Northern Sandlots : A Social History of Maritime Baseball [1 ed.] 9781442677784, 9780802069429

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Northern Sandlots A Social History of Maritime Baseball Nortliern Sandlots is the story of the rise and fall of regional baseball on the north-east coast of North America. Colin Howell writes about the social and economic influence of baseball on community life in the Maritimes and New England during the past century, from its earliest spread from cities and towns into the countryside, to the advent of television, and the withering of local semi-pro leagues after the Second World War. The history of sport is an important feature of the 'new' social history. Howell discusses how baseball has been deeply implicated in debates about class and gender, race and ethnicity, regionalism and nationalism, work and play, and the commercialization of leisure. Baseball's often overlooked connection to medical and religious discourse is also explored. Howell begins with the game's earliest days, when it was being moulded by progressive reformers to meet what they considered to be the needs of an emerging industrial society. He then turns to the interwar years, when baseball in the Maritimes was strictly amateur, revealing an emerging sense of community solidarity and regional identity. The game flourished at the community level after the Second World War, before it eventually succumbed to the new, commodified, and nationally marketed sporting culture that accompanied the development of the modern consumer society. Finally, Howell shows that fundamental changes in the nature of capitalism after the war, and in the economic and social reality of small towns and cities, hastened the death of a century-long tradition of competitive, community-level baseball. Howell has written an informative and insightful social history that examines the transformation of Maritime community life from the i86os to the mid-twentieth century. COLIN HOWELL is a member of the Department of History, Saint Mary's University.

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Northern

Sandlots A Social History of Maritime Baseball

COLIN D. HOWELL

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com ©

University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-5011-5 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-6942-8 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Howell, Colin D., 1944Northern sandlots : a social history of Maritime baseball Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-5011-5 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-6942-8 (pbk.) 1. Baseball - Maritime Provinces - History. 2. Maritime Provinces - Social life and customs. I. Title. GV863.15.M37H6 1995

796-35/O9715

C95-93O193-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To ray father in loving memory

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Contents

PREFACE ix

1 Laying Out the Field: Theoretical Approaches 3 2 First Innings: Baseball, Cricket, and the Bourgeois Ideal of Healthful Sport 13 3 New Players: Baseball and Working-Class Culture 37 4 Throw 'em Out': Rowdyism, Respectability, and the Yankee Baseballist 55 5 Gendered Baselines: The Tour of the Chicago Blackstockings 74 6 A Manly Sport: Baseball and the Social Construction of Masculinity 97 7 Reforming the Game: Baseball in the Progressive Era 120 8 Baseball as Civic Accomplishment: Regionalism, Nationalism, and Community Identity 146 9 The 'Others': Race, Ethnicity, and Community Baseball 171 10 Extra Innings: The Eclipse of Community Baseball 196 Post-Game Reflections 227 NOTES 233 INDEX 28l PHOTO CREDITS 287

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Preface

Some time ago, when I first contemplated writing a social history of baseball in Atlantic Canada, a dear friend and colleague raised an initial challenge. 'Why baseball and not hockey?' she asked. What a strange question, I thought, akin to asking why someone writing a book about fish wasn't studying oil. It quickly dawned on me, however, that what had prompted her question was the assumption that baseball was an American sport, and that hockey was quintessentially Canadian. Ironically, this dichotomy is what attracted me to the topic in the first place. How was it that baseball, an American game, became the most popular summer sport in the Maritimes during the latter half of the nineteenth century? What social purposes did it serve, and what local conditions nurtured its growth? In short, how did the history of baseball in the north-eastern corner of the continent at once replicate and diverge from the patterns of its development elsewhere? From the beginning, baseball appealed to me because of its connection to larger issues, issues that transcended regional and national boundaries, yet resonated within a local context. Clearly, baseball's development in the Maritimes derived much of its energy from the forces that drew the Maritimes and New England together over the years. At the same time, baseball developed at a time of significant social and economic transformation, when class and gender relations were in flux, when new ways of organizing work and play were being put into place, and when new assumptions about individual and social well-being and healthiness were being articulated. I was interested in the way that baseball was implicated in broader discourses involving respectable behaviour, masculinity and femininity, regionalism and nationalism, and class, ethnicity, and race. What follows is an attempt

