In the spring of 1904 he finished his pharmacy degree and immediately began working toward another in law. But neither potions nor motions held much appeal for the restless Shaughnessy—“Indoors irks this man,” as Maclean’s magazine once said.8 So in the fall of 1904, right after football season, he signed with the Washington Senators of the American League.

NO FIXED ADDRESS

Shaughnessy’s 1905 season was a crash course in the vicissitudes of Deadball-Era baseball. On April 17, a week and a half past his 22nd birthday, the lanky, copper-haired outfielder had his first sip of big-league coffee, playing right field for the Senators in a game against the Highlanders of New York. He went 0-for-3, with a hit-by-pitch.

“It wasn’t easy in those days, believe me,” Shaughnessy said. “Regulars would actually chase a rookie with a bat if he attempted to take a turn hitting. A regular held his job until somebody drove him out, and every youngster was regarded as a menace.”9

Shag got into another game four days later and hit a bases-loaded triple off future Hall of Famer Jack Chesbro. But the game—and Shag’s first major-league hit—were washed out before becoming official. The very next day Washington shipped him out, to the Montgomery Senators of the Southern Association.

Shaughnessy hated Alabama—the heat, the mosquitoes, the very real prospect of contracting yellow fever. He dropped 20 pounds, played poorly, and after seven games he was released, whereupon he packed his glove and spikes and headed north to Pennsylvania to play for Coatesville of the “outlaw”10 Tri-State League. After a few games there he ventured even further north, to join the Montpelier-Barre Intercities, a.k.a. Hyphens, of the even more outlaw Northern League,11 a colorful but financially shaky circuit operating in Vermont and northern New York.

It was already Shag’s fourth club of the year, and it was only June. Life had become a blur of steam trains, cheap hotels, and precarious employment. His halcyon days as big man on campus were long behind him. Now the only constant was the nagging worry that the next paycheck might not clear, that one’s current club—or even the whole league it was part of—might not survive the season, that the opportunities to forge a career in the snakes-and-ladders, musical-chairs world of Deadball Era baseball might simply dry up.

HELLO KITTY

The Northern turned out to be the most eventful stop on Shaughnessy’s baseball odyssey. It was during this time he attended some sort of Roman Catholic function in Ogdensburg, New York, where he was introduced to a young woman named Katherine Quinn, called Kitty, the convent-educated daughter of an Ottawa hotelier, Michael Quinn.12

That brief encounter might go a long way to explaining Shaughnessy’s decision to sign a $140-a-month contract to play for Ottawa, an expansion franchise in the re-jigged Northern League,13 in 1906. Once again the quality of play was surprisingly fast.14 Shag acquitted himself well, finishing with a .297 batting average and a league-leading five homers. He also proved a fan favorite. “Shaughnessy is the idol of the small boy and incidentally the ladies also,” said the Ottawa Journal. “His appearance at bat is always the signal for an outburst of applause and kindly advice to slam it over the fence again or to murder the umpire when he calls a strike.”15

Despite its blaze of talent the cross-border Northern League proved no more durable than its 1905 iteration. The Ottawa club folded on August 20, and Shaughnessy and several others had to sue to try to collect their final pay.

While the league withered around him, Frank’s romance with Kitty blossomed. But with several weeks of summer left and a few more dollars to be had, he reluctantly hopped a train back to Indiana, where he joined the South Bend Greens of the Class-B Central League. There he was said to have hit “the ball like a fiend,”16 batting .333 in 18 games.

That fall—it was still an era of distinct sporting seasons—Shaughnessy launched a second career, coaching football at Clemson Agricultural College in South Carolina. The following summer he played left field for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Frank and Kitty exchanged a lot of letters in those years.

In 1908 Shag returned to Washington to join the D.C. entry in a wannabe third major circuit, the Union League. Sportswriters soon branded it the Onion League, “because it was cheap and smelled bad.”17 The loop lasted two months before landing on baseball’s compost heap. Shaughnessy though landed on his feet—Connie Mack immediately signed him to play for his Philadelphia Athletics in the American League.

This time Shag’s big-league dream lasted all of two weeks. “I thought I had a good chance with the A’s,” he recalled years later. “I was hitting .32118 after eight games and feeling pretty proud of myself. Then one cold day in Chicago, I had to make a hard throw to the plate and something snapped in my arm. I couldn’t throw overhanded for a year….”19

Mack promptly shipped Shag and his wounded wing off to Reading, Pennsylvania, of the Class-B Tri-State League, in exchange for a player to be named later. The player turned out to be a young third baseman named Frank “Home Run” Baker, who went on to a Hall of Fame career. “That was a pretty good deal for the Athletics, I would say,” said Shag, adding, in faux self-deprecating style, “I guess I wasn’t much of a player.”20

That fall 25-year-old Frank Shaughnessy, vagabond baseball player and football coach, married 20-year-old Kitty Quinn at St. Brigid’s, the English-language Roman Catholic church serving Ottawa’s Lower Town.

KLAN COUNTRY

In 1909 Shaughnessy bought his release from Reading so that he could take a job playing for—and, for the first time in his baseball career, managing—the Roanoke Tigers, a.k.a. Highlanders, of the Class-C Virginia League. At 26 he was reportedly the youngest manager in Organized Baseball. It was an auspicious debut. Shag batted .285 with a league-leading five home runs and guided his team to the pennant. In a cliff-hanger of a finish—which would become something of a Shaughnessy managerial trademark—the Tigers nipped the Norfolk Tars by half a game and .003 percentage points.

Roanoke was also an opportunity for the indefatigable Shaughnessy to try his hand at a number of business sidelines. He bought into a couple of cigar stores, a garage, and one of the first automobile dealerships in the country.21 He also found time to pass the Virginia bar exam and hang out a shingle, although, according to legendary Montreal sportswriter Dink Carroll, Shag lacked the patience to build up a practice.

On the surface Roanoke appeared a good fit for the Shaughnessys, and the prospect of putting down roots must have seemed appealing, especially with the arrival of their first two boys. (The brood would eventually number nine—eight boys and one girl.) But Kitty missed her family in Ottawa, and, equally, as a devout Roman Catholic, never felt entirely comfortable in the Protestant South. The anti-Catholic KKK was between waves of terror at this time, but Virginia was still the heart of Klan country.

A CAPITAL IDEA

So Shag began to formulate a plan, one that would accommodate both his wife’s desire to raise a family in a more hospitable environment and his own to assert some measure of control over a chronically precarious baseball career. After the 1911 season the Shaughnessys packed their bags, bundled up their babies, and boarded a northbound train, destination Ottawa.

Despite the failure of the Northern League, Shaughnessy had long felt the city was ripe for baseball. “Well, this always looked like one good ball town to me, and I am surprised you haven’t entered some league before this,” he said during a 1910 visit.22 He decided he would be the one to remedy that.

Shag had been keeping an eye on the fortunes of the Canadian League, a Class-D loop operating in Western Ontario, with teams in London, Hamilton, Brantford, St. Thomas, Guelph, and Berlin.23 The Canadian had just completed a moderately successful first season, and Shag was confident an Ottawa team could make a go of it in such company. He sought out a couple of prospective partners—Tommy Gorman, the 25-year-old Olympic lacrosse gold medalist turned “sporting editor” of the Ottawa Citizen, and Malcolm Brice, 36, sporting editor of the Ottawa Free Press—to put together a franchise bid. Publicity for the venture was not going to be a problem.

Nor was money. A good chunk of the financial backing for the team came from Frank Ahearn,24 son of wealthy inventor and entrepreneur Thomas “Electricity” Ahearn, known as “the Edison of Canada.” The senior Ahearn was the principal owner of the Ottawa Electric Railway Company—game-day transportation would not be an issue either.

RAILROADED

In December 1911 the Canadian League awarded a franchise to the Ottawa Baseball Club, dubbed the Senators, and Shaughnessy spent the winter preparing for his club’s inaugural season. But then came the revelation that Shag was something of a baseball bigamist, having previously signed a contract to play for and manage the Fort Wayne Railroaders of the Class-B Central League. He might have gambled on Fort Wayne owner Claude H. Varnell not standing in the way of his new Ottawa venture, but Varnell made it abundantly clear he had no intention of divorcing his two-timing manager. “Shaughnessey [sic] will manage the Fort Wayne team unless he dies or gives up baseball,” he announced.25 Shag reluctantly said goodbye to his family in Ottawa and left for Indiana.

