Seen it all in baseball? The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame might surprise you
CBC
As far as baseball goes, an unassuming southern Ontario town can readily say it's home to some serious gems.
The homeplate where Joe Carter hit his homerun the last time the Blue Jays were in the World Series in 1993 is on display at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, northeast of London.
So too is Carter's batting helmet. It's the museum's mission to show off and educate people on the storied history of Canadian baseball, and the Blue Jays.
“It's really important to talk about the current Canadian born players, and the women who play the game,” said Scott Crawford, the director of operations at the Hall of Fame. “Canadians are great at playing baseball, and we’re just getting better and better.”
The Hall of Fame first opened in Toronto in 1983. In 1994, St. Marys won a bid to bring the museum to small-town Ontario, and the current venue opened in 1998.
The museum's since become a repository of sought-after baseball artifacts, most of which involve Canadian teams and players.
“For the Blue Jays we have World Series items from the early years. Original items from 1977. We [also] have Montreal Expos stuff, because of courts there are still diehard fans all over the place,” Crawford said.
Among the artifacts on display, some of the most significant date back to the last time the Jays found themselves in the World Series more than three decades ago.
“You can't have a bigger hit than winning the World Series off your home run,” said Crawford pointing to the home plate used in '93. “We also have his batting helmet that he wore during the World Series. It fell off his head at first base.”
Now that things have gone full-circle and the Jays are back in the limelight, Crawford hopes he’ll have some new artifacts coming his way soon.
On top of a clear desire to see the team win the best-of-seven series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Crawford said the current hype certainly isn’t bad for business, either.
“There's certainly an uptick in [tour] registration,” Crawford said. “Kids want to bring their parents to a baseball museum. Parents want to bring their kids to the baseball museum, because baseball is really considered like a family game, a family event. There's history to it.”
Baseball fans who spoke to CBC News at the Hall of Fame said they were surprised to learn that a museum like it was so close to home.
“It’s interesting. There’s a lot of history. One of the reasons we came was we didn’t know there was a Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. We wanted to know more about it,” Joe Phillips said Sunday as he took a tour.
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