x Preface to unravel those discourses and their connection to the constantly shifting patterns of production, consumption, and commercialization that accompanied the transformation of capitalism and of sport over the past century. Long before I thought seriously about questions of this sort, I had been a fan of baseball. Some of my earliest memories involve days with my father and grandfather at the ballpark in Kentville, a small town in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, watching the semi-pro Wildcats play other teams in the Halifax and District Baseball League during the 19505. Although these clubs were stocked mainly with American players from New England and the Carolinas, what seemed more important at the time was that the local ballpark served as a focal point of community identity and civic pride. Now and then there were those who questioned the reliance on American players and worried about the limited opportunity left for good local players to develop their talents, but in the friendly afterglow of the Second World War the links between the Maritimes and New England remained as strong as they had ever been. In addition to the American imports, there were a number of local players good enough to compete and star in the various semi-pro leagues in the Maritimes. Although some of them, like Vern Handrahan of Charlottetown and Billy Harris of Dorchester, New Brunswick, went on to play major-league baseball, many equally talented athletes maintained a strong allegiance to the Maritime region, rejecting the blandishments of major-league clubs interested in recruiting them. One of the more prominent was Johnny Clark, a speedy outfielder from Pictou County whose daring exploits on the base paths earned him the nickname the 'Westville flash/ Then there was W.A. 'Buddy' Condy, generally regarded as the best natural hitter ever to play in the Maritimes, and a number of others who for their own reasons turned their backs on a pro career. At the end of the war Condy turned down a contract with the Montreal Royals, choosing to work towards a career in medicine rather than suiting up alongside Jackie Robinson and the other prospects on the Brooklyn Dodgers' top farm club. A couple of years later, after homesickness ended a short but successful stint in the semiprofessional Quebec Provincial League, Johnny Clark rejected an offer from the Philadelphia Phillies and settled in to an eight-year career in the Halifax and District League. When my friends and I weren't watching baseball in those days, we were playing it, making up in dedication what we lacked in proficiency. During the daytime it was pick-up baseball, often played from early

Preface xi morning to dusk. Evenings were set aside for organized competition from Little League up to Babe Ruth League and junior ball, or for cheering on the Wildcats at Memorial Park. There was a youthful masculine camaraderie in all of this, and when coaches like the old pro Eddie Gillis, now a regional scout for the St Louis Cardinals, drilled us in the fundamentals of the sport and the discipline it required, one got the feeling that we were also being instructed in the essentials of growing up. At the time we took the expectations of gender at face value; it seemed natural that baseball was a man's game and that women should watch from the sidelines as young men flaunted their physical abilities as an expression of their masculinity. No one thought much then about the socialization of gender roles; one simply experienced them as part of life. Then came the announcement at the beginning of the 1960 season that the H&D league, the sole surviving semi-pro circuit in the region, had folded. I remember the mixture of disappointment and adolescent bewilderment that swept over me when I heard the news. It astonished me that the civic leaders of Kentville, Truro, Stellarton, Liverpool, Halifax, and Dartmouth could have let die something I considered so integral to community life and essential to my own growing up. What I failed to appreciate at the time was that the collapse of communitylevel baseball was a continent-wide phenomenon, related to the contraction of minor-league baseball during the fifties and sixties throughout North America. Nor did I understand then that small towns everywhere were being transformed. Gradually the development of the post-industrial capitalist economy was beginning to draw small towns out of their relative isolation and into a world of super-highways, consolidated schools, shopping centres, and industrial parks. At the same time, new patterns of leisure were emerging, influenced by the expanding numbers of people owning automobiles, summer cottages, and television sets. If memories of my youth have prompted me to reflect upon the images of community, region, and adolescent masculinity that surrounded baseball in the fifties, my training as a historian alerts me to the fact that these concepts are themselves socially constructed. Obviously the discourses and images surrounding the game in the postwar years differ greatly from those of today. Contemporary baseball is characterized by the increasingly sophisticated marketing of sport and its ancillary operations as commodities in a consumer-oriented society. Mass-produced sporting wear makes the team logos of major-league

