June 9, 2024

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

When this grey-haired baseball has been walked into Harvey Jackson Memorial Park in the sleepy hamlet of Kendal recently - to see my son’s Kingston Thunder U-18 team play in a tournament – it was, to quote Yogi Berra, “like deja-vu all over again.”

I was a member of the 1972 Kingston Lions junior squad when I first played at the quaint old ballyard. Yet once I stepped down the narrow cement steps of the dugout, 52 years washed away in a flood of memories.

The ballpark in Kendal, 170 km west of Kingston in the Municipality of Clarington, is a throwback to yesteryear. It’s steeped in character and pleasant reminders of a time when baseball was king of summer sports in cities such as Kingston and in rural areas everywhere.

There’s a wooden concession stand with a hand-printed menu, hinged windows and an attached deck. A matching white and green trimmed equipment shed sits behind a screened-in batting cage and the home team’s bullpen, not far from a sun-guarded scorekeeper’s table that longtime volunteer Eddie Couroux built. And of course those old-time dugouts. They call them dugouts for a reason: because they’re subterranean. From down there, you have a cricket’s eye-level view of the playing field.

The Kendal ballpark is as aesthetically pleasing as it is historically significant. It was named in honour of Cpl. James Harvey Jackson, a member of the Princess Patricia Regiment who died on a WWI battlefield. His parents donated the land for the ball field, which opened in 1926.

“There’s a nostalgic feel to that old ballpark,” recalls former Kingston Ponies player Mario Cantarutti, “the way it’s nestled into the countryside, with the forest beyond right field, the highway behind left field, the fans along both lines, and those old-time dugouts. It takes you back in time.”

The baseball diamond has showcased some splendid players over the years, players such as the late Ralph Kennedy, a towering righthander who had some outstanding battles against Kingston teams, and a rubber-armed youngster who made it all the way to the big leagues - Paul Quantrill.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Quantrill pitched and played at Jackson Memorial Park as a kid. His grandfather Howard Quantrill was a stalwart for Kendal senior teams back in the 1940s and 50s, and Paul’s father, John, pitched for local clubs in the 1960s and 70s. Though Paul would go on to toe the rubber for seven teams over 14 major-league seasons – he still holds the New York Yankees single-season club record for pitching appearances (86) – the seeds of that career were planted in Jackson Memorial Park.

“The place had a real nice feel to it,” says Quantrill, whose son, Cal, pitches for the Colorado Rockies. “But it wasn’t just the park but also the atmosphere and how the community supported its teams. When I look back on my career, I still think of all the great fun I had as a kid at that Kendal diamond.”

Kendal’s present-day population of 95 includes Brian Foster and the aforementioned Eddie Couroux, two longtime volunteer caretakers of the ballfield who between them have logged better than 60 years of mostly unpaid toil. Foster, like Couroux a catcher in his playing days, caught John Quantrill and coached local teams for nigh on a half-century. At 75, Brian and his Santa-like beard, still tends to the diamond.

“He’s there at least five days a week,” says Kendal postmaster Paula Sheppard.

Eddie Couroux arrived in Kendal in 1945. Now three years shy of his 100th birthday, there are, as the saying goes, no flies on the North Bay native. When the caller from Kingston first telephoned him, Eddie was unavailable. He was out riding around on his four-wheeler.

“I played hardball for Kendal in ’47, caught Howard Quantrill and some other fellows,” Eddie recalls, fresh from his ride. “Back then we played against Newtonville, Orono, Little Britain, Bowmanville, and let me tell you it was good ball.”

Eddie took in some of the action at the recent Kendal Tournament.

“Once this game gets in your system,” he explains, “it never leaves you.”

The deep dugouts, like the light standards, the backstop, and the outfield fence, are not original features.

“Someone dug up the ground and built the dugout walls using (cinder) blocks and I put the wooden roof on it,” says Eddie. “That was back in about the late 50s or early 60s. They’re still holding up OK.”

Ditto for Eddie.

The ballpark has played host to some memorable Kingston/Kendal games. In one tilt during the Lakeview Indians run to the 1967 OBA senior A pennant, the late Charlie “Goose” Pester reached base five times, stroked four hits, and stole three bases. After swiping that third bag, Goose hollered at third-base coach Bob Elliott Sr. “Knobber! Don’t be throwing any more stones (the steal signal). I’m tired!” That plea appeared in the game story written by then-Whig-Standard cub reporter Bob Elliott Jr., the ex-big-league baseball scribe who’s now in the media wing of the hall of fame in Cooperstown.

Former pro pitcher Art Leeman, the Glenburnie Rifle, went the distance and fanned 16 for Kingston in that game. The 91-year-old doesn’t remember his pitching line, but he still chuckles at the memory of the 6-foot-4 Pester hitting his head on the front of the dugout roof during a hurried exit.

“Poor Charlie just wrapped both arms around his head, sat down on the bench and stayed there,” Art recalls.

Longtime senior nine mainstay Clyde “Camel” Harris remembers the dugout’s cement walls playing tricks with a batted ball.

“Foul balls would come screaming into the dugout, and if the initial shot missed you, the ricochet was guaranteed to get you,” says Harris. “Those old country ballparks like Kendal, Keene, Little Britain, they were Field of Dreams stuff.”

As mentioned, yours truly first played on the Kendal ball yard with a top-drawer Kingston Lions junior team coached by the late Joe Hawkins. I returned in 1990 while playing out the string with a Ponies senior club that went on to cop the provincial Sr. C crown that season.

One particular play during the latter visit is recalled like it happened last week and not 34 years ago. And somewhere among teammate Randy Casford’s collection of keepsakes there is video evidence - a grainy VHS tape recorded by his late mother, Donna.

Midway through an EOBA elimination game versus the local Eagles, my batterymate Casford induced a batter to loft a fly ball to the right of home plate. I gave chase and…well I’ll let the ol’ southpaw take it from here.

“You took off after it, caught the ball, then all of sudden disappeared inside the Kendal dugout,” Casford says. “In the video, all you can see is you running after the fly ball, then nothing – nothing but a cloud of dust near the top of the dugout.”

For the record, I snagged the pop-up with a sliding catch and somehow escaped unhurt except for bruises and scrapes, a minor miracle, really, considering I cleared the four concrete steps and crash-landed on the dugout floor. Fortunately, both shin pads cushioned the fall.

“You must’ve been hurt,” Casford insists before adding the punchline, “because you were never right afterwards.”

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