Terrier Town: Summer of '49 (review)

Founded in 1911 the Ontario Intercounty Baseball League was at the height of its popularity after World War II, with teams in such towns as Brantford, Galt, London, Guelph, Waterloo, Kitchener, and Stratford. With a mix of local talent and some ex-Major Leaguers, teams drew crowds into the thousands, rivaling those of Minor League teams south of the border. David Menary's book, based on research and interviews, is told from the point of view of Charlie Hodge, a fictional player-narrator on the Galt Terriers who watches his team reach the playoffs in 1949 but lose the final game.

Team owner Gus Murray had a wallpaper store downtown, and his zeal for promotion, which included on-field cake baking demonstrations and cooking oil giveaways, brought huge crowds to the park that summer. Murray sought a manager with big-league experience and hoped to sign Mickey Owen. When Owen declined, Murray used his acquaintance with George Selkirk to land Tommy Padden, a former Pirates catcher who had managed in the Yankees farm system. He needed stars and signed Goody Rosen, who had hit .325 in 145 games for the Dodgers in 1945 and was playing for the International League team in Toronto. Rosen's best years were behind him, but he had shown great ability even before standards of play declined during the war. He hit .312 for Brooklyn in '37 and .281 for a full season in '38. In the '49 season with the Terriers he hit well over .300 and nearly .600 during the playoffs. Another former Major Leaguer was Connie Creedon, who played for the Braves in '43 and hit .430 for St. Hyacinthe in 1948.

The team had some local talent, including Verne "Tex" Kaiser, who later played for the Montreal Canadiens, and Frank Udvari, who served in the NHL as a referee from 1951 to 1966, plus one game in New York in 1979 after his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Many hockey players made money in the off-season playing ball in the Intercounty League, and Howie Meeker of the Toronto Maple Leafs played in his hometown of Kitchener at the time. The team was integrated, with black pitcher Jeff Shelton, but he found it difficult to avoid racial insults even in Canada. First baseman Cam Pickard lacked a couple of fingers from an industrial accident. Murray later signed Pete Gray to a personal services contract, and Gray played for Guelph in 1951. Other players had more checkered pasts. Connie Waite's real name was Waitkoviak, changed because he had been banned from baseball for life, and Don "Lefty" Perkins was really Harry Sollenberger, still owned by the Yankees. The Terriers' 1949 season hinges on "Tulsa" Tommy Warren, who had played 22 games for the Dodgers in 1944. He had a real gambling problem and came to Canada to escape the law after bilking some "investors" in shady car deals. It was his muffed catch in the final game that led people to believe he had bet on the series, and Murray said Warren made a large bank deposit the next day.

The book is styled as a nostalgic tale of a young man's coming of age in a small town. There are the usual baseball themes of youth and innocence against corruption and gambling, but the use of Hodge as a narrator is inconsistent. Much of the book reads like a historical account, and the reader can go for pages before the voice of the narrator creeps in again, only to disappear until the next chapter. "Hodge" also gives details that are far too sharp to be an older man's recollections of his teenage years. The factual aspects of the book are fine and many of the stories are entertaining, but these would have been better served by a straightforward history rather than this awkward fictionalization. It is an effort to piece together the defensive positions of the players, as we hear little of...