The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Baseball's Unknown History in Ontario

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Baseball fans will know the stories of the game's development by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. But author William Humber's latest book "Old Ontario at Bat: Baseball's Unheralded Ancestry" explores baseball's independent growth and development in the province of Ontario. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your 2-point TBO. Casual fans may think that baseball in Ontario began with the arrival of Major League Baseball's Blue Jays in 1977. Not so. Not by a long shot.

The first organized baseball in this province was played in the 18th century. And rather than being something imported from the United States, author William Humber says the game had its own birth and growth independent from whatever Abner Doubleday came up with in Cooperstown, New York. It's all chronicled in Bill's new book, Old Ontario at Bat, Baseball's Unheralded Ancestry. And we're delighted that it brings William Humber back to this studio.

And I say back to this studio because those with long memories, well remember you were part of the sports panel that we did here on Studio Two. Absolutely. Most Monday nights for a long time. With Stephen Brunt and Mary Ormsby and people, I recall them very well.

It's great to see you again. And let's just hit this premise right off the top, shall we? The conventional wisdom has always been that baseball started in New York state and somehow got imported to the province of Ontario and Canada in the mid-19th century. True or false? False.

Even Stephen Harper, in his otherwise really good book about hockey, referred to baseball as the American importation. But not true, Stephen. and he wasn't the first many have said that over the years it it developed as a folk game in Ontario the same way it did in the United States and went through the modernization process probably around the time of the 1820s 30s until we know the game as as it is today became really kind of popular in the press in the mid 1850s

and from then on takes off as the game as we know it today. We do love our myths though because the myth of baseball being imported up here and the myth of baseball being started by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York, which I gather also is not true. Oh, fraudulent. Totally fraudulent. Totally fraudulent. Totally fraudulent, yeah. Made up by Albert Spaulding who was hoping to prove that baseball had an American origin not as in fact was the case an English origin. The word baseball actually appears in English works in the

18th century as you well mentioned. Not only did George III, the fellow against whom Americans rose up in rebellion, play the game with his father, but so did his father, the then Prince of Wales who died in 1851. So lots of accounts of them playing what was essentially a folk game, a game that you would make up on a playground just for fun. Okay. I mean, I've got to ask this because a lot of what you talk about in this book is going

back a long way. Yes it is. So you've got the earliest account of baseball in Ontario being played in 1792. Yes. And I guess the question is, how do you know? Well, it's a dubious account, but nevertheless the accountant in 1860 said that the Duke of Kent was visiting Upper Canada, Niagara, in 1792, just after Upper Canada become Upper Canada, having split from Quebec as it turned out, and was given a game of baseball to watch by Joseph Brandt and his people.

We're kind of uncertain whether it's legit or not, but look, the account in 1860 said baseball and there is an account of a game in New Brunswick a year after that so we know the game in its popular form was being played and certainly our early accounts from 1803 would validate that yeah baseball was here at that time. But some of the games that you've described there I mean the scores were 45 to 13 or 30 to 25 yeah you don't see those kinds of scores today so do we assume that it was a very different kind of game?

It was and even the New York game which became in effect the popular game of baseball by the mid 1850s you could say. What it did was it did away with what was called plugging and plugging meant that a runner between bases if you threw the ball at him and it connected, he was out. Well, that meant you had to use a very soft ball, for obvious reasons. The New York game allowed a much harder ball to be introduced into the game. And that essentially became the game as we know it today. But pitchers were told that they were much closer to the plate.

They had to throw underhand. They had to throw where the batter wanted the ball thrown, high or low. Fielders did not have gloves. So it's amazing the scores were as low as they were if you think about it. Okay. I also, Sheldon, you want to bring this graphic up, this next one, because this is from a newspaper article. Here we are. We're going to see it. And there, right at the very top, is the word baseball. But it's not one word, it's two words. Yes. Was that base-ball different from baseball? No.

It was just the way they spelled it in those days. Football was the same. It was a two-worded game. And in fact, the earliest spelling of baseball wasn't even base-B-A-S-E, it was B-A-S-S. It was an English spelling. It was essentially the game as we think of it today. It was a game with a ball, it was a game with bases

that you ran between. Whether they used a bat or not or what kind of club they used will probably never be certain because it wasn't a big game. It wasn't an official game. It wasn't anything that people took seriously in those days. It was just for fun. Was it more like cricket? It stole one thing from cricket.