Shaughnessy was determined to make the best of his exile in Indiana by adroitly managing both sides of his divided loyalties. Without kiboshing Fort Wayne’s chances in the Central, he funneled a handful of surplus Railroaders north to round out the Ottawa roster. Without this injection of talent, it’s safe to say the Senators would not have challenged for the Canadian League pennant in their first year.

Shag’s juggling act worked out pretty well for both teams. The Senators cruised to the Canadian League title, nine games ahead of second-place Brantford Red Sox. The Railroaders, a last-place club as late as July 1, eventually clipped the Youngstown Steelmen by 2½ games for the Central League flag. Shag batted .304 and stole 34 bases.

When it was all over, Kitty back in Ottawa received this terse telegram from Indiana: “Ft Wayne won the pennant. Had a hard battle we play Cleveland Wednesday at Ft Wayne expect to get home Friday phone Brice about pennant. Frank.”26 The two-timing Shaughnessy had somehow parlayed his divided loyalties into two pennants in two countries in a single season.

After the season he touched down in Ottawa just long enough to pack his whistle and report to McGill University in Montreal, where he became the first professional coach at a Canadian school. “I worked hard because I liked it,” he said, “and if I needed a better reason, I had a big family and had something of a grocery bill every week.”27 It was a move that led to his third sporting championship of the year – a Yates Cup28 win for his Redmen over the University of Toronto. Shag went on to coach McGill football for 19 seasons, during which time he helped define and refine the Canadian game. 29

ICEMAN

Now Shaughnessy needed something to bridge the icy gap between football and baseball seasons. He accepted a job to coach and manage Frank Ahearn’s Ottawa Stewartons senior amateur hockey club in the Interprovincial Union. “I told them I didn’t know anything about the game and, in fact, hadn’t even seen hockey, aside from kids playing in the neighborhood rinks,” said Shaughnessy. “They insisted I knew how to handle men and organize sports, and that’s what they were interested in….”30 It was here, unsurprisingly, that Shag’s string of sporting championships came to an abrupt end.

The experience, however, launched a third career for Shaughnessy. The following winter he debuted as “business manager”31 of the other Ottawa Senators, those of the National Hockey Association (NHA), the forerunner of the NHL.32 That spring Shag came close to adding the Stanley Cup to his rapidly expanding championship résumé, but the NHA-champion Senators dropped the final to the Pacific Coast Hockey League Vancouver Millionaires.

A BRAND NEW SUIT

Shaughnessy might have continued his cross-border juggling act in 1913. He actually liked Fort Wayne, and he really liked the idea of owning a club in one league while pulling in a salary in another. But Kitty wanted him home, and this time owner Varnell agreed to his release.33

On Thursday, May 16, much of the federal government shut down at 1 P.M. so civil servants could get out to the ballpark in time to witness Frank Shaughnessy’s long-awaited playing debut as a Senator. A Sparks Street tailor, A.J. Curry, announced he would present a new $30 suit to the first Senator to hit a home run at Lansdowne Park. It seemed like a pretty generous offer, until you consider the Ottawas had failed to hit a single homer at home during their first season. Said one writer: “Any man to get credit for a four play wallop at the local ball yard (has) to sock the ball a quarter of a mile, more or less, and complete the circuit at a Ty Cobb clip”34—which is exactly what Shaughnessy did in his first game back in his adopted city since the demise of the old Northern League in 1906.

As Shag stepped to the plate in the fourth inning, the game was halted as a local MP presented him with a floral horseshoe wishing the team “Good Luck 1913.” After the interruption the pumped-up skipper drove the first pitch he saw over the head of the Brantford right fielder. The ball bounded up a slope and skipped toward the cattle barns near the Rideau Canal. Shag scored standing up. He finished the day with the Senators’ first-ever home-field homer, a single, a double, and a brand-new suit.

Shaughnessy’s debut was a harbinger of what was to come in his three seasons as the star center fielder and fiery field boss of the perennial champion Senators. Wherever he went, whatever he did, whatever he said, the spotlight was always on Shag, with his out-sized physical presence35 and his perceived Simon Legree management style—“more like McGraw’s than Mack’s,” as one baseball writer put it.36 He was said to hand his men a raise one minute and a “blue envelope” (i.e., a pink slip) the next.37

“Shaughnessy’s methods are unpopular at times with the fans and with his players,” the London Advertiser conceded in the aftermath of Ottawa’s third straight pennant in 1914, “but he gets results….”38 The respect was sometimes grudging but it was always genuine. “All credit must be given to Shag,” said the rival London Free Press, “for he not only drives his players, never overlooks an opening, but he makes mediocre performers live wires.” 39

“The continued success of this shrewd Irishman smashes all idea of luck,” said another baseball writer, as the Senators captured a fourth-straight flag, in 1915. “That commodity might land him a winner once, but when success is spoiled on success there is something in the man himself above ordinary.”40

The Senators’ victory in 1915 gave Shaughnessy a hand in six pennants in three leagues in only seven years of managing.

Now, after finally experiencing some years of stability, Shag’s baseball future—and the future of the Senators—remained uncertain. The War in Europe had upended everything. Rumors swirled all fall and winter. When the Canadian League failed to take the field for the 1916 season, for Shaughnessy it was back to the uncertainties of life as a minor-league gun-for-hire. He was forced to accept a last-minute offer to manage the Warren (Pennsylvania) Warriors of the Class-D Interstate League.

With a population distracted by preparations for the war in Europe and by an actual war with Mexico, attendance in the Interstate was down by half. On August 3 Warren, some $800 in debt and owing players two weeks’ salary, became the second of three Interstate clubs to fold in less than a month. The Wellsville Reporter speculated that Shaughnessy would return to Canada to raise a company of athletes to fight in the war. Instead Shag signed with the first-place Bradford Drillers, but as a player only. A few weeks later he moved over to the also-ran Wellsville Rainmakers, as player and manager. In an unsettled, no-fixed-address sort of season, Shag recorded a .301 batting average and stole 19 bases in 76 games. But for the first time since 1912, he failed to win a pennant.

SIBERIA

For Shaughnessy fall meant football. But with collegiate ball on hold for the year due to the War, the autumn of 1916 found him coaching the 207th Battalion team to the championship of the military’s Overseas Football League. He also continued as business manager of the hockey Senators, even swinging a deal to pry future Hockey Hall of Famer Cy Denneny away from Toronto. But in November Shaughnessy, now 33 and the father of four boys, decided to enlist. It was what most of the Ottawa athletic community had already done. “Before the current call is exhausted … the Capital will be without ninety per cent of its leading athletes, and unless the war ends shortly, it will be difficult for the various local clubs to carry on successfully,” said the Citizen.”41

On his Officer’s Declaration form Shaughnessy gave his profession as “attorney and athletic director.”42 His medical sheet lists him at 6-feet-1½ inches and 195 pounds, with “excellent physical development.”43 Said the Citizen: “Frank has worn baseball and football togs for so many years that he had no difficulty in adapting himself to the King’s uniform.”44

At first, Shaughnessy’s military career wasn’t much different from his civilian one. He coached and played baseball, coached football and even coached hockey. (“… Frank’s advice is invariably brief, but to the point, viz: ‘Get the goals and then lay back on the defense.’”45) But Shaughnessy’s real value to the military was his wide web of contacts in the sporting world. After all, who better to beat the Hun than an army of elite athletes?

Shag was placed in charge of Ottawa recruiting for the 207th Battalion, and in typical Shag style soon out-recruited his fellow recruiters. “In his short-term as re-inforcing officer, Lieut. Shaughnessy established a record for recruiting as he secured over a hundred men.”46

Shag spent the early summer of 1918 in familiar surroundings. His battery was quartered at Lansdowne Park, a fairly short walk from his home on Powell Ave. in Ottawa’s Glebe neighborhood. Summer evenings his men played baseball.

