Sesquicentennial Celebrations

found this as we are preparing for the Vintage Baseball game this weekend, recreating the London Tecumsehs. Pics, likely humiliating, to follow, since there will be much media, and we may even be wearing stunning straw boaters in lieu of what one might think of as the Pittsburgh Pillbox. Some of the good bits included herewith...

Labatt Park (nee Tecumseh Park): London, Ontario

by William Humber

If ballparks were merely a place of commerce for a few hours of idle amusement they would inspire no memories or interest in their preservation... They are supremely public places in which a community shares a common experience in ways innocent of violence and surrounded by celebration and good feeling.

If one place could be said to encapsulate the history of baseball in Canada and the passage of this common experience from one generation to the next, it would be the splendid site of London, Ontario's Labatt Park... the park has been associated with organized baseball and senior amateur ball since 1877 and before that was a popular site for recreational games. There may be no other site in organized baseball that can make such a claim.

Baseball in London corresponds to all stages of the game's evolution in North America. There is some irony in the fact that the city's ascendancy over other centres in southwestern Ontario was at least partially due to the American leanings of rivals St. Thomas and Delaware. Governor Simcoe reserved London as the colony's future capital in the late 18th century and later administrators saw it as a bulwark against the American radicalism of the region which culminated in the failed rebellion of 1837.

as they say, read the whole thing... and watch this space for futher pictorial confirmation of doofdom from this corner...