By David Matchett
This is a seemingly simple question, but it isn’t, and it recurs while researching the history of baseball in Canada.
Some players who were born in Canada emigrated soon thereafter and others born abroad moved to Canada before they could walk. Ongoing research can uncover an old census record or baptismal certificate that suddenly converts an American or removes someone else from the list of Canadians.
And various research resources can differ, especially those in print that can go out of date.
Canadian Baseball Network is in a unique position to set the definition then maintain and update a list of Canadian major leaguers. Future research projects will be able to clearly state “Canadian players, as defined by the Canadian Baseball Network…” and we would all know exactly what that means and who is included, or excluded, and why.
What follows is my proposal for some ground rules that I hope will start a debate and lead to a comprehensive list of Canadians that we can all agree upon.
Canadian-born only?
Is a Canadian only someone who was born in Canada? That definition excludes everyone who grew up here after their families immigrated from somewhere else.
Canadians consider NBA MVP Steve Nash as one of our own but he was born in South Africa. Nash considers himself to be a Canadian and he has represented Canada in international competitions so it’s reasonable to say that he is Canadian.
Pitcher Kirk McCaskill offers the other side of this issue. He was born in Kapuskasing, Ont., but moved to the US while still a toddler. As quoted by Jim Shearon in Canada’s Baseball Legends, page 210, McCaskill said:
“… I only lived in Canada for two years. I’m very proud of the fact that I was born in Canada … but I am an American citizen. The United States has afforded me all of my opportunity, all of my education and I’m equally proud of that.”
McCaskill is Canadian-born, but is he Canadian?
Two catchers from the early 20th century are a further illustration of this dilemma. Larry McLean was born in Fredericton, N.B. but his family moved to the United States when he was young and he lived the rest of his life south of the border.
McLean didn’t consider himself to be Canadian and until the 1990’s most baseball resources listed his birthplace as Cambridge, Mass.
On the other side of this argument is Jimmy Archer, who was born in Ireland. His family moved to Montreal when he was an infant and eventually settled in Toronto where Archer lived until his baseball career took him to the US.
Are McLean and McCaskill more Canadian because they were born in Canada, or are Nash and Archer more Canadian because they spent more time here?
Arguments can be made in favour of each position.
Do Canadian parents count?
Does one’s parentage have an impact? Perhaps, but that may be only part of the argument. Mark Teahen was born in California but his father is Canadian and Teahen later because a naturalized Canadian citizen. He has represented Canada in international tournaments and considers himself to be a Canadian.
Hall of Famer Napoleon Lajoie was born in Rhode Island to Canadian parents. Lajoie’s older siblings were born in Canada and if the family had left a couple of years later Larry Lajoie might be considered the greatest Canadian-born player of all time. But he was born in the US and considered himself to be an American so it would be a stretch to designate him as Canadian.
Do the parents factor in? I would say yes, but other issues have to be accounted for as well.
Historical records change
Ideally, whenever there is doubt, we should ask the person if he considers himself to be a Canadian, like Jim Shearon did of Kirk McCaskill. However, since we can’t always do that, we’ll have to turn to other sources and base the decision on the facts that are available. The problem with this is that the facts change.
According to Baseball-Reference.com a total of 93 Canadian-born players made their debuts in the first fifty seasons of major league baseball (1871 to 1920). However, the 1956 edition of the Official Encyclopedia of Baseball included only 53 of them.
Of the rest, some listings showed American birthplaces, some didn’t show any birthplace at all and a few players didn’t even make it into the book, their records erroneously combined into contemporary players’ totals.
By the time the 1977 edition of the Encyclopedia came out seven players’ records had been updated to count then as Canadian-born. Bill Humber’s 1983 Cheering For The Home Team listed 62 Canadian-born players who debuted up to 1920; Thorn & Palmer’s Total Baseball from 1989 had 72 Canadians; Neil Munro’s Canadian Players Encyclopedia from 1997 had 83; and Bob Elliott’s 2005 The Northern Game had 87, as did Jim Shearon’s Over The Fence is Out from 2009.
None of this is meant to imply any inaccuracy in these books. The authors based their work on the best information available at the time. But ongoing research is always updating players’ personal information as the list of Canadians to play in the majors continues to increase. Print resources go out of date.
The best sources for current information about birthplaces and nationalities are therefore online databases that are updated on a regular basis.
Two sites that I have found to be very helpful and comprehensive are Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.
Some Proposed Ground Rules
Here are some proposed ground rules for deciding who is a Canadian:
Anyone born in Canada is a Canadian, even if they left the country soon thereafter.
Foreign-born players who are noted as Canadians in Canadian baseball resources are also included. Four books that I refer to are:
A. Diamonds of the North, Bill Humber, 1995, updating his 1983 work presented in Cheering For The Home Team, B. Canadian Players Encyclopedia, Neil Munro, 1997, C. The Northern Game, Bob Elliott, 2005, D. Over The Fence Is Out, Jim Shearon, 2009.
As of Feb. 17, 2013 Baseball-Reference.com lists 239 players with Canadian birthplaces. In addition, one or more of the books noted here consider the following players to be Canadian:
Jimmy Archer, born in Ireland, raised in Toronto (A, B, C, D)
Chris Barnwell, born in the US to Canadian parents (D)
Reno Bertoia, born in Italy, raised in Windsor, Ont. (A, B, C, D)
Hank Biasetti, born in Italy, raised in Windsor, Ont. (A, B, C, D)
Mike Brannock, born in the US, raised in Guelph, Ont. (A, C, D)
Sheldon Burnside, born in the US, raised in Toronto (A, B, C, D)
Luke Carlin, born in the US, moved to Gatineau, Que., at age two (D)
Emil Frisk, from Ignace, Ont. but Baseball-Reference.com lists him as being from Kalkaska, Mich. (A, B)
Jim Gillespie, born in the US (A, B, C)
Billy Hulen, born in the US (A)
William Hogg, Baseball-Reference.com shows him as being from Port Huron, Mich. (A, B)
Harley Payne, listed as being from Windsor, Ont. but other sources show him as being from Windsor, Ohio (A, B, C)
Kevin Reimer, born in the US (in Mobile, Ala. in 1964 when his Canadian father Gerald Reimer was playing double-A in the Cincinnati system) to Canadian parents and raised in Enderby, B.C. (A, B, C, D)
Chris Reitsma, born in the US and raised in Calgary (D) Mark Teahen, born in the US to Canadian parents and later became a naturalized citizen (D)
Gus Yost, listed as Canadian but Baseball-Reference.com shows his place of birth as unknown (A, B)
So that’s 239 Canadian-born players and another 16 who were not born here but who could also be considered to be Canadian.
Conclusion
This issue first came to my attention two years ago when I was compiling a list of the Canadian-born players who had appeared in the most games at each position. Jack Graney had the top total in left field, followed closely by Jeff Heath, but as I was wrapping up my research they were passed by George Wood.
This didn’t happen because “Dandy” Wood played in a lot of games in 2011. In fact, he hadn’t appeared in a game since 1892. What happened was a diligent researcher found that he was born in Pownal, P.E.I. and not Boston and toward the end of 2011 Baseball-Reference.com changed his place of birth in their records.
I haven’t found a single, comprehensive list of Canadians so let’s figure this out for ourselves.
Here are some points to consider:
Do we include only Canadian-born players in the list?
What resources do we use to determine a player’s place of birth?
How do we resolve conflicting birthplace information between resources?
Do we also include players who may be Canadian for a reason other than their place of birth?
What resources do be use to identify these foreign-born Canadians?