In September Shaughnessy transferred to the Ammunition Column, 35th Battery, Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia). The big show in Europe had only a few weeks left to run, but Canada was still involved in—and in command of—a confused and half-hearted Allied campaign to support the White Russian Army against the Bolsheviks in Russia’s Far East. Shag had experienced any number of baseball Siberias, but never before the real thing. And now, at the peak of the Spanish flu pandemic, he found himself in New Westminster, British Columbia, preparing to embark on a slow boat to Vladivostok.

On November 28, 17 days after the war ended on the Western Front, Shag and his mates sailed from Vancouver on the “remount ship” S.S. War Charger. They carried a load of 16- and 18-pound artillery shells and some 500-600 horses. “I think they picked me because I was as big as a horse,” Shag said.47 The Charger wallowed 500 miles in 23 days until, in danger of running out of coal, it was ordered to turn back. “The funniest thing that happened to me was that I was sentenced to Siberia—and never got there,” said Shag.48 On January 21, 1919, Lieut. Frank Shaughnessy left the army by “reason of General Demobilization”49 and returned home to Ottawa.

A BRISK NORTH WIND

Shaughnessy resumed his McGill position, which had expanded to include responsibility for all outdoor sports. But, as always, he needed a baseball gig to see him through the summer. Shag pursued a number of leads, including the possible formation of a new all-Canadian circuit, featuring Ottawa and Montreal, along with the Canadian entries from the Michigan-Ontario League. “If the new league is formed, I will take either the Montreal or Ottawa franchises, or at least will take a financial interest in them. . . ,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind that an all-Canadian league would be a howling success.”50 But there were serious doubts in other minds, and the league Shag envisioned failed to get off the ground.

Reluctantly Shag accepted an offer to play for and manage the Hamilton Tigers of the Class-B Michigan-Ontario League. Now 36 and returning after a two-season layoff, he nonetheless put up one of the best offensive seasons, batting .313 with a .412 on-base percentage in 109 games. His Tigers, featuring several former Senators, finished a close second, behind the Saginaw Aces.

Shaughnessy appeared to be wearying of his baseball life. “Managing a baseball team is far from being what it may seem to the average fan in the bleachers,” he told the Citizen. “The player who has nothing to do but play his position each game, and whose worries end with the game each day, has an easy time; but the manager has just as many worries off the field as on. I will make a desperate effort to win the pennant this year, but win or lose I am not going to attempt to fill the role of manager any more.”51

And yet in 1920 he returned to Hamilton. His team again finished second, this time 14½ games behind the runaway London Tecumsehs. But it was the same old fiery Frank. In late May he was arrested for getting into a fight in game in Flint. His offensive production, however, declined dramatically—a .262 batting average with 16 stolen bases in 93 games. It was his swan song as a regular or semi-regular player.52

BYE-BYE BYTOWN

During the 1920-21 offseason Shaughnessy teamed with Canadian baseball legend Knotty Lee in another attempt to bring high-level baseball back to either Ottawa or Montreal. But in the end the Shaughnessy-Lee duo failed to make a business case for either city. In 1921, after a decade in Ottawa, the Shaughnessys decamped with their seven boys to Montreal, with the half-baked idea of Frank selling insurance to supplement his McGill income. The Shaughnessy era in Ottawa was over.

But, as The Sporting News noted, “every time Shag decided to ‘settle down,’ baseball sounded a recall.”53 And so at midseason in 1921 Shaughnessy took over as manager of the chronically second-division Syracuse Stars of the International League. The Syracuse gig marked the beginning of a 40-year relationship with the International. By 1936 he was president of the league, and for the next 24 years he served as a passionate defender of the interests of minor-league baseball. Said the New York Times: “He’s as big as all outdoors and as hearty as a brisk north wind.”54

His “Shaughnessy playoff system”55 is often credited with saving minor-league ball during the Depression. In 1946 he presided over the re-integration of the International League. Said Shag of Jackie Robinson: “He’s the best player in minor league ball. He’s also the smartest.”56

Kitty Shaughnessy, whose homesickness led to the creation of the Ottawa Senators, died in 1958 in Montreal, a week after the Shaughnessy’s 50th wedding anniversary. Shag finally retired at the age of 77, in 1960. He died on May 15, 1969, at the age of 86. He was among the first inductees to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1983.

“I remember him as kind and big and gruff,” his granddaughter Honora Shaughnessy recounted. “He would always have a TV and one or two portable radios going at the same time, listening to various games. I remember my father always called him ‘Sir.’”57

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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This profile is based on a similar version by the same author that appeared in the 2022 SABR book Our Game, Too: Influential Figures and Milestones in Canadian Baseball. 

For a deeper dive into Frank Shaughnessy’s career, please refer to Charlie Bevis’s BioProject profile on the SABR website.

NOTES

1 “Shag” Deserves Credit,” Hamilton Herald, August 29, 1914: 9.

2 Tim Burke, “Shaughnessy Clan Full of Rich History,” Montreal Gazette, June 15, 1982: B-5.

3 Joe King and Cy Kritzer, “Diamond Ace, Gridiron Star and Executive,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1960: 10.

4 “The Man Has Better Things to Do Than Talk About Himself,” unattributed 1968 newspaper clipping. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

5 After two previous Shaughnessys who attended Notre Dame, both nicknamed “Shag.”

6 Shaughnessy was the starting right end on the undefeated 1903 team that outscored its opponents 291-0 over nine games.

7 David Pietrusza, Minor Miracles: The Legend and Lure of Minor League Baseball (Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing, 1995), 119.

8 Frederick Edwards, “Old-Fashioned Father,” Maclean’s, October 1, 1934: 15.

9 King and Kritzer, 16.

10 An “outlaw,” or independent, league is one that is not part of the National Agreement and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of Organized Baseball.

11 Officially, the Northern New York League. Not to be confused with the Northern League operating in the same period in Manitoba, Minnesota, and North Dakota.

12 Quinn was the proprietor of Revere House, 475-479 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, until selling out in 1912.

13 Officially the Northern Independent League in 1906.

14 Rival Rutland, for example, boasted future Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins and right-hander Dick Rudolph, a 26-game winner for the Boston Braves in 1914.

15 “Notes of Sport,” Ottawa Journal, July 13, 1906: 2.

16 “Greens Take One of the Doubleheader,” Wheeling News Register, September 2, 1906: 6.

17 Jerry Kuntz, Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines: The Many Lives and Outrageous Times of George and Alfred Lawson (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 2009), 126.

18 It was actually .310 — on a team with a .223 batting average.

19 Pietrusza, 120.

20 Pietrusza, 120.

21 The dealership sold – or at least attempted to sell – the Virginian, a short-lived make built in Richmond.

22 “‘Home Run’ Shaughnessy Pays Ottawa a Visit,” unattributed 1910 newspaper clipping. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

23 Re-named Kitchener in the midst of World War I.

24 Ahearn became part-owner of the hockey Senators, 1920-1934. He was selected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder in 1962.

25 “News Notes,” Sporting Life, February 24, 1912: 15.

26 Telegram from Frank to Kitty Shaughnessy, September 2, 1912. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

27 Joe King and Cy Kritzer, “Shag, as a Farm Manager, Polished Rickey’s Kid Stars,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1960: 26.

28 The oldest active football trophy in North America, first awarded in 1898.

29 “It was largely through his campaigning that the Canadian game adopted the forward pass, 12-man teams and the direct snap from center. …” (Marven Moss, “Frank ‘Shag’ Shaughnessy Is Still Rolling in High Gear Despite His Age, Leading Battle for Minor Clubs,” Sherbrooke Daily Record, January 11, 1958: 8.) “He is credited with having more to do with changing Canadian football, by introduction of American football tactics, than any other man.” (King and Kritzer, “Diamond Ace, Gridiron Star and Executive.”)

30 King and Kritzer, “Diamond Ace, Gridiron Star and Executive.”

31 Equivalent to today’s general manager position in hockey.

32 The Senators joined the NHL when it began play in 1917-18.

33 Hardly an act of charity, it cost Shaughnessy $750.

34 “Ottawa and Brantford Teams Open Local Season Month from Today,” Ottawa Citizen, April 24, 1913: 8.