And that was the earliest games in Ontario, certainly those played in 1819 and 1838 that we know about in Hamilton and in Beechville. It had a 360 degree playing surface. So you could literally hit the ball anywhere you wanted. And truly, the revolutionary character of the New York game was that they they reduced the the grounds effect to a 90 degree game such as we know today I've often told people I was at an international cricket match in London at Lord's Cricket Ground Watching a game of cricket and I was amazed how far from the field I was because it's a 360 degree game

how far from the field I was, because it's a 360 degree game. OK. Anybody who follows basketball knows that a Canadian invented basketball. Of course. James Naismith. Yes. Who's the James Naismith of Ontario baseball? Well, the guy I give the most credit to

is William Shuttleworth. But in saying that, I would say he did not invent it. The game was already here, had been played for a long time, was already a popular game, but certainly made the game popular in Hamilton. That's a picture of him right there. Which one is him? He's the one on the left, the shorter man.

Shorter man, and with the baseball bat in his hand. Yes. And is he wearing a bow tie or what's he wearing? Well, those were the costumes that they put on in those days. They were still kind of trying to invent the baseball costume, as they were. And what did he do in Hamilton, Ontario in 1854 that was so important?

He started a formal team. Up until then, the game had been informal. It was played sporadically. In fact, it was played on militia mustard day on the 4th of June, at least on two accounts way before 1854. But he kind of institutionalized it. He made it possible. Newspapers started reporting the game.

He took the game on tour. He played in one of the first international. In fact, the first international baseball game ever played, and Americans are baffled by this. It wasn't played in the United States. It was played in what we now know as Niagara Falls, Canada, which was then known as Clifton. And poor Americans could never find where Clifton was on the map. And all they had to do was look across the river

back in 1860 when a team from Buffalo and a team from Hamilton played that first game. William Shuttelworth, is there anything anywhere in Canada, a plaque, a statue, something to acknowledge his contribution to this game? Well, not that I'm aware of, nor is there a plaque to honor that first international baseball game ever played. And intriguingly to honor that first international baseball game ever played and intriguingly the first ever

International hockey game was played in the in the United States in Burlington, Vermont So, you know our national game as we know it today gets credit in the States their national game Is that they like to call it was played first internationally in Canada So the first formal baseball clubs were formed in the 1850s. In what cities in Ontario? Well, the big city at first was Hamilton, but it was soon surpassed by Woodstock. And Woodstock reigned throughout pretty well all the 1860s, except for 10 days when Little Ingersoll, their rivals,

you know, in many respects, won the championship, which of course they in those days called the Championship of Canada, when in fact no team won the championship, which of course they in those days called the Championship of Canada, when in fact no team basically east of Kingston ever played in any of these championship games, and unwisely let Woodstock back into the tournament as it were to challenge them again. But Guelph really took off with the championship in the 1870s to be surpassed by London eventually in about 1870s to be surpassed by London eventually in the

about 1876. No disrespect to these cities or towns but you have not mentioned the biggest cities in the province yet. Did they not have teams? Well the Hamilton Spectator of all papers noted in 1881, oh finally the Globe and Mail is writing, the Globe as he's then known, is writing about baseball and as a historian you're always frustrated when you look at the globe and there's so little about baseball. It appears that Toronto was more enamored with cricket. They had a great cricket ground, a care hall, as it was called.

And it was only by the 1880s that they got into the game. Had they got into the game earlier, it's more than likely the National League would have come calling. Baseball would have probably been a professional game in the big city because they wanted big cities in the league, the National League did. And who knows how Canadian sports history would have changed. Because the National League started in the 1876. Okay and you think there was the possibility that Toronto could have had a National League Major

League baseball team then? Albert Spalding was a huge promoter of Toronto. He couldn't understand why the city didn't have it. There was a fellow, Lemuel Felcher, I believe his name was, who talked about putting a team in the National League around 1885 and said, I don't think we're ready for it yet. Well, it turned out if we weren't ready then, we're going to have to wait a heck of a long time. A year later, he was arrested for a felonious activity that got him thrown in prison. So maybe it was a good thing they didn't. We waited another 100 years for Major League Baseball

to come here. Yes, we did. Not to Montreal, but to Toronto. Right. OK, so there's a team in Hamilton in 1861 called the Hamilton Maple Leafs. Yes. Is there any connection between that team

and the eventual Toronto Maple Leaf baseball team, which played at the foot of Bathurst Street, and which actually still exists in inner county baseball? Absolutely. The name still exists, obviously. The Maple Leaf name was first used by that Hamilton team because the original name of the Hamilton team were the Young Canadians. And Woodstock took on that name, and that name and Hamilton thought we don't want to be you know confused with them so we're gonna call ourselves the Maple

Leafs. Toronto did have a Maple Leaf team it was a cricket team so that preceded you know I mean you know the Hamilton the Toronto Maple Leafs as baseball team far preceded of course the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team which as you know we well know, were known as the St. Patrick's before they were the Maple Leafs. So Toronto and our sports history is kind of full of these little oddities, you might say.

