A
SHORT HISTORY OF VANCOUVER
PRO BASEBALL
by Jim Bennie
The
year was 1905. Vancouver had been blessed with semi-pro baseball, as
visiting nines from American cities and colleges as far south as
California would come to the Powell Street Grounds for contests –
contests that inspired a couple of local baseball backers to believe
the city could support a professional team. A.E. Tulk and W.D.
Haywood convinced the Northwestern League to grant them a franchise.
They hired long-time baseball man John McCloskey, later known as the
manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, to put together a team. And
because McCloskey was a veteran, the team was called the Vancouver
Veterans. One newspaper shortened it to Vets. Another took that name
and using the esoteric rhetoric peculiar to baseball sportswriters,
called them the Horse Doctors.
The team’s first game was in
Bellingham
on May 9 (a loss) and the first home game was May 11 (a win) against
Victoria
in the brand-new Recreation
Park
at the southeast corner of Homer and Smithe (recently turned into a
condo development with narry an indication a ball park ever existed
there). The season was divided into halves and
Vancouver
lost the first half by a bit of chicanery by Everett Smokestackers
manager Billy Hulen. Unbeknownst to McCloskey or the Vets, Hulen
played an unscheduled make-up game at 5 in the morning in
Bellingham
to ensure his team at least tied Vancouver
for first. The Veterans finished with a 45 and 52 record
(Everett
won the championship), and Haywood and Tulk decided against a second
season.
However, a baseball club was resurrected for the
1907 season. The Vancouver Canucks (not to be confused with a
current hockey team) went through five managers and finished a
painful 34 and 106 year, a mere 53 games behind the first place
Aberdeen Black Cats, managed by one Robert Paul Brown, whose name
would soon become familiar to several generations of Vancouver
baseball fans.
Stunningly, Vancouver went
from worst to first. It topped the Northwestern League in 1908 with
a new moniker – the Beavers, which it would keep through 1922. The
team’s “manager” was by A. Richard Dickson, a businessman who had
no baseball experience, though likely many of the on-field decisions
through a succession of Captains. George Engel led all league
pitchers with a 22-7 record, Ham Hyatt has a league-best 15 home
runs and Jim Flanagan led in batting average with .352.
Bob
Brown arrived in 1910 to manage the club after time at the helm of
the Spokane Indians. With players over the years like Pug Bennett,
Lou Nordyke, Kitty Brashear, Dode Brinker, pitcher Dutch Ruether and
sluggers Charles Swain and Emil Frisk, the Beavers were contenders
throughout most of their life, hoisting the pennant in 1911 and
1914.
The other highlight for the Beavers was the opening of
Athletic
Park
on April
17, 1913
at Fifth and Hemlock. 6,000 took in the first game, a
Vancouver
win over Tacoma.
A lowlight was a player mutiny on June
18, 1915
to protest Bob Brown’s suspension of a player.
The
Northwestern League was reconstituted in 1918 as the Pacific Coast
International League and Vancouver
placed first in a shortened season in 1919. It was renamed the
Western International League in 1922 and died suddenly on June 18,
mainly because Tacoma was tied in with W.H. Klepper, the Portland
P.C.L. owner, who had been suspended by Commissioner Landis in a
baseball ethics scandal and withdrew his financial assistance to the
Tigers. However, venerable Athletic
Park
hosted amateur ball through the rest of the roaring 20s and the
Depression, and players like Coley Hall, Johnny Nestman, Norm
Trasolini and Ernie Paepke became household names in
Vancouver.
Athletic Park suffered a fire in 1926 and survived to host two memorable events – the first night baseball
game in Canada (actually a double-header) on July 3, 1931, broadcast live
on CKWX by Charlie Defieux, and a major league all-star exhibition game on
a very rainy October 19, 1934 (Babe Ruth was 0-for-2), with Charlie again
on the mike on 'WX.