35 Shaughnessy is usually listed at 6-foot-1 1/2, 185 lbs.

36 “Shaughnessy May Become Big League Manager,” Ottawa Citizen, August 12, 1915: 8.

37 “Shag” Deserves Credit,” Hamilton Herald, August 29, 1914: 9.

38 Bert Perry, “Looks Like Fourth Straight Pennant for Ottawa Club,” London Advertiser, August 4, 1915: 8.

39 Bill Rhodes, London Free Press, undated 1915 clipping. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

40 Unattributed clipping from summer 1915. Courtesy Honora Shaughnessy.

41 “Many More Ottawa Athletes Called in First Draft under New Military Service Law,” Ottawa Citizen, May 6, 1918: 8.

42 Officers’ Declaration Paper, Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force, December 22, 1916.

43 Medical History Sheet, February 17, 1917.

44 “Shag in New Role,” Ottawa Citizen, December 21, 1916: 8.

45 “Shag in New Role.”

46 “Ottawa Athletes to Kingston School,” Ottawa Citizen, January 15, 1917: 8.

47 John Kieran, “Under Two Flags,” New York Times, January 23, 1941: 27.

48 Kieran, “Under Two Flags.”

49 Canadian Expeditionary Force Certificate of Service, March 4, 1920.

50 “Shaughnessy Is Planning for New Baseball League,” Ottawa Citizen, August 4, 1919: 8.

51 “Shaughnessy Is Planning for New Baseball League.”

52 Shag’s last professional at bat came at age 41, with an unsuccessful pinch-hit appearance for the Shaughnessy-managed Syracuse Stars, of the International League.

53 King and Kritzer, “Shag, as a Farm Manager, Polished Rickey’s Kid Stars,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1960: 26.

54 Kieran, “Under Two Flags.”

55 A format for determining the champion of a one-division sports league, in which the top four teams in the standings battle it out in post-season competition.

56 Sam Blackman, Tim Bourret, and Dabo Swinney, If These Walls Could Talk: Stories from the Clemson Tigers Sideline, Locker Room, and Press Box (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2016), 56.

57 Honora Shaughnessy, telephone interview with author, August 6, 2002.

Following the demise of the Canadian League after the 1915 season and departure of the Montreal Royals of the International League in 1917, baseball promoter Joe Page dreamt of a baseball league that would cover Quebec, Ontario and even further west.1 That the Canadian Pacific company, his employer, would provide transportation for these teams probably played a part in his plans.2

After many failed attempts, the Eastern Canada League was created in 1922. While it did include teams in the two provinces, the initial league was modest in scope: to the Quebec teams in Montreal, Valleyfield, and Trois-Rivières was added a single team in Ontario – Ottawa. Still, the addition of the federal capital was seen as a stepping stone to the future addition of teams further west.

The Ottawa Senators played their first season at Lansdowne Park, initially managed by Dick Dawson. After a slow start, the team had a successful season on the field, battling until the end and finishing 2 1/2 games behind first-place Trois-Rivières. Key to the turnaround was a gutsy 14-inning complete game by young pitcher Fred Frankhouse on May 24 against Trois-Rivières.3 Frankhouse, who on his way to 106 wins in a 13-year career in the majors, won 18 games for Senators, and even hit .284 in part-time duty in the outfield. The change of fortune was also due to a string of acquisitions, including semipro slugger Paddy Hogan (.326 average in 36 games) and George Underhill from Trois-Rivières (.300 with 10 home runs in 107 games between the two teams). Hogan took up the manager role from Dawson in June, before leaving the team to report for duty in the US army.4 Catcher George Army finished the season as the manager.5 Another highlight of the season was the no-hitter thrown by Red Parkes on July 25.6 Parkes would win 40 games over his three seasons with the team.

After a relatively successful first season, Joe Page offered to merge his league with the Michigan-Ontario League.7 But not only was his offer rejected, he was in for a surprise when Ottawa officials granted exclusive use of Lansdowne Park to amateurs. Page was said to have jumped in a train to Ottawa and stormed city hall, where a tumultuous meeting took place. He was unable to change their minds.8 With no time to secure a field on such short notice, it was decided that the Ottawa club would play its games in Montreal.9 While still listed as Ottawa in the Spalding Guide and other official documentation (including Baseball-Reference to this day in 2024), the team, now known as the Canadians, would only play one regular-season game in Ottawa (another was rained out).10

The Canadians joined the Royals in Montreal, with Trois-Rivières returning, and Quebec City replacing Valleyfield. The Canadians won the first-half pennant, and when a best-of-15 championship series was organized against the second-half champions Royals, the first two games were scheduled for Ottawa. The two teams split the games played on September 5 and 6. The first game attracted 1,000 spectators, with a smaller audience witnessing the second.11

Having failed to expand west, Page went south in 1924, adding two teams in Vermont: Rutland and Montpelier. He also did manage to get some time in Lansdowne Park for the Ottawa team, who also played on Sundays across the river in Dupuis Park in Hull (now Gatineau), Québec. Adding to the confusion, this was the same franchise as the 1922 Ottawa Senators and 1923 Canadians (who played in Montreal), while a new franchise, the Montreal Canadiens, replaced Trois-Rivières. The newly minted Canadiens were owned by Léo Dandurand, also the owner of the NHL team of the same name.12 The league, now expanded to six teams, was rebranded as the Quebec-Ontario-Vermont League.

Former major leaguer Jean Dubuc, who had been a part owner of the team in 1923 while pitching for Syracuse in the International League, moved as player-manager of the newly named Ottawa-Hull Senators for 1924.13

Expectations were high, with the core of the 1923 finalist team almost intact, but as the team played around .500 ball, the wheels fell off as Dubuc suspended star slugger Frank Delisle in late June. Delisle, who hit a combined 40 home runs in 1922-23, was hitting well but was accused of indifferent play in the outfield and breaking team training rules.14 The team finished the first half in third place with a 26-25 record, a distant seven games behind Quebec City.

With the expanded travel, most teams were struggling financially, and the two Vermont teams dropped out after the first half. Ottawa-Hull, cutting its losses, sold many of its best players during the second half, notably Delisle, back after 15 games of suspension, to the Canadiens. Frank Jacobs (.338 average) and NHL player Jess Spring were also sold to the same team. The Senators finished in last place in the second half with a 20-30 record.

The lackluster play of the Senators gave ammunition to those who were opposed to the decision to bring back the professionals to Ottawa. For the second season in a row, their use of Lansdowne Park was contested, as with the upcoming annual fair, the team was warned that it would lose Lansdowne Park after September 1. This led the league to cut short its season, with Quebec City the runaway winner anyway.15 The Ottawa Citizen had already cut bait with the team, ending its coverage after an August 10 ugly incident on the field, in which players yelled obscenities at the home-plate umpire.16

At the end of the season, all teams except Quebec City were in the red.17 The next spring, the project was still in limbo in April, but when Ottawa did not even send a representative to a meeting in Montreal, it was evident that the league was dead.18 Given its tumultuous experience in the league, it is no surprise that Ottawa was without professional baseball until 1936, when it joined the Canadian-American League.

CHRISTIAN TRUDEAU is a professor of economics at the University of Windsor. He is a game theory specialist by day, and a historian of Quebec baseball by night.

SOURCES

Baseball-Reference.com was the main reference for standings and list of players, as well as the list of players constructed by the author from newspapers accounts. Many Quebec newspapers (as well as Le Droit, from Ottawa) were consulted (available on the website of the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec).

NOTES

1 “Canadian Nat’l Baseball League,” Quebec Chronicle, January 27, 1922: 6.

2 Patrick Carpentier, “Joe Page,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-page-2/, accessed July 20, 2024.

3 Gary Belleville, “May 24, 1922: Ottawa Senators’ Fred Frankhouse tosses 14-inning complete-game win over Trois-Rivières,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/may-24-1922-ottawa-senators-fred-frankhouse-tosses-14-inning-complete-game-win-over-trois-rivieres/, accessed July 20, 2024.

4 “Senators by 7-5 Beat Three Rivers,” Ottawa Citizen, June 20, 1922: 11

5 “Senator Pilot Will Be Out for Few Days,” Ottawa Citizen, August 29, 1922: 11.

6 “Parkes Credited With No-Hit Game,” Montreal Gazette, July 26, 1922: 12.

