Relatives of Black players on Ontario baseball team that broke barriers taking to the field in their honour
CBC
Thirteen years before Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in the MLB, the Chatham Coloured All-Stars became the first baseball team with Black players to compete in a championship in Ontario.
The team played the Penetang Shipbuilders in the Provincial Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship in 1934 in its second year in the league.
The All-Stars won the game, in a historic victory that reverberated far off the field as well.
The All-Stars' legacy is being commemorated Saturday with a charity baseball game in Chatham-Kent in southwestern Ontario at Fergie Jenkins Field, named after the Chatham-born all-star MLB pitcher who retired in 1983, and became the first Canadian inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Blake Harding is among team members' descendants who will take to the field in an event called Field of Honour, part of continued efforts to get the team into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont.
Harding, 73, wasn't born when his father, Wilfred (Boomer) Harding, was the centre-fielder and one of the team's stars, but he grew up hearing the stories, including about the challenges the players faced because of the colour of their skin.
"He would talk about the things that they ran into, the adversity and the problems, but yet the camaraderie they shared on the field and off their field," said Harding, who also had a few uncles on the team.
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