The
Depression was lifting, and a successful attempt was made at
reviving the Western International League. Lacrosse mogul and cigar store owner Con Jones built
a park (now Callister
Park),
named it after himself and put the Vancouver Maple Leafs there. The
first home game was April
27, 1937
(Tacoma
won it in the ninth inning). The Leafs
finished in third place, and in fourth in 1938. Jones, unexpectedly
losing money due to low attendance, gave up the franchise to brewer Emil Sick, the
owner of the Seattle Rainiers (named for one of his beers). Sick
redubbed the team the Capilanos (named for his brewery) and moved it
back to Athletic
Park.
Tommy Lloyd won the home run championship that year with 25, the
team acquired veteran minor league slugger Smead Jolley from
Spokane
in 1941, but the Caps didn’t win the pennant until 1942 under the
guidance of Don Osborn, who led the league in earned run average in
both ’41 and ’42.
The league shut down in 1942 due to the
war, and Athletic
Park suffered a
disaster. It been renamed Capilano Stadium in 1943 when the land was purchased
by the team from the C.P.R. for $35,000. Brown went
shopping for a Pacific Coast League team for Vancouver and
had almost purchased the Sacramento Solons, but a citisens group
came forward in February 1944
to buy the club and stop the move. Ironically, decades later, the
Vancouver P.C.L. team would be purchased by someone from Sacramento and moved there.
On
February
28, 1945, a
$50,000 fire roared through the ball park and left it a soak shambles
of charred lumber and twisted iron. But it was quickly rebuilt, as
there was already talk about reviving the Western International
League – which happened at a meeting of the board of directors
months later. And so, the Capilanos were back in business for 1946.
They rose from sixth place to take the pennant the following year
over Spokane
by .001 percentage points with 25-year-old war veteran Bill Brenner
as manager and catcher.
For years, there had
been talk of building a bigger stadium, and after a bit of dickering
with the city of Vancouver, the new Capilano Stadium
opened (late) on June 15, 1951. It built using the blueprints of the
parent club’s ball park – Sick’s Stadium, and the infield sod
of the old yard. The $550,000 gleaming white stadium was compared by
many at the grand opening to a major league park (precient, as
Sick’s housed the Seattle Pilots in 1969). And the opening was grand
in more ways than one, as the Capilanos thrashed the Salem Senators
and former New York Yankees pitcher Floyd (Bill) Bevens, 10-3.
Alas, the Caps finished the season in second place, a half game
behind Spokane, despite Bob Snyder’s 27 wins, including one
over
Bevens at the new stadium’s debut.
But minor league baseball was
in a deep decline. Teams were losing money. Leagues that had existed
for decades were shutting down for good. The Western International
League tried to add to its attendance numbers by expanding into
Alberta
in 1953, but it was to no avail. The
Calgary
and Victoria
franchises folded in 1954, then the league was voted out of
existence on December 15. The Caps won the pennant in the W.I.L’s
final year, with Marv Williams leading the league in batting with
.360, Bob Wellman tied for homers with 21 and Bill Brenner back with
the club – as a knuckleballing pitcher, with a 2.53 E.R.A. and a
21-9 record.
Some owners wanted to form a smaller circuit
with less travel expense between cities, and thus the Northwest
League was born. But Vancouver
adopted the attitude “P.C.L. or nothing” – there had been talk years
earlier of an “All Pacific” League with
Vancouver
and the Coast League clubs – and rejected the idea of joining the
small-time N.W.L. And the P.C.L. wasn’t far away. Brick Laws got fed
up with poor attendance numbers and a decrepit stadium in
Oakland
and moved the Oakland Oaks (a.k.a. Acorns) to
Vancouver
for 1956. The team’s new name was the Mounties, and they made their
debut in a 6-3 loss at Seals Stadium on April 10. The P.C.L. had
been to Vancouver before – the Seattle Rainiers had played several
games at Athletic Park in the late 30s – but it arrived on what was
hoped would be a permanent basis on April 27.
San
Francisco
was the opponent again, and 8,146 paid to see the Seals score a pair
in the ninth to defeat Vancouver
2-1. Losses were not all that unusual in 1956 – the Mounties
finished dead last with a 67 and 98 record.