xii Preface clubs available across the continent, and major-league ballplayers sometimes make as much in endorsements as they do in regular salary. In this context there is little space for the celebration of minor-league, let alone local community, baseball. Today's sporting culture, like the entertainment industry, has become a story of those currently in the public eye. But what of the century of baseball history before the Second World War? In the nineteenth century baseball was enmeshed in the broad negotiation of class and gender relationships that accompanied the emerging industrial-capitalist order. Notions of bourgeois respectability, of gentlemanly amateurism, of skilful production, of worker solidarity, and of appropriate manliness were central to the discourse about baseball's social purposes. Baseball's rise took place amidst the broader commercialization of leisure, and as such involved debates about the evils of gambling, of rowdy spectatorism, of irresponsible promoters and club owners, and of sharp and corrupt practices both on and off the field. The game's early development was also shaped by those who saw sport as a tool for reform. Evangelical reformers attacked what they regarded as the unsavoury character of traditional recreations and saw organized sport as a vehicle for moral improvement. This attack on popular leisure pursuits, as Robert Malcolmson has pointed out, had begun long before the emergence of baseball.1 By the beginning of the nineteenth century the cultural traditions of working people were meeting with greater contempt than ever before. Concerned about the rowdiness and drunkenness that accompanied traditional celebrations and carnivals, which satirized the existing social system, with charivaris, mummers' parades, and polymorphian processions, and with the unsavoury influence of roughs and gamblers in such sports as horseracing, advocates of a more disciplined social order saw organized sporting activity as a civilizing force.2 Increasingly, more genteel spectator sports displaced animal or blood sports such as cockfighting or bear baiting, revealing in the process a bourgeois concern for orderly behaviour and moral improvement. When placed in this context, the development of organized team sports such as baseball represents not merely a shift in fashionability, but suggests the negotiation and redefinition of class relations in an emerging capitalist order. At the end of the nineteenth century the reform impulse assumed a less moralistic character. As urban populations swelled with the arrival of rural dwellers and immigrants in the second half of the century, a

Preface xiii new professional elite, steeped in the language of science, promised social improvement and planned urban development through innovative forms of organization and professional management. In the vanguard of reform during the so-called progressive era were members of the various professions, particularly engineers, lawyers, journalists, educators, and medical practitioners, who responded to the social dislocations of urban life in such a way as to address some of its most obvious abuses. Emphasizing the need to reorganize modern society around the principles of efficiency, social justice, and expert management, progressive reformers took the lead in matters pertaining to sanitation and public health, inadequate housing, the proper ventilation of buildings and factories, improved inter- and intra-city transportation, the adulteration of food and drink, and the development of healthful forms of recreation, physical culture, and sport.3 In promoting a more 'scientific/ professional, and systematic approach to the physical environment, this group of professionals - which Harold Perkin described in the British context as 'the forgotten middle class' - played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of turn-of-the-century capitalism. When war came in 1914, most progressives responded to the bugler's call, seeing the war as an opportunity to apply principles of scientific management and human engineering to the remaking of the world order, just as they had tried to shape social relations at home through the medium of sport and organized recreation.4 By the 19205 the progressive dream of a world liberated through scientific understanding and technological advancement was in tatters. In the Maritimes the end of the war brought disillusionment: industrialization gave way to deindustrialization, markets for the region's primary products shrank, and large numbers of people left the area in search of employment elsewhere. Those who remained turned to images of the past as a form of consolation, celebrating the glories of the so-called Golden Age of sail and the integrity of the sturdy Maritime folk. Not surprisingly, one can discern a corresponding shift in the discourse surrounding baseball at this time, away from the imagery of class differentiation and social regeneration towards that of community identity and regional integrity. This postwar evacuation of the language of class, the idealization of local community life, and the invention of a Maritime folk tradition by Maritime writers and cultural anthropologists had a political counterpart in the Maritime Rights movement.5 For blacks, native peoples, and recent immigrants this idealization of the Maritime folk and local-community identity could only have served

