November 10, 2026
By Kevin Glew
Cooperstowners in Canada
The ninth annual Canadian Baseball History Conference took place at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont., on the weekend.
Organized by Andrew North – the Willie Mays of baseball conference convenors in our country – the event was a rousing success.
Thank you to Andrew, his wife, Elena, and Scott Crawford, at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, for all of the work they put into organizing the two-day event, which featured 15 presentations on a wide variety of topics.
I took more than 30 pages of notes, so it would be impossible for me to share everything I learned. Instead, I have picked out 10 interesting things that I scribbled down during the event.
Here are the first five:
1. In his excellent presentation titled, “Toronto Base Ball Club 1895-1897: A prelude for Bill Dinneen and 41 years in the major leagues,” Jim Easton discussed how Dinneen’s pro career started in Toronto. The Syracuse, N.Y. native began pitching for the Eastern League’s Toronto Canucks in the 1895 season. He followed that up by going 11-12 in 1896 before enjoying a breakout campaign in 1897. That year with the Maple Leafs (formerly the Canucks), Dinneen went 19-8 with a 1.95 ERA and threw 25 complete games in 34 starts to help the team, managed by Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Arthur Irwin (Toronto, Ont.), to a championship.
Following that season, Dinneen was purchased by the Washington Senators and after two seasons with them he landed with the Boston Nationals where he developed into their ace. After the 1901 campaign, Dinneen jumped to the Boston Americans and won 20 games in three consecutive seasons. Easton noted that in 1904, Dinneen went 23-14 and threw a complete game in each of his 37 starts. The right-hander finished his pitching career with 170 wins and a 3.01 ERA and then went on to become a highly respected American League umpire for close to 30 years.
Easton noted that Dinneen is the only person to throw a major league no-hitter and to also call one as an umpire.
2. Mackenize Longpre’s illuminating presentation, “Charlie White, Leon Day and a Groundbreaking Summer in Toronto: The Integration Story of the International League Maple Leafs” took us back to 1951. Much has been written about Jackie Robinson breaking the modern professional baseball colour barrier with the International League’s Montreal Royals in 1946, but it wasn’t until five years later that the Toronto Maple Leafs introduced its first two Black players – White and Day.
Why did it take them so long?
Longpre suggested that it could have been the Maple Leafs’ prior affiliations with the Philadelphia Phillies (1948 to 1950) and Boston Red Sox (1947) that held them back. Both of those teams were slow to integrate. The Phillies did not have a Black player on their major league roster until 1957 and the Red Sox waited until 1959.
By 1951, however, the Leafs were affiliated with the St. Louis Browns who were owned by the progressive thinking Bill Veeck. The Leafs owner was the like-minded Jack Kent Cooke.
When the Leafs signed Day, he was 34 years old and had been a pitching star in the Negro Leagues for many years. Eleven years younger than Day, White played third base for the Leafs. Both were significant contributors to the Canadian club in 1951. Day, who would later be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, posted a 1.58 in 14 pitching appearances (one start). White would hit .283 with four home runs and 27 RBIs in 60 games and later play parts of two seasons with the Milwaukee Braves (1954-55).
Longpre also pointed out that a third Black player suited up for the Leafs that season — a 24-year-old right-hander named Frank Barnes. Barnes did not fare well in his two appearances with the club, permitting five earned runs in one inning.
3. Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Bill Humber followed Longpre with a presentation about Elston Howard‘s 1954 season in Toronto called, “Elston Howard: Best Ever Here?”
Howard, who later became the first Black player for the New York Yankees, was converted into a catcher while with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1954. He evolved into a nine-time All-Star at that position in the big leagues.
Humber shared that there were some questions as to why Howard was assigned to Toronto in 1954. The promising right-handed slugger had batted .286 with 10 home runs in 139 games at the same level with the Kansas City Blues in 1953. Some suggest that the Yankees were not yet ready to integrate and so they were stalling Howard. Whatever the reason was that he ended up in Toronto, Howard excelled there, batting .330 with 22 home runs and 109 RBIs in 138 games and was named the International League MVP.
In his research, Humber discovered that Howard stayed at the Barclay Hotel, which was located kiddy-corner to Union Station in Toronto (Front Street West and Simcoe Street). That’s where many of the Black athletes were housed in Toronto at the time. Howard helped the Maple Leafs draw more than 400,000 fans to Maple Leaf Stadium in 1954, which was more than some MLB clubs. Humber also noted that following his playing career Howard was considered a candidate to be the Blue Jays’ first manager before Roy Hartsfield was hired.
4. On Saturday afternoon, Buffalo-based journalist and retired professor Joe Marren highlighted two athletes – James Riley and Dennis Ribant – who played both pro hockey and pro baseball in his presentation, “Bo may have known football and baseball, but he couldn’t skate.”
I knew about Riley, but I hadn’t heard of Dennis Ribant, who Marren shared, played for the Detroit Red Wings’ OHA affiliate in Hamilton during the 1960-61 season. Ribant was also a right-handed pitcher for six MLB seasons from 1964 to 1969.
A Detroit native, Ribant wanted to sign with the local Tigers before the 1960 season, but they insisted he quit hockey, something he was not prepared to do, according to Marren. Ribant went on to register six goals and 14 assists in 48 games for the Hamilton Red Wings in the 1960-61 campaign. He also met his wife, Bette, in Hamilton.
After the hockey season, Milwaukee Braves GM and Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee John McHale offered Ribant a $20,000 signing bonus and told the young right-hander that he could also continue to play hockey. Ribant signed and proceeded to dominate with the class-D Quad Cities Braves in his first pro season. In fact, on July 2, 1961, he tossed a nine-inning perfect game against the Clinton C-Sox. Marren noted that it was the only nine-inning perfect game thrown in the pro affiliated minor league ranks that season.
Ribant never did pitch in the majors for the Braves but he toed the rubber for six other MLB teams: the Mets (1964-66), the Pirates (1967), the Tigers (1968), the White Sox (1968), the Cardinals (1969) and the Reds (1969). He finished his career with a 24-29 record and a 3.87 ERA in 149 games (56 starts).
He didn’t play pro hockey again after the 1960-61 season.
He died on April 24, 2023 at the age of 81.
5. Also on Saturday afternoon, author Andrew Forbes delivered a fascinating presentation called “Spoke, Peck, and the Greatest Game Ever Played in Peterborough.” Forbes, who lives in Peterborough, Ont., explained why legendary outfielder Tris Speaker and longtime big leaguer Roger Peckinpaugh came to Peterborough to play in an exhibition game on October 13, 1923, which was advertised as “the Greatest Game Ever Played in Peterborough.”
Forbes shared that the game was a fundraiser for the Great War Veterans’ Association (GWHA) and proceeds would be directed to the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 237 in Marmora, Ont.
Speaker liked to hunt and fish and he was likely lured to the region for that reason. Peckinpaugh owned a cottage in the area and had also been involved in previous GWHA fundraisers.
The game took place at Riverside Park, in the shadow of the city’s famous Quaker Oats factory. Speaker and Peckinpaugh and their team of all-stars beat the local Wellingtons 10-3. And Speaker didn’t disappoint the fans. He had two triples, a single and two RBIs and in the fourth inning, he even made a rare pitching appearance.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Leave a Reply