7 “M.-O. League Magnates In Session Today To Discuss Plans for 1923,” Hamilton Spectator, January 4, 1923: 16.

8 “Joe Page Bangs Bombs at Council,” Ottawa Journal, March 1, 1923: 17.

9 “Continuous Ball for Montreal,” Quebec Chronicle, March 26, 1923: 3.

10 “Canucks Beat Trios Pro Baseball Game,” Ottawa Citizen, August 18, 1923: 10.

11 “Canadians Even Count In Eastern Canada Playoff,” Ottawa Citizen, September 7, 1923: 13.

12 Patrick Carpentier and Christian Trudeau, “Léo Dandurand, nationalisme canadien-français et baseball: Quand la sainte flanelle transpose sa formule aux autres sports,” Revue du baseball canadien, Vol. 1, 2022 : 26-37.

13 This is the name found in the Spalding Guide and other official documents. The team was more often called Aces or Dubucmen in the press.

14 “Pepper Box Army Back in Action Again to Help Aces in the Weekend Fixtures,” Ottawa Citizen, June 28, 1924: 22.

15 “Sport Gossips,” The Labor World/Le Monde Ouvrier, August 23, 1924: 4.

16 “Underhill’s Three Bagger Wins Final From Canadiens,” Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 1924: 9.

17 “Fin de la saison du baseball professionnel,” Le Devoir, September 2, 1924 : 7.

18 “La ligue Québec-Ont. ne sera pas réorganisée cette année,” Le Soleil, April 13, 1925: 9.

Ottawa enjoyed a five-year fling with professional baseball between 1936 and 1940, fielding teams in the Class-C Canadian-American (Can-Am) League, which stretched across New York, Vermont, Quebec, and Ontario. While their tenures were brief and met with mixed success, these teams left their mark on baseball in the nation’s capital.

1936 OTTAWA SENATORS: A PROMISING START

The first Ottawa Senators of the Can-Am League took the field in 1936 under the ownership of Don Stapleton1 and the leadership of Walter “Wally” Masters, a 29-year-old Pennsylvania native who juggled the roles of president, business manager, and field manager. A jack-of-all-trades, he also played for the team. As he recalled in David Pietrusza’s definitive Can-Am League history, “I pitched that year, and played other positions too, even the outfield.”2 The team played their home games at Lansdowne Park, a football stadium alongside the Rideau Canal that could seat 10,000 spectators. While the stadium provided a scenic backdrop, it lacked a fundamental baseball feature: an outfield fence—at least, not to start the season.3

The Senators clinched the second-place finish in the league with a solid 53-37 record (.589). Despite making the playoffs, their season ended with a 3–1 series loss to the Brockville Pirates.4 Ultimately, the Perth Royals—who had gone by the moniker “Blue Cats” until they changed their name in July 19365 emerged victorious as league champions. Offensively, Billy Caldwell led the team with 80 runs scored, while Jimmy Nolan recorded 111 hits.6 “Nolan’s worth to his club is also reflected by his batting average of .335,” observed the Ottawa Journal.7 Masters left Ottawa at the end of the season for Philadelphia.8

1937-1938 OTTAWA BRAVES: STRUGGLES ON THE DIAMOND

In 1937, the Ottawa team rebranded as the Braves, reportedly as a way “to line up a pennant contender.”9 Unfortunately, the name change failed to translate into on-field success. Managed by player-coach Clair Forster in 1937 and George Army in 1938, the Braves struggled to find their footing, finishing eighth in the league both seasons with records of 32-75 (.299) and 38-83 (.314), respectively.10

One of the few bright spots of an otherwise dismal 1937 season was the play of first baseman Ed Mohler, a 22-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate who joined the Braves midseason. Mohler finished the season with a .305 batting average, 47 runs scored, 100 hits, 17 doubles, two triples, and five home runs. Ottawa sold him to the Boston Bees of the National League at the end of the season.11

The Braves’ 1938 campaign might have unfolded differently had they secured several key players. If the team managed to sign talented pitchers Joe Dickinson and John “Whitey” Tulacz, or trade for talented shortstop Al Tarlecki, the local press speculated the outcome of the season might have been dramatically different.12

1939 OTTAWA SENATORS: ANOTHER DISAPPOINTING SEASON

The team began 1939 as the Braves but reverted to its former Senators name when Utica joined the league and adopted the Braves moniker. This once again resulted in Ottawa’s hockey and baseball teams sharing the Senators name—a fact not lost on the local press. “There was a suggestion last night at the hockey dinner to discard calling the football team Rough Riders and hang ‘Senators’ on them, too,” quipped the Ottawa Journal. “What with the hockey and ball clubs and the Upper House [the Senate], the town has about all the senators it can well stand.”13

The name change didn’t improve their fortunes. The 1939 season proved challenging for the Senators, even under the guidance of former big-league catcher Wally Schang.14 Hired as player-manager, Schang’s contract offered a unique incentive: a weekly bonus for keeping the team in the top three, along with additional rewards tied to attendance figures.15 Despite Schang’s efforts and the financial incentives in his contract, the team finished in sixth place with a disappointing record of 55 wins and 69 losses, placing them 27 games back from the league-leading Amsterdam Rugmakers. Ottawa once again missed out on the playoffs.16

1940 OTTAWA-OGDENSBURG SENATORS: PENNANT WINNERS

The 1940 season marked a high point for Ottawa baseball in the Can-Am League. The irony was that for all its pennant-winning success, the city had to share half the glory with Ogdensburg, New York. This arrangement was necessitated by two wartime challenges. First, the Canadian army required Lansdowne Park for military training, which took precedence over baseball and would make scheduling games at the stadium next to impossible. Second, exchange rate issues stemming from the war created financial difficulties.17 As a result, owner Don Stapleton secured permission to play approximately half the team’s games across the U.S. border in Ogdensburg.18

Despite this unusual circumstance, the Ottawa-Ogdensburg club, under the leadership of 25-year-old manager Cy Morgan, finished the season in first place.19 They lost in the semi-finals in five games to the Amsterdam Rugmakers, who went on the win the league title.20 Following the loss, the owners declared the team would not be returning for the 1941 season.21

The roster featured several players who went on to play in the majors: pitchers Bill Peterman, Paul Masterson, and John “Specs” Podgajny, catcher Homer “Dixie” Howell, and infielder George Jumonville.22 “It wasn’t so much that they were a strong team, although they were,” wrote David Pietrusza. “It was that their parent club, the [Philadelphia] Phillies, was so putrid and their farm system so small, that they were willing to grab any player, anywhere, that looked halfway decent for a tryout.”23

STEVE RENNIE is a former journalist now working in the Canadian government. He grew up in the village of Osgoode, which is now part of the city, and got to see the Ottawa Lynx in their heyday. His baseball writing includes articles for the SABR Team Ownership Histories Project and an upcoming piece on the short-lived Eastern International League of 1888. In the spring of 2024, he presented on Ottawa’s early baseball history at the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, New York. He is the president of SABR’s Ottawa-Gatineau and Eastern Ontario chapter.He has a particular interest in nineteenth-century baseball in Canada and enjoys unearthing forgotten games and teams from the sport’s early history for the Centre for Canadian Baseball Research and Protoball. He lives in Ottawa with his wife Joanna and their two children.

NOTES

1 David Pietrusza, Baseball’s Canadian-American League: A History of Its Inception, Franchises, Participants, Locales, Statistics, Demise, and Legacy, 1936-1951 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 42.

2 Pietrusza, 66.

3 Pietrusza, 115.

4 “Brockville Eliminates Senators From Can-Am Playoffs,” Ottawa Journal, September 15, 1936: 16.

5 Pietrusza, 12.

6 “Can-Am League,” Baseball-Reference.com. Accessed August 2, 2024, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Can-Am_League.

7 “Can-American Leaders,” Ottawa Journal, September 23, 1926: 19.

8 “Wally Masters to Leave for Home in U.S. Shortly,” Ottawa Journal, September 30, 1936: 20.

9 “Local Baseball Club Now Known as Braves,” Ottawa Citizen, February 24, 1937: 13.

10 “Can-Am League.”