Was the baseball they were playing then professional or amateur? It was probably best thought of as semi-professional. In other words, Woodstock had the best team and were bringing in, and so were Guelph. They were bringing in American professionals by the 1870s, but they were pretending to be amateur. Well, no American professional is going to come to Canada to play baseball and do it for free for the honor of Guelph or Woodstock. So they would be given a

sinister, some form of, you know, job, a local payment under the table, and so they could always pretend to be amateur. But fully professional teams in Ontario are here by 1876 in Guelph and London. And what kind of crowds would show up to watch them play? Well, the big audience, they would say, would be 8,000 to 10,000 people. Further study has probably revealed

that maybe it was half that. But 4,000 or 5,000 people is still a pretty decent sized crowd. And when London won the International Association Championship, which I argue is a rival to the, was a significant major league rival to the National League, they were drawing crowds of up to four or five thousand people in their early days. You referenced earlier in our conversation, June the 4th, as being a big date and a big deal. How come?

Well, it was Militia Muster Day. And it was put in place by Sergi Carlton. And he did it largely to ensure that the repetition of the War of 1812 would at least find Canadian men ready to take up arms. So it was a training day, ostensibly. They didn't have that much equipment. And so they would march around for a couple of hours

on the 4th of June and celebrate King George III's birthday, I might add. Same day. Yeah, same day. Absolutely. They would march around and then basically as an excuse to get drunk in the afternoon. And they'd play baseball.

And we have at least two accounts of old-fashioned baseball being played on that day, 1819 in Hamilton, as I say, and 1838 in Beechville. At some point, American professionals are recruited to come to Canada to play. Yes. How accepted or controversial was that? As long as they pretended that they were amateurs,

nobody seemed to worry about it. It was enough to simply say that they were defending the honor of Ingersoll or Guelph or Woodstock and as long as the Towns was winning games and was happy with that, the first guy we have is a guy named Sam Jackson who had played for the Boston Red Stockings, not the Boston Red Sox of today. They are essentially the Atlanta Braves of today if one follows the journey as it were. And he had to pretend that he was running a business in Guelph when he came to town, but everybody knew he was there for the money.

There was a guy named George Sleeman who played baseball. The beer guy? Yes, yes. Same family? Yes, he is the guy. He's the guy who started Sleeman who played baseball. The beer guy? Yes, yes. Same family? Yes, he is the guy. He's the guy who started Sleeman Brewery. He started the brewery and was a great promoter of baseball and Guelph took the team to the big tournament in Watertown, New York where they won a championship in 1874.

They defeated amongst other teams, Guelph did, the Ku Klux Klan Club of Oneida, New York. I mean, hard to believe these teams could exist. And he flourished for a couple of years as the director, as it were, of the owner, for want of a better term, of the Gwell Maple Leafs. Unfortunately, the Prohibition Movement put them out of the beer business, and it's only been in the last 40 years that they've come back as it were but under the Sleeman name and you know still within at least at the time when they came back they were still

within the Sleeman family I believe they've been sold to out-of-country interests since then. Let's look beyond the kind of men's semi-professional baseball that you write about in this book and to that end we've had Heidi LM Jacobs in that chair because we did a show with her on the book that she wrote about the Chatham colored all-stars. So black baseball is finally getting its due in terms of the history books. But what about women's baseball or indigenous baseball? How widespread was that at the time?

Well, I mean, I have two accounts in the book. One of a team being formed in Guelph in 1872, a women's team. And two years later at a place called Dutton near Lake Erie, they were forming a baseball team, a women's baseball team. There was a team from the Tuscaroras, from the Six Nations, who played in a baseball tournament in the mid-1870s. So the game was already, in effect effect percolating throughout the entire province. Everybody wanted to play baseball of all ages. The first all-black team we know about in Ontario was 1869. Wow. Many many many years you know before even the

Chatham All-Stars and they were known as the Lincoln Nine in honor obviously of Abraham Lincoln. They played out of London, Ontario. But how much, for example, if there was an indigenous team, would they have played a so-called white team or a black team? They did in the tournament. The intriguing thing is that the 1869 black tournament, they were not invited, shall we say,

to perform in the mainstream tournament that was being held. Whereas the indigenous team, the Tuscaroras, shall we say, to perform in the mainstream tournament that was being held, whereas the indigenous team, the Tuscaroras, did play and finished third in this tournament that was held. Okay, I want to quote John Thorne. He is, of course, one of the great baseball historians, and he says, we should not confuse the absence of evidence for the evidence of absence. The great little quote.