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to reinforce their sense of isolation from mainstream society. Although minorities often turned to sports such as baseball as a way of encouraging self-respect and racial and ethnic identity, segregation on the basis of race was a continuing reality even on the supposedly 'democratic' field of play. Women, blacks, native people, and ethnic minorities were the 'other/ against whom standards of the 'normal' were erected. And, when barnstorming black baseball teams, or sectarian assemblages such as the 'House of David/ visited the region to play ball, the dramatization of their otherness was an important part of their appeal at the gate. As for gender, there is no question that baseball had triumphed as a male sport by 1914. Despite the postwar celebration of the image of the 'athletic' woman in the advertising industry, and the growing involvement of women in sporting activity during the 19203, the baseball park, like the workplace, would remain characterized by obvious gender segregation. Baseball was a 'manly' sport after all, serving as an obvious rite of passage from adolescence to manhood. There was little ideological room here for widespread female participation as ballplayers. To be sure, a few adventurous women did play the game, both in the nineteenth century and the twentieth, but the role of women in baseball was essentially that of spectators. By denying women an active role in the sport, baseball reinforced traditional stereotypes of women as consumers rather than producers. At the same time, the idealization of the 'lady' fan served the interests of promoters interested in attracting an expanded and 'respectable' audience. What follows is a sweeping, some might say too sweeping, analysis not only of baseball's century and a half of development in the Maritimes, but its connection to broader social issues and processes. It touches upon significant theoretical debates about class formation, regionalism, community identity, gender, race, and ethnicity. At its most abstract level, it is a study of the cultural production and commodification of sport, and of the social dimensions of capitalist development in a hinterland region. Lay readers might find daunting some of the theoretical issues elaborated upon in the opening chapter, but they are intended to provide the analytical framework for the rest of the book. Even despite its theoretical content, however, this study is intended to be much more than an intellectual or scholarly exercise. My objective instead is to marry the insights derived from personal memory with those of recent scholarship, and to offer a sympathetic yet critical understanding of the making of the baseball world in the region by those who were part of its creation. It is hoped that both a scholarly audience

Preface xv and everyday enthusiasts of the game of baseball will find something in the following pages to maintain their interest. In any work of this sort one becomes indebted to more people than one can adequately hope to repay. It is no exaggeration to say that this project simply could not have been completed without the generous assistance and support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Without the Council's help I would have been unable to recover from the disastrous fire in November 1991 that burned my house to the ground. Fortunately, my SSHRCC research grant allowed me to take stock of what materials had been lost in the fire and, where possible, to replace them. A grant from the Senate Research Committee at Saint Mary's University also helped to recover lost data, and to photocopy smoke- and water-damaged material that eventually had to be destroyed. It is in such difficult times that one realizes the value of true friendship. I am particularly indebted to the students and faculty in the Atlantic Canada Studies Program at Saint Mary's who gave so much of their time and effort to help me recover from my loss, organizing work parties, assisting in research, typing, and inputting material into the computer, and just providing moral support. Thanks to Jackie Logan at the Gorsebrook Research Institute, who is one of the most generous and helpful persons it is my pleasure to know; to Terry McLean, who has gone beyond the call of duty trying to make me computer-proficient; and to Susan Webber for assisting at a critical moment. Then there are the many research assistants who have worked with me on the project, and with whom I share a sense of collective effort. Lois Loewen developed an exhaustive card file on individual baseball players; Anne-Marie Smith scoured New Brunswick newspapers; Heidi Macdonald sorted through the religious press for stories relating to child-saving; Trudy Sable travelled far and wide interviewing native people about baseball; and Sheridan Hay helped sort out issues relating to community and race. I reserve a special mention for Gillian Allen, who took the post-fire mess and turned it into a filing system that testifies to her training in both history and law. I am also indebted to my colleagues in the History Department at Saint Mary's, and to Marjorie Warren for responding so cheerfully to all that I have asked of her over the past few years. Fellow department members John Reid, Richard Twomey, and Michael Vance have all read and commented upon portions of the manuscript. So have a number of colleagues across the country. Thanks to Ian McKay, Sharon Tillotson,