11 “Ed Mohler, Sold to Boston Bees, Ranked With Best in Can-Am Loop,” Ottawa Evening Citizen, September 11, 1937: 13.

12 “Lost Opportunities,” Ottawa Evening Citizen, September 2, 1938: 10.

13 “Senators Building for Baseball Season,” Ottawa Journal, February 14, 1939: 18.

14 “Wally Schang to Pilot Ottawa Baseball Team,” Ottawa Journal, February 7, 1939: 15.

15 “Senators Building for Baseball Season.”

16 “Can-Am League.”

17 Gary Belleville. “August 7, 1939: Ottawa Senators’ Wally Schang homers two weeks before his 50th birthday,” SABR Baseball Games Project. Accessed August 2, 2024. https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-7-1939-ottawa-senators-wally-schang-homers-two-weeks-before-his-50th-birthday/.

18 “Can-Am Directors Okay Splitting Ottawa Games with Ogdensburg in ’40,” Ogdensburg Journal, February 19, 1940: 4.

19 “Can-Am League.”

20 “Amsterdam Eliminates Senators in Fifth Game by 6–4,” Ottawa Journal, September 12, 1940: 23.

21 Jack Maunder, “Another Angle,” Ottawa Journal, September 12, 1940: 22.

22 Pietrusza, 204.

23 Pietrusza, 84.

Urban Shocker, the legendary pitcher who perfected his signature spitball while playing for the Ottawa Senators. (Ottawa Journal, September 10, 1914: 4.)

On a hot afternoon in mid-July 1920, Ottawa-trained spitball pitcher Urban Shocker of the St. Louis Browns found himself at New York City’s Polo Grounds in a showdown with Babe Ruth. At the time, most major-league pitchers had taken to just walking Ruth, who was busy breaking major-league home run records. But not Shocker. Having already struck Ruth out once, when Ruth approached the plate for a second time, Shocker turned around and motioned to the outfielders to come in closer.

In evident disbelief, they followed their pitcher’s directions and moved forward. This astounding move rattled the great batter. He swung at one of Shocker’s slow balls and missed. Shocker turned around again, motioning the outfielders in a bit closer. For a second time, a swing and a miss. A last time, Shocker turned around and motioned the outfielders to move in closer yet, guiding them almost into the infield. Once again, the terror of opposing pitchers took a swing, and missed. Ruth was out. Commentators who observed this stunt suggested perhaps Shocker had risked this delightful piece of baseball theatre—which had precisely its desired psychological effect on the batter—because he knew if Ruth hit the ball, none of the outfielders would have been able to catch it anyway.1 Like everyone else in the park, they would have watched it sail over their heads and past the stadium’s back wall.

After the game, reporters praised Shocker for his virtuoso “spitball, curve, and change of pace” with which he had tormented the Yankees, including Ruth. The media noted in particular the success of the “headwork” Shocker had used to outwit opposing batters.2 During the game Shocker struck out 14 New York batters, including Ruth (three times), in the 6 to 4 victory.3 As the New York Herald declared in its headline the next day: “38,823 Paid Fans See Shocker Tame the Babe.”4 As a spitball pitcher in the major leagues, Shocker won 187 games and lost only 117, with a 3.17 ERA and 983 strikeouts to 657 walks. This remarkable baseball player—who was once one of Babe Ruth’s most successful antagonists, before later becoming his teammate, learned how to throw his spitball in Ottawa.

THE ROAD TO OTTAWA

Urban Shocker was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 22, 1890; his siblings retained the family name of “Shockcor.” In his biography on Urban Shocker, baseball historian Steve Steinberg speculates Urban may have adopted the simplified spelling of “Shocker” because newspaper reporters were not able to get the more complicated spelling of his name right.5 He also speculates journalists may have heard him being called “Urb” and thought it was “Herb,” a name often used for him during his minor-league career, including by journalists based in Ottawa.6

Growing up in the baseball-loving city of Cleveland appears to have infected Shocker, who enjoyed playing sandlot games. Sometime around 1909 he moved to Detroit to live with his older sister, and in 1911, he joined the nearby Windsor Canucks, primarily as a catcher.7 At this time the Windsor Canucks were not yet a professional team, as they would become in 1912 with the formation of the Border League;8 however, the local papers were already taking note of Shocker’s play. On May 1 an article in the Windsor Evening Record noted that “Shocker performed in a very satisfactory manner behind the bat.”9 By June 14 a large headline in the Windsor Evening Record proclaimed, “CATCHER SHOCKER LEADS LIST OF WINDSOR’S HEAVY SLUGGERS.”10 The article noted that “the blond fellow” had been “hitting at a terrific clip all season,” achieving a .400 batting average. They opined that Shocker had shown his value in other ways as well, especially in his “coaching of the pitchers” and in his general “pepper” and “enthusiasm.”11

One day while playing with the Windsor team, Shocker broke the tip of the third finger on his right hand. In the Windsor Evening Record for June 9, 1913, reporters noted that Shocker had started to make a catch but “received a bump on the finger in the fourth inning.”12 When his finger healed, it had a hook at the last joint. In important ways, this accident would change the trajectory of Shocker’s baseball career. As Shocker would explain later, “That broken finger may not be pretty to look at but it has been very useful to me. It hooks over a baseball just right so that I can get a break on my slow ball and that’s one of the best balls I throw.”13

On an early outing as a pitcher (Shocker volunteered for the position when the team was short of pitching staff) he deeply impressed the game’s onlookers. The Windsor Evening Record reported in May 1913 that “with the form that Shocker displayed in the box on Sunday afternoon, the stock of the Windsor Border league team was given a big boost.”14 In that game, Shocker struck out 13 of the opposing batters.15 Canadian reporters watched him continue to serve as a pitcher throughout the season and were impressed by how the whole team appeared to rally naturally behind him in this role. An article appearing in the Windsor Evening Record on August 12, 1913, remarked that “If the players have confidence in a pitcher they will give him better support every time.”16 With respect to Shocker they noted: “The boys know Shocker’s capable of pitching a good game and they play behind him different than to other heavers.”17

Shocker had a 4.54 ERA with Windsor that year. The hook in the third finger of his pitching hand made a difference, giving him remarkable control. He began to develop his slow ball and worked on his curve balls. Already, at this early stage, his strikeouts to walks ratio was an impressive nearly 3 to 1. By the fall, Windsor media were making unabashed pronouncements about his promise as a pitcher. In an article published on September 19, 1913, they wrote: “‘Shock’ has a better assortment of curves, more experience, and many other little points that go to make a successful pitcher.”18

In 1914 Shocker joined the Class-B Ottawa Senators of the Canadian League, where he had the good fortune of playing under the management of Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy, who would teach him “the spitter.” Shaughnessy was a player-manager for the Senators, himself an outfielder of considerable talent. Like Shocker, he was an American; it was falling in love with a woman — Katherine Quinn from Ottawa — that brought him to the city, first to court her and then, later, when they moved there as a young family, with the first of their children, owing to her love for the place.19 Shaughnessy built baseball up into a popular sport in Ottawa observing, “All the visiting clubs were happy to come to Ottawa,” noting that they received 20 cents on admission from huge crowds and that he had solved the problem of baseball games being banned on Sundays in Ontario by booking a field across the river in Quebec.20

Observers were immediately impressed with Shocker as he began to come into his own as a pitcher under Shaughnessy’s expert mentorship. In April, a story in the Ottawa Citizen observed that “Pitcher Shocker, of the Ottawas, has a lot of electricity up his sleeve.”21 By June the Ottawa Citizen was expressing raptures about Shocker’s pitching, noting that he had been “invincible” in a game’s tightest moments.22 Shocker still lacked some basic pitching skills, however. In an interview for The Sporting News, Shaughnessy later recalled that when he first started to work with Shocker, the pitcher’s curve ball still needed work. But he also saw promise; Shag’s impression of Shocker was that he was “‘as smart as they come.’”23

One day while Shocker was sitting on the bench waiting to warm up, Shaughnessy came up to him.

“Ever tried the spitter?” Shaughnessy asked.