It is a great line. So having said that, what kind of original source material could you get your hands on to write this book? Well, one of them was the diary of Eli Plater from 1803 talking about playing ball in what was then New York, Toronto. A lot of the accounts, of course, are long after the fact, which is always a frustration with researchers. So you have to try and compare what they were talking about long after the fact with what in fact we know about the time. So the 1838 diagram, for instance, that Adam Ford did of a Beechville diagram, in fact,

was replicated not quite the same way in a book in 1914 called Baldum in the US. And there's enough similarities between them that we can say that one kind of validates and verifies the other. But a lot of times with research you have to kind of work backwards from what we do know to what in fact we've been able to find out since then in remembrances in other accounts that have come to us. Why are you so interested in a period of time and a game that you obviously could never have seen and never experienced? Well I often say I never saw games in the 1920s and that was a baseball interest too. You know what, it was largely because when I would go to 19th century baseball conferences with my American friends,

they had an inability to cross the border. And it was like those old weather maps that you sometimes saw in USA Today, where the weather would hit Detroit, disappear in Ontario, and then reappear on the American side of the border. And to me, there was just as much material north of the border as there was south. It's not a Canadian separate from the United States.

It's kind of integrated. We're sharing ideas. We're going back and forth. It's how other games develop, like football, basketball, et cetera. It was a sharing across the border. But we were always, until at least 1880, controlling the game ourselves.

It was our game. The New York Papers would refer to it as the Canadian game. There was no question that we wanted to see the game ourselves. It was our game. The New York papers would refer to it as the Canadian game. There was no question that we wanted to see the game. As we have done with football, we've retained that kind of separate distinction from the United States throughout our entire history. In baseball, that began to fade by the 1880s, and we really became integrated into the American, you know, the larger North American system of baseball. Any theories as to why we seem to be very adamant about making sure we get our hockey history right? We still of course have a distinctive football game up here that is different from the Americans, but baseball we've kind of allowed that to lag. Why is that? I think it's because baseball has largely a North-South flow. In other words, people in

New England tend to be Boston Red Sox fans. It's a natural thing. People on the West Coast tend to gravitate to Pacific coast teams. And in fact, the first baseball in Victoria and Vancouver, we're aware of, they weren't playing across Canada. They were playing down the coast in San Francisco and Los Angeles and places like that. And I think that's been the history. Our first national team, the first time we ever put a national baseball team together,

given its long history in Canada, wasn't until 1967 at the Pan American games in Winnipeg. My last question for you is admittedly a bit of a speculative one. So here we go. What do you think the people who played this game one and 200 years ago would make of what's happening today, namely players from all over the world playing in dome stadiums, playing in some cases on artificial grass, played by men, some of whom make a billion Canadian dollars

to play this game? Well, on the one hand they'd be astounded but I think more deeply they would be surprised at how similar in many respects and the feeling of the excitement associated with the game was to the games that they were playing. The rules were very different you know the uniforms were different they many cases they didn't have gloves but in its essence it was baseball as kind of we experience it today and have that feeling you know so when I go to the

Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and in St. Mary's you know we honor that 200 years or more of history and they're the people that are distributing the book and I said good for them they you know they they recognize that history and and I'm thrilled to be able to tell that story in a more fulsome way. You ever met Stephen Harper? I have briefly met him when he came to Bowmanville, where I live, to start a hockey museum that we had in Bowmanville.

And did you? It was very brief. Did you have an argument with him? I did not. You did not? I think it was pre his hockey books. Oh, okay. So in fairness to him, he made the comment and he was not alone.

The Canadian Forum said when we bow down to Babe Ruth, you know, we're showing we're part of the American Empire. That was in the 1920s, you know. So we've had this kind of prevailing attitude for a long, long time in Canada and it's about time we got over it. That's my feeling. If I see him again, I'll give him a copy of your book. Excellent. Old Ontario at Bat, baseball's unheralded ancestry. And we are delighted that it has brought William Humber to our studio today. Bill, thanks so much. Great to see you again.

Great to be here. And it's available through the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Mary's, Ontario. Excellent.