With signs of Spring beginning to appear, the last Heritage Papers for the season will record some Baseball incidents from the past [see heading above]. Mr. Bill Humber, the October [1996] speaker left some notes for the Society about how the early game had been played in the Hamilton area; and Mr. Ted Wilcox, writing in the Spectator, recalled games he had umpired in Carlisle and Freelton, more than a century later.
It is hardly surprising that Hamilton should be one of baseball’s first strongholds in Ontario. It was a town experiencing all the boom, bust and boosterism of similarly sized American cities during the 1850s. Until then bat and ball games in Canada were informal affairs more characteristic of medieval folk sport than the modern game known today.
The best evidence suggests that Bill Shuttleworth (1833-1903), a Hamilton clerk, organized the city’s first team, the ‘Young Canadians’ (later the Maple Leafs), who plated on the grounds facing Central School between Bond and Beverly Streets. His fellow players were a cross section of Hamilton’s working people with a wide variety of trades and professions represented.
Until the American Civil War, baseball was a regional game and one in transition from its informal background. As such, it was characterized by the adoption of semi-formalized though regionally different rules and play largely within one’s own club. The Canadian interpretation played throughout Southwestern Ontario can quite legitimately be considered the only experiment outside of the United States on baseball’s eventual form.
It differed slightly from the American game, in its strict adherence to 11 men on the field as opposed to the American rules which allowed 10 to 14. The Canadian game required that all 11 men be retired before the other team came to bat, as opposed to the requirement that only one men be retired in the American game. Both games allowed the pitcher to throw in the modern style, rather than underarm.
London, Ontario’s first formal team organized in 1855, restricted its membership to 22 men so that they could be equally divided into two squads of 11 men. The additional positions in the Canadian game were a fourth baseman and a backstop behind the catcher. This Canadian brand of baseball remained popular in Ontario until the end of the decade, as did the practice of playing games only against the members of one’s club and not against other teams or towns.
In 1859, two teams from Hamilton and Toronto played the first recorded game in Canada using American or New York rules as they became known as. Perhaps because of the standardization of play fostered by these rules, this game is also the first mention of a game in Canada between teams representing rival cities.
As late as 1860 the ‘Young Canadian Club’ of Woodstock, were still playing the 11 aside Canadian version of baseball. They had been organized on the grounds next to Reeves Street at the back of the post office by Bill Shuttleworth’s younger brother Jim. On this day they outlasted ‘The Rough and Ready Club’ of Ingersoll 83-59. Both teams are within a short buggy ride of Beachville, where the first accredited bat and ball game had been played in 1838.
It was the loss by a Hamilton team, ‘The Burlingtons’ to the ‘Niagaras’ of Buffalo in 1860 in the first ever international match which sealed the fate of the Canadian game. Buffalo had adopted the New York rules in 1857 and the pragmatic young merchants and business men of the Burlington club, which had been formed in 1855 with 50 members playing mid-week club matches on the grounds near Upper James Street and Robinson, willingly made the switch. The Hamilton ‘Maple Leafs’ debated the merits of the new rules. Arthur Feast, a stonemason, supported Bill Shuttleworth’s defense of the Canadian game. Charles Wood, a young innkeeper from the U.S. won the day with his support of the New York game.
A year later Wood convinced the Woodstock players to switch to the New York rules and the Canadian interpretation of baseball disappeared for all time. The new rules were popularly received and on 30 July 1861, over 800 Hamiltonians watched the ‘Maple Leafs’ led by their catcher Bill Shuttleworth, defeat the ‘Burlingtons’ on their grounds 33-27.
On 3 September 1861, Jim Shuttleworth returned to his hometown along with the Woodstock ‘Young Canadians’ to play brother Bill’s ‘Maple Leafs’. Woodstock’s battery of Pascoe and Clyde weakened only in the fifth innings when they gave up 12 runs. McCann of Hamilton “kept a sharp eye on the ball which he delivered with lightning speed”, but Woodstock won the two hours and 45 minutes match, 24-22, by virtue of three unanswered runs in the top of the ninth. A return match in Woodstock several weeks later resulted in an even more convincing Woodstock victory 41-14. Hamilton rather feebly blamed the conditions of the field for their loss.
During the summer of 1867, a major tournament in Detroit drew teams from that city as well as Pittsburgh, Port Huron, Woodstock, Hamilton and Ingersoll. Hamilton paid a $15 entry fee for the Senior division and a chance to win a $300 prize and gold mounted rosewood bat. The city team had borrowed two of Guelph’s better players, Jim Nichols, a former cricketer and policeman and Bill Sunley, a tinsmith. They won 19-10 in the opener against Port Huron, but McCann, Hamilton’s pitcher, lost his touch in the next game and they lost. The team was awarded a runners-up gold-plated ball which became one of Bill Shuttleworth’s prized possessions.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 1997, 2023.