“No,” Shocker replied. “But I’m sure I could throw anything.”24

Shaughnessy encouraged him to try. Shocker got up and asked a teammate if he could borrow a piece of slippery elm, then he approached an older pitcher on the team and asked if he could instruct him how to throw a spitball.25 As Shaughnessy remembered, Shocker was “so clever he learned the spitter the first time he threw it.”26

Shocker tried out his new pitch for the first time in a July 19 Senators game against the St. Thomas Saints. A blazing headline in the next day’s Ottawa Journal proclaimed: “Champs Slaughtered Saints on Sunday winning 19 to 1.”27 A subheading summed up in block capitals the performance of the Senator’s pitcher: “SHOCKER TWIRLED WELL.”28 The Ottawa Citizen similarly praised Shocker for pitching “clever ball from start to finish.”29 Shag’s mentorship was already paying off. The same Citizen article noted that Shocker had “used his ‘spitter’ for the first time” in this game and “had things all his own way.”30 Shocker continued to improve his new pitch throughout the summer and by August the Citizen had begun referring to Shocker as the “Senators’ spitball artist,” noting that batters swung without effect at Shocker’s “moist ball.”31

In 1914 Shocker won 20 games with the Ottawa Senators. Throughout, he continued to hone his impressive control with, now, in addition to his slow ball developed in Windsor, his spitball learned in Ottawa. This growing arsenal of specialized pitches enabled him to strike out 158 batters that year. In September, Shocker helped lead the Senators to their third straight Canadian League title. The Senators sealed their championship on September 7 (see sidebar) and within a matter of days Shocker was called up to try out for the majors.

The Ottawa Citizen reported, “Pitcher Shocker goes to Detroit Tigers and will get a trial immediately,” referring to him in the article’s subtitle as the “Canadian League ‘Iron Man.’”32 The Citizen also commented on Shocker’s character and general contributions to the team describing him as the “most willing pitcher who has ever worn the Ottawa spangles,” and a “thorough gentleman on and off the field.”33 The Citizen pointed out that Shocker’s rapid movement up the ranks that season had taken place mainly owing to his improvement as a pitcher, beginning in “the middle of the season, when he began working on his spitball.”34

The Ottawa Journal similarly trumpeted the news. In their article they included a dramatic photograph of Shocker mid-pitch while wearing his Senator’s uniform with its prominent white “O.” A caption above the photo read: “PITCHER URBAN SHOCKER, who will receive a tryout with the Detroit Tigers;” to which they added, “Shocker was easily the class of the Senator’s twirling staff.”35 Shocker did not make it into the majors on that occasion and ended up returning to Ottawa. With his expert support, the Senators won the Canadian League pennant again in 1915.

Meanwhile, scouts for the major leagues had continued to watch what was happening with Shocker. An article in the Detroit Free Press in August 1915 proclaimed, “Shocker Fairly Burned Up the Canadian Circuit During Month of July.”36 The same article said the next time the team was on the road a National League scout intended to check out “the young spitballer.”37 Shocker was recruited at the conclusion of the 1915 season by the New York Yankees and never returned to the Senators. However, he did make a return trip to Ottawa in October 1916 as a participant in an exhibition game between Tris Speaker’s All-Star American Leaguers and a team of “Internationals” (for whom Shocker played) in Lansdowne Park. An article in the Ottawa Citizen noted that Shocker— had enjoyed a “flashy season” with the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Yankees. The article said Shocker was held up before his first trip to the plate to be presented with a gold locket from “local admirers,” for which he bowed his thanks.38

SHOCKER’S SPITBALL IN THE MAJORS

After his major-league debut on April 24, 1916 with the New York Yankees, Shocker spent some time optioned by the Yankees, who had a pitching surplus, to the International League. In this way Shocker ended up playing again in Canada, this time in Toronto.39 After spectacular play for the Maple Leafs that summer he was recalled by the Yankees, and in the spring of 1917 Baseball Magazine included Shocker in its list of the most promising major-league recruits.40 In January 1918 Shocker found himself traded by the Yankees to the St. Louis Browns as part of a multi-player deal. It was for the Browns from 1918-24 and then with the New York Yankees from 1925-28 that Urban Shocker served out his career in the majors.41

When the Browns acquired Shocker from the Yankees in 1918, a St. Louis sports reporter raved about the hurler’s “wicked spitball.”42 The Ottawa press had not forgotten Shocker’s connections to the city, and local coverage of this trade noted that the deal had almost been scuttled by the Yankees’ unwillingness to let Shocker go. Ottawa sports writers proudly claimed Shocker as part of Ottawa’s baseball history by referring to him in their coverage of the trade as an “Ex-Ottawa Heaver”43 and “the former Ottawa spit baller.”44

In 1920, for a variety of reasons – including wishing to recalibrate the relationship between batters and pitchers for a higher scoring game – major-league baseball’s club owners agreed to ban “trick” pitches, a list in which, with some debate, they considered including the spitball.45 The league’s spitball pitchers protested this anticipated change noting that they had acquired this specialization when the throw was legal. An example of the arguments made appears in the November 25, 1920 edition of The Sporting News in which Burleigh Grimes—the “Brooklyn Moist Ball Artist”—argued that it was unfair to suddenly remove from a pitcher’s repertoire something that had been a legal throw, and a skill, that for most spitballers good enough to throw in the majors, had taken 10-15 years to perfect.46

For his part, Shocker reacted to the proposed spitball ban by saying that he felt he would be fine since he used the spitball sparingly, and mainly “only in the pinches” although he also added that he bluffed it frequently.47 Although major-league baseball’s owners ultimately decided that the spitball should be included in the list of banned trick pitches, in a concession to the arguments made by the spitball pitchers, they decided that those hurlers for whom the spitball was an important pitch would be grandfathered, and therefore able to continue to use this pitch. Shocker was among the 17 spitballers to whom this exemption applied.48

Throughout his time in the major leagues—which included playing for the World Series-winning 1927 Yankees—Shocker persistently impressed onlookers with his pitching smarts and range of pitching styles, including his Ottawa-derived spitter. An article in a September 13, 1924 St. Louis newspaper was typical of sports coverage of the 1920s in its praise of Shocker’s ability to learn the batters’ individual styles and getting them to “hit at pitches tossed to their weaknesses.”49 This intellectual form of pitching was something they described as the key to his “puzzling effectiveness.”50 Similarly in 1922, in its coverage of a Browns/Yankees match (with Shocker playing for the Browns) the New York Times reported that Shocker had risen to “magnificent heights in the pinches” and that his control was perfect as his “spitball broke across the corners, and a puzzling slow ball floated past Yankees’ bats.”51

In 1926, in assessing Shocker’s value as a pitcher, reporters for The Sporting News suggested Shocker was “worth his weight in diamonds,” noting the “big spitball expert” had become a Yankee mainstay.52 And when Burleigh Grimes, who was the last legal spitballer in the majors, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1964, he was asked who, in his opinion, had been the best spitball pitcher. Grimes responded that it had been Urban Shocker, “because he had everything else to go with it.”53

In 1928 the Yankees were forced to release Shocker owing to his by then obvious health issues. Shortly before his unconditional release from the team, in an interview with The Sporting News Shocker revealed that for the previous two years he’d had to sleep sitting up because lying down, even a little, choked him.54 He’d been suffering from–and playing through–heart failure. He died in Denver, Colorado on September 9, 1928 at the age of 37.

The next day, the Ottawa Journal ran a story about Shocker’s death under the headline “Heilmann Grieves at Death of Friend: Pays Tribute to Urban Shocker as one of the greatest right-handers.”55 Harry Heilmann, a champion batter with Detroit of the American League, described Shocker in this article as “the greatest right-handed pitcher of the last decade.”56 The article also mentioned Shocker’s Canadian apprenticeship, as someone who had played in both Toronto and Ottawa.

