August 3, 2024

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

The ceremonial first pitch caught the outside corner of home plate...well, eventually.

OK, so it was a two-hop heave, it was still a sight better than some of the ridiculous first-pitch tosses seen on TV these days, and it served nicely to officially open the 2024 Canadian Little League Championship at Kingston's Cricket Field.

“Oh my,” 86-year-old guest-of-honour hurler Ruth Pester quipped with a smile that gradually widened from beneath a pair of fashionable sunglasses. “I really should've warmed up first.”

Ruth was pinch-hitting for her late husband Charlie, and despite the sweltering temperatures, she was decked out for the occasion: cornflower blue pants, matching sneakers, black top, and tie-dye blue scarf. A large blue glass-blown pendant dangled from a thin silver chain. She was honoured to represent her hubby, a ballplayer who is considered by many to be the best ever in our town's long, rich hardball history.

Somewhere in the hereafter, Charlie Pester doubtless beamed with pride. “Goose” and his gal, his high school sweetheart at Kingston Collegiate, his “Twinkle Toes” - back at the old ball yard where one watched and cheered faithfully while the other thrilled and entertained Kingston crowds with seldom-seen feats and a palpable passion for the game.

At the sight of Ruthie's two-hop strike, however – that's one too many hops even for cricket at this Cricket Field - Goose likely let loose a high-pitched Walter Brennan-like giggle of approval. In his salad days, Charlie would “paint the corners” with fastballs that also hopped, although Goose's “gas” remained entirely airborne on route.

“What a lovely tribute to Charlie,” Ruth had mentioned to me on the eve of the seven-team national tournament for kids age 12 and under. “He loved baseball and he especially loved watching kids play baseball, probably because Charlie was just a big kid himself.”

Some fans in the opening-day crowd probably knew of Charlie Pester and his athletic exploits, which happened not just on the ball diamond but on the hardwood, on the track and on the gridiron as well. For those uninformed of his athletic prowess, Charlie Pester was simply one of Kingston's finest athletes during a truly incomparable era, arguably our finest ever. That's what his peers say, and their opinions ought to weigh heavy in any discussion of such rankings. Twenty-six years after cancer struck out Pester at age 62, the prevailing consensus is that he was a local athlete like no other.

Charlie was indeed a multi-sport athlete, but it was in baseball where the legend of Goose Pester began and endures to this day. The no-hitters, the blazing fastball, the tape-measure home runs, the constant chatter, the antics, the sharp, short whistle, the quips that kept teammates loose, the competitive fire that kept them accountable.

No doubt the ghosts of nicknamed teammates and coaches from yesteryear - Hickory, Doc, Bucky, Knobber, Nick, Stitch, Ox, Gabby, to name a few - were present in the ether, watching as Ruthie launched the 10-day national championships at the city's oldest ballpark, where the first local ballgame was played five years after Confederation.

Maybe the spectre of undefeated heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano popped around, too. Rock and Goose once shared the head table at a celebrity sports dinner. Luke Easter probably floated by to say hi. The ex-Cleveland Indians African-American slugger never forgot how the big white Canadian rookie dubbed “Ozark” once led a two-team exodus from a racist Florida restaurant that had refused to serve Easter.

Charlie was the undisputed king of Kingston characters, a big, blustery, booming-voiced individual who loved to entertain. And did. Fittingly, he shared a July 4th birthday with another great showman, songwriter George M. Cohan.

The Goose was the Limestone City's answer to baseball immortal Babe Ruth. Both demonstrated a flair for the dramatic and for belting home runs that seemed to leave vapour trails. Both were premier pitchers early in their careers. Both were lovable hams who eagerly played to an audience. Both were known to burn the proverbial candle at both ends, although the Goose one-upped the Bambino with this his greatest achievement: On a September afternoon in 1980, Pester ordered his usual quart of beer at a local watering hole, downed half of it, put the bottle down on the bar, and never touched another drop of alcohol for the last 18 years of his life. He died in 1998.

Little League tournament volunteer Wayne LaBarge recalled one of Pester's many tape-measure blasts, this one from better than 60 years ago. “I was a kid working the scoreboard over there,” the grandfather said, pointing to where the old manual scoreboard once stood behind first base. “After big Charlie hit the ball, it just kept going up and up and up...until it landed right in that courthouse fountain. That was some wallop.”

It sure was, but it wasn't Charlie's longest.

Goose once powdered a pitch that banged off the County Courthouse well beyond left field, a prodigious poke accomplished by only other hitter – St. Louis Cardinals infielder (and baseball Hall of Famer) Red Schoendienst during the Kingston stop on a barnstorming tour by major-league players in the early 1950s. “The courthouse home run is my favourite story,” noted Pester's grandson Charlie Pinkerton, a Michener Award-winning journalist who lives in Toronto and share's his grandfather's lofty height. “That home run is a huge part of family lore.”

Ruth witnessed the moonshot. “I was there, I went to all of Charlie's games,” noted the retired teacher. She recalls that on that particular day she was supervising kids at the park opposite the Cricket Field. Her vantage point was the top of a playground slide from where she had a bird's eye view of the children.

“The ball hit the front door of the courthouse,” she said. “It might've bounced first, but I don't think so, because it sailed right over the fountain.”

Following the Little League opening ceremonies, Ruth Pester, despite the humidity and threat of rain, stayed put. She'd satisfied her first-pitch duties but not her appetite for live baseball. She settled into a lawn chair and watched the host Kingston Colts cap a perfect Day 1 with an electrifying 3-2 walk-off win over Quebec.

“Charlie would've loved to have seen that,” she said.

Who knows? Maybe he did.

“Even though Charlie played other sports so well,” Ruth pointed out afterwards, “baseball was his favourite. He said it was the thinking man's game.”

She laughed at how the Goose delighted in telling people that baseball is the best sport because it's mentioned in the Bible. "In Genesis 1.1 it says 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,'” she confirmed. "But Charlie would say, 'In the big inning, God created the heavens and the earth.'”

For a moment there, I thought I heard Walter Brennan giggling.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com