The Mounties
never did have a first-place club, but came close in 1957, finishing
3½ games back as the team benefitted from excellent pitching by
George Bamberger, Morrie Martin, Erv Palica and Art Houtteman, all
ex-big leaguers.
On May
4, 1959,
the Mounties got a Hall of Famer, though no one knew it then. At the
time, they were getting an infielder who had been struggling with
Baltimore and
was been sent down to see if he was the real thing. He made an
auspicious debut, breaking up a no-hitter in the seventh inning with
a single. His name was Brooks Robinson. Less than two weeks later,
on May 17, Robinson tore his forearm in the fifth inning when he ran
into a metal hook projecting from the Mounties’ dugout guard rail.
2,011 witnessed it at Cap Stadium, though Jim Robson’s play-by-play
description on CKWX was so vivid, many more claim they were at the
ballpark that day and saw it with their eyes instead of their ears.
Robinson came back within three weeks, and finally was called up on
July 6, homering in his last game. The Caps finished in second, 1½
games behind Salt Lake City, and second again in 1961, ten games
behind the Tacoma Giants, as Canadian-born Mountie Ron Piché led
the P.C.L. with an earned run average of 2.26.
1962 saw
lowlights and skylights. José Valdivielso led off the 12th inning of
the May 28 game at Cap Stadium when he looked in the sky, screamed
and ran back to the dugout, with other players quickly following. He
thought a burning plane was sending debris onto the field. There was
a three-minute game delay due to what was said to be a meteorite
high in the galaxy. It was also the year George Bamberger
communicated with the dugout via a hand-held radio receiver inside
his uniform (Bamby won the July 18 contest with
Tacoma).
But the team estimated its losses at $90,000 and the franchise
packed up and moved to Dallas.
However, the Mounties made a comeback. The Kansas City A’s
put a farm team at Cap Stadium from 1965 to 1968, sending players
like Sal Bando, Tony LaRussa and Rene Lachemann, shortstop Ossie
Chavarria, who stayed in Vancouver and became a respected umpire,
and local boys Wayne Norton and Gerry Reimer (Kevin’s dad).
The most infamous incident in Vancouver
baseball history happened on May
11, 1966
against Seattle.
Vancouver
outfielder Ric Joseph was hit on the shoulder in the fourth inning
by a fastball from Jim Coates, who had a reputation as a
head-hunter. Joseph headed to the mound, but was stopped by
Seattle
catcher Merritt Ranew, who landed one of Joseph’s chin. Players
poured onto the field and umpire Jerry Dale restored order. Or so he
thought. Tommy Reynolds was up next and bunted, went part the way up
the line, then turned for the mound to get at Coates. Ranew tried to
rescue his pitcher, but Mounties’ first baseman Santiago Rosario,
waiting in the on-deck circle, raced to the mound and cracked Ranew
on the head with a bat. The dugouts emptied again, and an ambulance
came to take Ranew to Vancouver
General
Hospital.
Lost in all this was the fact Coates was throwing a no-hitter at the
time, which is the reason he denied throwing at Joseph.
Santiago
was banned from baseball the rest of the year. A post-script is that
Joseph got his revenge, waiting for Coates at the
Sylvia
Hotel
and pummelling him there, cutting his nose and chipping a tooth.
Ranew’s career carried on eventually. He ended up with the
Mounties in 1969, when the club was a joint farm team of the
expansion Seattle Pilots and Montreal Expos. That year’s team is
famous for being the April home of Jim Bouton when he wrote Ball
Four (though, as he writes, he was called up before ever
pitching at Cap Stadium). Manager Bob Lemon’s team drew only 62,666
fans, last in the league, the season ending with the club dropping a
pair of games in Portland
on September 1. Mounties management urged fans not to give up hope
there would be a team in 1970, but that was quashed in a statement
on September 9 by P.C.L. president Bill McKechnie. The team would
move to Salt
Lake City.
The following day, the sports landscape of
Vancouver
changed forever with the announcement the city that an N.H.L.
expansion franchise for 1970 had been purchased.
