Possibly Kingston’s best-ever ballclub

Originally published Oct. 20, 2017

Retired journalist Patrick Kennedy wrote, then delivered the following introduction of the 1967 Ontario senior champion Lakeview Indians club at a recent banquet saluting the 50th anniversary of their provincial title.

By Patrick Kennedy

Kingston Heritage

In sport, the term ‘greatest ever’ is too often tossed around without thought or consideration to accuracy or merit, and can then be further complicated by the overlapping of generations. Who can unequivocally state, for instance, that Ali, the self-proclaimed Greatest, would beat Joe Louis in his prime or Iron Mike at his most menacing.

Hockey’s best-ever? Howe, Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby? Who’s to say.

One game, one quarterback, his team narrowly trailing in the final two minutes. Who do want behind centre? Manning? Montana? Brady?

There are of course no definitive answers, which are all subjective. And remember this: Memory, a trickster by nature, gets trickier with age, conveniently blurring the passage of time.

So it’s impossible, therefore, to proclaim the 1967 Kingston Lakeview Indians as the finest amateur ball team to come out of Kingston. However, any serious talk on the topic surely must place that bunch high on the list.

In the eyes and fading recollection of this impressionable fan, though - someone who turned 14 that Centennial year and was still occasionally entertaining ever-diminishing hopes of a baseball career, who studied the game far more fervently than, say, Grade 10 calculus - there can be no debate. That Indians team was tops, blurry memory be dammed.

The club, at least to us north-end kids who walked or biked to games at the Cricket Field, seemed the coolest, closest thing to a pro team. None of us had ever seen a pro game unless you count those summer Saturday afternoons when Curt Gowdy, Peewee Reese and Dizzy Dean appeared on TV working the CBS Game of the Week – the only televised game that week.

The club’s practices were similar to the big league workouts we’d read about in Baseball Digest. The uniforms looked big league, too, not unlike the work clothes donned by Rocky Colavito in the outfield for those other Indians in far-off Cleveland. Like major leaguers, the Kingston players were grown men, save for a 17-year-old bespectacled rookie nicknamed Camel. (Monikers, by the way, were the norm on that squad: Woody, Crunch, Mac, Nick, Jed, Coff, Weesey, Lefty, Slugger, Squirrel, Knobber, Junior, Gilly, Goody and Goose.)

The team even had its own general manager, statistician, official scorer, travel secretary and beat reporter, all in the person of Bob Elliott Jr., while his father, also named Bob, managed the team.

Like the pros, our Indians were all business between the white lines, playing as if their day jobs were at stake. Infield practice was so smoothly conducted, we imagined this was how the Cubs took infield at Wrigley, the Giants at Candlestick, the Cardinals at Crosley.

When first baseman Guy White stretched to take a throw on a close play, we figured that’s the way Boog Powell was doing it in Baltimore, Norm Cash in Detroit. When middle infielders Ron Earl and Bob Gilmour combined with White on a double play, it was like listening to the Yankees radio broadcaster describe Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson turning two with Moose Skowron.

On the other hand, when hard-hitting third baseman Don Goodridge fielded a ground ball, then took a crow hop or three before throwing to first too late or just in time to nip the runner, we knew that was NOT how Clete Boyer was doing it in New York or Dick Allen in Philadelphia. “When Goody took those crow hops, we wondered if he was ever going to throw the ball,” recalled Squirrel Earl.

For pure drama and excitement, you couldn’t beat the sight of big Charlie Pester swinging from the heels with two strikes, whether he missed entirely or hammered a pitch off the fountain across Lower Union Street. The Goose’s strikeouts were often as riveting as his prodigious clouts. He was our Ruthian-like character: outspoken, fan friendly, talkative, brash, personable, sublimely skilled, confident and above all fiercely competitive. If Goose was pitching and Grandmother Pester was crowding the plate, he would not hit her, but five will get you 10 that Granny’d be on her fanny, dusting herself off.

Grizzled pitchers Keith Weese and Art Leeman, age 35 and 34, respectively, that summer, seemed like pensioners in our minds, yet they demonstrated time and again that there was so much more to their craft than the ability to throw hard and fast. We were lucky to have been tutored in the rudimentary elements of the art form by the father of neighborhood pals Ken and Ed Jarrell. Having their pop, former pro, Arnie (Ol Hickory) Jarrell, explain the science of pitching was like getting investment advice from Warren Buffet, a six-gun lesson from Wyatt Earp, star-gazing with Gallileo.

