Terrier Town: Summer of ’49

Johnny Lockington

283 Johnny Lockington T HE CHAMPION 1949 BRANTFORD RED SOX HAD A DIFFERENT look in 1950. Some players left or retired, though the bulk of them were back. Brantford native John Lockington, the deer in centre field, played several more seasons with the Red Sox. He and his brother ran a successful sporting goods store in Brantford, and it was there that they sold tickets to the Red Sox games. “That was one of the deals that Pennell promised me if I came up from London,” he recalled. “He said if you come back from the London Majors we’ll give you all the business.” He never forgot that 1949 Terrier team with its Murderer’s Row. “You walloped us the first three games,” he said. “You guys just killed us. And then we beat you in four straight.” Of course, he didn’t forget the internal problems Murray had to contend with that August. “Geez, the poor guy. Y’know, the players’ strike, holding him up for more money and all that. Some of the Terriers had the wool over his eyes, so he brought down a junior team and that’s when we won our first game. Then it was settled, but poor Gus, he was really in a bind. We had to feel sorry for Gus. He was quite a promoter, but he had a difficult time that summer. We used to say Gus had all the tigers by the tails.” That last game, Game 7, was the most memorable of all for Lockington. “Highway 24 was bumper to bumper that night,” he said. “It was quite a victory.” As the Brantford players drove into Galt that night they were given a hard time by loyal Galt fans. “They kept booing us as we drove in,” he recalled. Lockington remembered the Galt players and management were involved in some sort of fracas following the game. “We changed at the Galt YMCA in those days so we were gone celebrating, but there was some commotion. They were all ex-pros and they were mad. They shouldn’t have been beaten. I think they were counting their dollars before they earned them.” But no one could deny that Brantford had a good team. “We had wonderful pitching that year and we were solid down the middle,” Lockington said. Later Red Sox teams looked much stronger on paper, but few were as successful as that ’49 Red Sox team. “In ’49 we had the weakest team we ever had and we won it. But Bill [Gibbs] was our heart and soul as far as our pitching went. And Alf Gavey, too. I think they each were jealous of the other to an extent, and they each wanted to produce the best. They had a good rivalry going and I think it helped the club.” Lockington grew up in Brantford and then went to the University of Western Ontario, having been admitted to the first physical education class Western ever had. That was in 1947. At university he ran track and played with the London Majors on the side. He was the perfect lead-off hitter, a spot he held in the batting order on every team he ever played for. Few runners had the ability to steal bases the way Lockington did. “I’ve still got the strawberries on my hips from sliding,” he said nearly fifty years later. In his first summer with London they went on to win the Canadian championship, a feat they repeated in 1948. They also won the world amateur title in a tournament held over seven cloudless days and nights in London. Each game they played drew a crowd of five thousand, which is how many were on hand when London beat the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Zelners, the United States representative, for the title. The next season when he went to Brantford he was again on the provincial champion team for the third consecutive year, something few, if any, have ever accomplished before. In public school Lockington captained his baseball team at the same time that Doug Bradshaw, Gord’s younger brother, pitched for the opponents. “We used to boo Bradshaw when he was pitching and one time he got flustered and threw the ball over the screen. About the eighth inning I’d be collecting the sweaters and I’d run home and he’d be chasing me.” But Bradshaw, who had quite a temper, never caught him. 284 Terrier Town—Summer...