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Pennell and the Prime Minister
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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John Lockington, Wilmer “The Great” Fields, and Justice Pennell 85 Pennell and the Prime Minister We should have called ourselves the Nine-and-a-Halfs. – Larry Pennell I N THE SPRINGTIME, WITH THE PROMISE OF WARM WEATHER, Pennell and King had come to the conclusion that 1949 would be the best Brantford season since the war. Already they had Clayton Cooper lined up to catch. Cooper had a strong arm, and he could hit. And, in addition to pitcher Alf Gavey, the Hamilton native whom Pennell had recruited after arm trouble forced his release from the Cardinal organization, they hoped to use Gibbs, a junior just back from a stint in the pros. Normie Hann would play second, Art Hillman left field, Lipka, who’d played Triple-A with the Montreal Royals, would play third, and there were two more pitchers, Frank “Nig” Parker and Harrison Fisher, who would complement Gavey and Gibbs. And centre fielder Lockington would anchor the outfield on speed alone, between left fielder Harry Mooradian and George Carruth in right field. Clearly, the Red Sox of 1949 promised to be a good team, but what was surprising was that they were a bunch of homebrews. Three years earlier, in May of 1946, Brantford had been readmitted into the Senior Intercounty Intermediate Division only a week prior to the start of the season. Galt had a team of veterans in the same division called the Galt Vets, as did Hespeler and several other smaller communities. The war had just ended and Pennell was late in getting things organized. There were no players, no team, no uniforms, but Pennell was born to organize. “It came to me very early,” said Pennell, “that I was a manager, not a player.” But in June of 1946 the Intercounty had already drawn up a schedule. Pennell made a late application to the Intercounty—the season was set to open in one week—and it was accepted, probably because of the difficulties immediately following the war, and partly due to the fact that Brantford simply belonged in the Intercounty. “Galt and Brantford games were always the biggest rivalry,” Pennell would later recall. “It was like the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees,” he said. League president Otto Manske said they’d have to revamp the schedule to accommodate Brantford, but they’d do it. Now all Pennell and the Brantford people had to do was sign some players and get some uniforms. Neither would be easy on such late notice, but Pennell was undeterred. Lockington, who’d played with London while attending the University of Western Ontario during the war, put Pennell and King onto the trail of some uniforms at the London Armoury. Uniforms were in short supply immediately after the war; for years, all materials had been earmarked for military use, and there was a delay in getting things back to normal after the war. They had tried getting uniforms in Toronto and Montreal and elsewhere, but without success. Now Pennell spoke to someone at the London Armoury by phone, and was told they had eleven uniforms that Brantford could buy for $100. But time was running short. On the day of Brantford’s season opener, King and Lockington drove to London to pick up the uniforms. Ten tops were found but only nine bottoms. Later they would all joke that they’d started the season with nine and a half uniforms. “We should have called ourselves the Nine-and-a-Halfs,” said Pennell. Some players wore old uniforms from other leagues. One wore an Alberta uniform. The important thing was they had enough players to field a team, and each of them was in some uniform, even if it didn’t say Brantford across the front. If uniforms were hard to come by that summer, so too was baseball equipment. When the first few practices were held that spring, there was virtually no equipment. I remember one player had two bats, the only bats we had, and he had to leave practice one time with his bats and that ended the practice. Pennell had bats on order, but it took time for them to arrive. In any case, King and Lockington 86 Terrier Town—Summer of ’49 [44.201.199.251] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:21 GMT) arrived back at the ballpark on Opening Day just half an hour before game time. “We opened at home on the 24th of May that year...