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John Thompson, Bryan Palmer, Alan Metcalfe, David Smith, Michael Smith, Peter Twohig, Chad Gaffield, and Sandy Young for their trenchant criticisms and their encouragement. I am particularly lucky to have friends like Rosemary Ommer and Phil Buckner, who can push you to clarify your thoughts and purposes, but always in a spirit of affection and concern. Thanks as well to my good friends at the University of Toronto Press, especially Gerry Hallowell, Rob Ferguson, and Laura Macleod, whose consummate professionalism has always been an inspiration. They can always play for my team. Over the past few years I have been assisted at every turn by archivists, librarians, and university personnel. Carman Carroll, Allan Dunlop, and the staff at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (PANS) have come to my relief in many a tight game, remaining dedicated to serving the historical profession despite serious funding cutbacks. Tom Sweet at the Nova Scotia Sports Heritage Centre is as gentle and helpful as his name implies, and Patti Hutchinson of the same institution cheerfully answered all my queries and made material available to me. It was with much sadness that I learned of the death of Robert 'Bun' Foley, a volunteer worker at the centre who spent hours regaling me with stories of Nova Scotia's sporting heritage. At Saint Mary's, Ken Clare kept alerting me to new publications and Sandra Hamm went out of her way to help secure interlibrary-loan material. During my work in the United States I received courteous assistance from the staff at the Bangor Public Library, the Fogler Library at the University of Maine, and the Maine State Archives in Augusta. And, finally, I would like to thank Tom Hecht, librarian at the Cooperstown National Baseball Library for his help, and for tickets to the Hall of Fame box in Oneonta. Then there are my close friends and family who mean so much to me. To my wife, Sandi Galloway, to Heather and Kevin, Mike, Don, and Ken, thanks for helping me realize the important things in life. During the writing of this book, my father, Dennis Howell, passed away after a long struggle with cancer. With incredible dignity and courage, he showed all of us the nobility of fighting until the last out is recorded. It is to him, with all my love and affection, that this book is dedicated.

Atlantas Baseball Club, Halifax, 1878

Three players of the 1886 Young Men's Literacy Association team in Halifax. From left: catcher Jack White, batter Jim Fender, and pitcher Michael Power

Socials Baseball Club, Halifax, 1887

The Chicago Blackstockings touring team in New Brunswick, 1891

Fredericton Tartars baseball team, 1899

Halifax Resolutes, 1900

Cover from Tip Top Weekly magazine, 1907

Halifax Crescents baseball team, 1916. Roy Isnor is seated third from the left, front row.

Baseball on the North Commons, Halifax, c. 1920

Baseball at the Wanderers Grounds, Halifax, in the 19205. Note the preponderance of men in the audience.

Royals Baseball Club (Saint John, NB), Intermediate Champions, 1921

Halifax Coloured Diamonds, c. 1925

One of the finest pitchers of the interwar period, Sammy Lesser played for Halifax in the short-lived NS Professional Baseball League in 1924.

Charlie Paul, a Springhill native, played in the Boston Red Sox organization and for a number of teams throughout the Maritimes.

One of the few early photographs of native people playing baseball; the group poses after playing 'three catches and up' at Bear River, NS, in 1939.

Vince Ferguson accepts the good wishes of the mayor of Halifax (mid-1930s).

Babe Ruth, in street shoes, prepares to give a hitting exhibition at Wanderers Grounds, Halifax, in 1942.

Johnny Duarte, a right-handed pitcher of Latin American descent, played for the Dartmouth Arrows of the H&D League in the late 19405.

Charles 'Bomber' Neal, one of the earliest black imports to the H&D League d947)

Coach Teaches' Ruven and 'Bomber' Neal of the Dartmouth Arrows ham it up before the camera.

Middleton Cardinals (H&D League) pitching staff, 1947. Bucky Tanner is at extreme left.

Action from a game between the Halifax Shipyards and Dartmouth Arrows at the Halifax Wanderers Grounds, 1949

'Brother' Macdonald, Glace Bay Miners, slides into third base in a Cape Breton Colliery League match, 1949.

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