You were wise to clam up and pay attention, and in 1967 we witnessed, firsthand, as Arnie’s theories on pitching were put to the test and proven over and over. Weese, Leeman, and Pester showed us that deception, location and fluctuating speed were as paramount to success as a blazing fastball, which happened to be the go-to pitch of Indians southpaw Doug McIlroy, our fellow Swamp Ward native.

To us, manager, Bob Elliott, the beat reporter’s white-haired pop, seemed as serious, as wily, as unflappable and, yes, as ancient as old man Stengel himself. Elliott and Cliff Earl, Ron’s dad, had resurrected a senior city all-star team in the spring of ’67, then peopled it with players from the disbanded Kingston Baseball Association. Having these die-hard hardball men at the helm was like having Willie Shoemaker as a riding instructor, Einstein as a physics tutor, Ann Margaret as … well, as anything.

In defending any best-ever argument, statistics weigh heavy at the evidence table, and in this case exhibit A was the team’s record. The Indians posted a dazzling 22-5 regular-season won-loss record before flying through five playoff rounds winning 10 and losing just twice.

Exhibits B, C, D and E consisted of eye-popping pitching stats. Weese, off a farm in Centreville, carded an unblemished 8-0 mark to go with a 1.87 ERA.

Leeman, from a large Glenburnie clan peppered with ballplayers, was 11-2 with a microscopic 1.24 ERA. Pester, arguably this city’s greatest all-around athlete and easily its most entertaining, sported a 2-0 record with an even 2.00 ERA, a shade higher than McIlroy’s stingy 1.62, and included a no-hitter, one of a record four the Goose recorded in Kingston flannels.

On offence, seven Kingston players hit .310 or higher that year, including a trio who produced at a clip of .400 or better. Pester, who like Leeman and Weese had played pro ball as a young men, topped the team with a .421 average.

Teenage outfielder Clyde Harris, the aforementioned Camel, hit an even .400, kick-starting a long, memorable senior career, in two cities, that would not wrap until age 45.

Prior to 1967, the last Kingston team to cop an OBA pennant was the 1935 Ponies. Jim Arniel, was on that club, and 32 summers later, his son Doug, a.k.a. Slugger, won the deciding game of the best-of-three provincial final with a two-run, ninth-inning home run that dented a roof in Orillia.

They, along with Bob Gilmour and sons Rob and Pat, remain the only father-son duos to capture Ontario senior A baseball crowns.

My favourite moment from that season was one I never saw or really fully appreciated until one day twenty some years later when, in the course of researching a story on Kingston’s 100th anniversary in baseball, I visited Arty Leeman at his Glenburnie home on Unity Road. Among other things that day, Art talked about the no-hitter that he twirled in the penultimate game of the ’67 playoff run, a 2-0 victory in Oakville that came achingly close to being a perfect game.

How close? One pitch, a full-count fastball with two out in the bottom of the ninth – Ball 4. Art described that missed strike call as if he’d thrown the pitch that very day instead of decades earlier. The passion and competitive fire that fueled the cagey old righthander in his playing days were on full display in the Leeman living room that day, and I was left to wonder about the competitiveness and passion that consumed pitchers like Leeman in games where something was on the line.

Kingston’s best amateur club? Clearly the Lakeview Indians possessed more than enough talent, garnered more than enough accolades, to be strongly considered in any local best-ever poll. They could hit, hit for power, pitch, catch and throw. Most importantly, they won. As a team.

They could also, on occasion, fracture an unwritten baseball rule. Like the time pitcher Elwood Johnston, then a city cop, spent part of a police shift helping to steal signs from an opposing team.

The story goes that Woody, who later served in the RCMP as well as with CSIS, our country’s intelligence-gathering unit, was observing his team’s game from a position well beyond centre field. In a nearby squad car sat the late city detective Bob ‘Duster’ Joyce, binoculars in hand, picking off the lone signal being put down by the catcher some 400 feet away. Duster relayed to Woody what pitch was coming and Woody signalled his teammate at bat.

“Arm straight up for a fastball, nothing for off-speed,” the retired spy recalled, laughing.

“What a ball club that was,” he added.

Indeed it was, Woody. Some might even suggest the city’s greatest ever.