Capilano
Stadium was left to fallow, featuring soccer games and concerts. But
the idea of professional baseball in
Vancouver
was still alive. Harry Ornest ignored all the nay-sayers, including
Province baseball writer Clancy Loranger, who told him of all the
cash Nat Bailey lost running the Mounties, and managed to convince
the P.C.L. to grant Vancouver an expansion franchise for the 1978
season. Harry looked at history and re-named Capilano Stadium ‘Nat
Bailey Stadium’ (Bailey died about a month before seeing a game in
“his” stadium). Perhaps looking at the historical connection with
breweries, Harry named the team the Canadians, with the same
typeface and colour as the Molson Canadian beer label, though Harry
always brushed it off as mere coincidence. Ironically, the Park
Board would not permit him to sell beer in the first year. And as an
added historical bonus, the scoreboard used at Sick’s Stadium, torn
down several years earlier, were transported to Nat Bailey.
The Canadians began life on April 14, 1978 in Honolulu as
the guests of the Hawaii Islanders (winning 4-0) and the first home
game at the renovated Nat Bailey Stadium was April 26 (beating San
Jose 9-4). Endless call-ups to Oakland didn’t
help manager Jim Marshall, a former slugging Mountie first baseman,
as the team finished third in its division. It won a first-half
championship in 1979, as Mark Bomback had an outstanding 22-7
season, leading the league with a 2.56 E.R.A., but the team lost to
Hawaii
in the divisional playoffs. The Canadians finally won a P.C.L.
championship in 1985, defeating Phoenix,
but lost to Las
Vegas
in the finals in 1986 and 1988. Pennant number two came against
Albuquerque in 1989, as lefthander Tom Drees threw three no-hitters
at home, two of them back-to-back, with Jerry Willard as the catcher
and Pat Karl the official scorer for all of them. (Drees drew 13,258
in Albuquerque’s Sports Stadium on June 2 as he went for
back-to-back-to-back no-hitters. He lost it in the first inning when he hung
a fast ball to future Canadian Tracy Woodson for a two-run homer). The
low-light of the P.C.L. Canadians came that year as well, as the
team staged a 1915-style mutiny on July 6 and forfeited a game in
Albuquerque
because they had not been paid. The cheques arrived the next day.
The Canadians changed ownership a number of times over the
ensuing years, with the last owner, Art Savage, candidly admitting
he would prefer a ball team closer to his
California
home. Sacramento
had been talking about building a Triple-A ballpark ever since
leaving the P.C.L. in 1977. The Sacto area finally got its act
together and was waving the sweet carrot of a state-of-the-art
stadium with all the amenities, a far cry from a luxury-boxless
Vancouver
stadium designed in the 1930s for Seattle.
Savage convinced the P.C.L. that extra attendance and revenue would
be assured in the California
state capital, and the league cavalierly disregarded the
Vancouver
fan base and agreed to move the Canadians after the 1999 season. How
bittersweet it was that the Canadians went all the way, winning the
P.C.L. championship at home on September 17 against
Oklahoma
City
before a full house, then travelling to
Las
Vegas
to beat Charlotte
in the Triple-A World Series. The P.C.L. had come to
Vancouver
from California
and to California
it would return.
But even as smoke from fireworks masked
‘Field of Dreams’ cornstalks on the field in a special goodbye after
the final game (the left field fence was accidentally lit on fire),
rumours circulated that a team would be coming to Vancouver from the
Northwest League – the very league rejected by Bob Brown and fellow
local baseball owners in 1955. Fred Hermann, the owner of the
Southern Oregon Timberjacks, was doing what Art Savage was doing –
thinking he’d make more money by moving his franchise. The
Timberjacks were based in Medford,
Oregon,
and Hermann quickly got approval to move the team to
Vancouver.
The first game of the Class A Canadians was played at Nat Bailey on
June
25, 2000.
The major leagues are a long ride from Class A, but the new
Canadians have sent over a dozen players to the big leagues, notably
Victoria’s
Rich Harden. Hermann sold the team after the 2006 season to local
owners who spruced up the old park. So baseball remains, and fans
can continue to await Vancouver’s 11th baseball championship, and endless
memories in between.