Ultimately, it was that initial training in Ottawa, under Shaughnessy, when Shocker had played for the Senators that had helped shape him into the kind of major-league pitcher he became at his best—as he was that day in July 1920 in front of a record crowd of 38,823 fans at the Polo Grounds when he bested the Babe. An unbeatable force, he tossed the ball with such controlled mastery observers said it “jumped away from the Yankee bats like a grasshopper.”57 At that moment, Shocker was at the top of his game, using the skills he’d fine-tuned during his formative years in Ottawa, to tame some of the game’s greatest batters, including Ruth. Commenting especially on the potency of his Ottawa-originating spitball, awed New York scribes remarked, “the slippery ball never cut such capers at Shocker’s command before.”58

SHARON HAMILTON is the chair of the Society for American Baseball Research’s (SABR) Century Research Committee, which celebrates important milestones in baseball history. She served as project manager for the special 100th anniversary SABR Century 1921 project at SABR.org and for the web project on Jackie Robinson and the 75th anniversary of baseball’s re-integration.

NOTES

1 “How’s this for a Star Battery?” The Sporting News, July 22, 1920: 3.

2 “38,823 Paid Fans See Shocker Tame the Babe,” New York Herald, July 14, 1920: 11.

3 “Shocker’s Hurling in First Game Gives Browns Split with Yankees,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 14, 1920: 7.

4 “38,823 Paid Fans See Shocker Tame the Babe,” New York Herald, July 14, 1920: 11.

5 Steve Steinberg, Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), ebook.

6 Steinberg, Urban Shocker.

7 Steinberg, Urban Shocker. Steinberg notes that Shocker also played for some Southern Michigan League teams during this period as well.

8 “1912 Border League,” https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/league.cgi?id=e19fecf2, Accessed September 4, 2023.

9 “Windsor Takes a Game of Detroit,” Evening Record (Windsor), May 1, 1911: 1.

10 “Catcher Shocker Leads List of Windsor’s Heavy Sluggers,” Evening Record (Windsor), June 14, 1911: 2.

11 “Catcher Shocker Leads List of Windsor’s Heavy Sluggers.”

12 “Windsor Loses to Both Ypsi. and Port Huron” Evening Record (Windsor), June 9, 1913: 3.

13 Baseball Magazine, January 1921, 381 qtd. in Joseph Wancho, “Urban Shocker,” Society for American Baseball Research, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/urban-shocker/, Accessed April 9, 2023.

14 “Shocker Made Good in Box,” Evening Record (Windsor), May 20, 1913: 3.

15 “Shocker Made Good in Box.”

16 M. R. Winters, “Team Plays Behind Shocker,” Evening Record (Windsor), August 12, 1913: 3.

17 “Team Plays Behind Shocker.”

18 “Windsor Plays First Rugby Game Sept. 17,” Evening Record (Windsor), September 19, 1913: 5.

19 See, David McDonald, “Frank Shaughnessy: The Ottawa Years,” Our Game, Too: Influential Figures and Milestones in Canadian Baseball, Andrew North, editor (Phoenix, Arizona: Society for American Baseball Research, 2022), ebook.

20 “The Frank Shaughnessy Story,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1960: 18.

21 “Canadian Ball League Race Will be in Full Swing Two Weeks from Today,” Ottawa Citizen, April 24, 1914: 8.

22 “Ottawas Began Important Home Series with Shutout Victory over Hamilton ‘Doc’ Yeats and his Tigers Beaten 6-0,” Ottawa Citizen, June 26, 1914: 8.

23 The Frank Shaughnessy Story,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1960: 18.

24 This dialogue is recreated based on Shaughnessy’s description of this exchange in “The Frank Shaughnessy Story.”

25 “The Frank Shaughnessy Story.”

26 “The Frank Shaughnessy Story.”

27 “Champs Slaughtered Saints on Sunday winning 19 to 1,” Ottawa Journal, July 20, 1914: 5.

28 “Champs Slaughtered Saints on Sunday winning 19 to 1.”

29 “Senators Avenged Saturday’s Waterloo by Burying St. Thomas Pitchers Under Avalanche of Hard Hits in Final Clash,” Ottawa Citizen, July 20, 1914: 8.

30 “Senators Avenged Saturday’s Waterloo by Burying St. Thomas Pitchers Under Avalanche of Hard Hits in Final Clash.”

31 “Heavy Hitting and Good Pitching in Pinches Resulted in Double Win on Saturday,” Ottawa Citizen, August 24, 1914, 8.

32 “Pitcher Shocker goes to Detroit Tigers and will get a trial immediately,” Ottawa Citizen, September 10, 1914: 8.

33 “Pitcher Shocker goes to Detroit Tigers and will get a trial immediately.”

34 “Pitcher Shocker goes to Detroit Tigers and will get a trial immediately.”

35 “Shocker to get tryout by Detroit Tigers,” Ottawa Journal, September 10, 1914: 4.

36 “Former Local Mound Artist Making Good,” Detroit Free Press, August 15, 1915: 19.

37 “Former Local Mound Artist Making Good.”

38 “With Urban Shocker in box Royals Turned Tables on Americans in Final Game,” Ottawa Citizen, October 10, 1916: 9.

39 For more on Shocker’s time in Toronto see Steve Steinberg, “A Shocker on the Island,” Dominionball: Baseball Over the 49th (Cleveland, Ohio: SABR, 2005), and Sharon Hamilton, “The Canadian Apprenticeship of Jazz Age Baseball Superstar Urban Shocker,” Journal of Canadian Baseball vol 2: no. 1 (2023) https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/jcb/article/view/8348/5632

40 J. C. Kofoed, “The Youngsters of 1917,” Baseball Magazine, August 1917: 434.

41 In the midst of his major-league play, Shocker was also called up for the draft. He served in France with the 340th Regiment of the 85th Infantry Division from the summer of 1918 until the spring of 1919. Biographer Steve Steinberg believes he likely did not experience combat.

42 Sid C. Keener, “Browns Trade Pratt and Plank to Yankees,” St. Louis Times, January 22, 1918, qtd. in Steinberg.

43 “Urban Shocker Goes to St. Louis Browns,” Ottawa Journal, January 23, 1918: 10.

44 “Yanks didn’t want to give up Shocker,” Ottawa Journal, January 24, 1918: 8.

45 For a detailed overview on the banning of trick pitches, including the spitball, in 1920 see Steve Steinberg, “The Spitball and the End of the Deadball Era,” https://sabr.org/research/article/the-spitball-and-the-end-of-the-deadball-era/. Accessed April 9, 2023. This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 23 (2003). For an examination of how this rule change affected Shocker while he played for the Browns see Rick Huhn, The Sizzler: George Sisler, Baseball’s Forgotten Great (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 81-86.

46 “Burleigh Grimes as Pleader for Spitters,” The Sporting News, November 25, 1920: 3.

47 Sid C. Keener Browns, “Spitball Hurlers use more Speed and Wider Curve with Ban on Freak Shoots,” St. Louis Times (St. Louis, Missouri), March 4, 1920. Qtd. in Steinberg.

48 Although Shocker threw a variety of pitches, and said he used the spitter only sparingly and mainly in a game’s tightest moments, he clearly viewed this pitch as a key tool in his arsenal and was among the 17 pitchers who asked in 1920 when the new rules against trick pitches were introduced that they be exempted from the prohibition on the spitball. This exemption was granted to Shocker and the others who applied for it in 1920, and this exemption was later made permanent, lasting for each one of these spitters until the end of their careers (see Steinberg: “the seventeen veterans who had registered for the 1920 one-year exemption.”).

49 “Shocker is in Form and Browns Shut Out Indians, 5 to 0,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri), September 13, 1924: 9.

50 “Shocker is in Form and Browns Shut Out Indians, 5 to 0.”

51 “Yankees Outluck Browns in Opener,” New York Times, July 12, 1922: S16.

52 Joe Vila, “Yank Boss makes a few ‘Mind Bets’” The Sporting News, July 29, 1926: 3.

53 Ed Rumill, “Shocker Threw Best Spitball,” Christian Science Monitor, July 30, 1964 qtd. in Steinberg.

54 Arthur Mann, “Gamest of the Game,” The Sporting News, August 11, 1938: 3.

55 “Heilman Grieves at Death of Friend: Pays Tribute to Urban Shocker as one of the greatest right-handers,” Ottawa Journal, Sept. 10, 1928: 16.

56 “Heilman Grieves at Death of Friend: Pays Tribute to Urban Shocker as one of the greatest right-handers.”

57 “38,823 Fans See Yanks Break Even,” New York Times, July 14, 1920: 11.

58 “38,823 Fans See Yanks Break Even.”