By Andrew Hendriks
To baseball fans, few things can be held as dearly as a ballpark.
Be it the atmosphere, the memories, the tradition — nothing serves as a better microcosm of the game than the diamond where you first fell in love with it.
Although it doesn’t have the prominence of Rogers Centre, Jarry Park or even Maple Leaf Stadium, Cambridge’s Dickson Park is no different.
Nestled along the banks of the Grand River sits one of Canadian Baseball’s prized jewels, a throwback to the Intercounty League’s golden era in Southern Ontario when baseball reigned supreme.
Built in 1919, Dickson’s obscure dimensions have been wreaking havoc on both pitchers and hitters alike for nearly 100 years.
Coming in at 279 down the right field line, 460 to dead centre and a speedster’s dream 695-plus in left (there is no fence), Dickson has seen its fair share of interesting plays during the landmark’s rich history.
Equally as unique as the playing dimensions is the ballpark’s 500 seat grandstand located down the third base line. A structure that housed both visiting and home team dugouts, showers and clubhouses for decades before updated facilities were set up behind home plate in the early 1980’s.
Over the years, this ballpark has been home to an array of teams such as the Guelph Biltmores, Cambridge Cubs and, most notably, the Galt Terriers, a semi-pro team owned by a local paint and wallpaper store merchant, Gus Murray.
Known simply as “Hustlin’ Gus”, Murray was said to have been a poor man’s Charlie Finley. A man whose passion for baseball set him out on a mission to grow the game’s popularity on a grassroots level while putting the small town of Galt on the map as a sporting powerhouse.
Through an array of Finley-like promotions, Murray was able to draw large crowds to Dickson Park. He parlayed his team’s gate receipts into a diverse group of ballplayers consisting of Major League Baseball alumni, National League Hockey players on summer “vacation” and local standouts.
Of the more well-known ballplayers to suit up for the Terriers during the Murray era, names like Tommy Warren and Goody Rosen, both of which played for the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1940’s, come to mind, not to mention the Hunstville Ont. native and man who replaced the Bambino in the Yankee outfield, George “Twinkle Toes” Selkirk, who won more World Series than anyone.
Selkirk, who was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame on Aug. 3, 1983, won a total of five World Series with the Bronx Bombers, was selected to two all-star games and played alongside such Yankee greats as Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio before suiting up for the Galt Terriers in 1948 and roaming the vast expanses of Dickson Parks outfield.
In more recent years, Canadian ballplayers such as Cooperstown Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, Rob Ducey, Scott Thorman and yours truly have all played at the corner of Park Hill Road and George in historic the city which used to be known as Galt Ont.
When asked about playing inside the strange dimensions of Dickson Park during his Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame induction in 2013, the left handed hitting Ducey, who clubbed 122 extra base hits during 703 MLB games, reminisced fondly of the parks short right field porch by saying “Dickson Dome? That park is the reason I became a pull hitter! Man, I loved that place”.
This aging ballpark serves as an example of many hidden gems that can be found littered across Canada, each of which holds its own unique story and ties in to the diverse history this country has to offer to the game of baseball.
This article was originally published at the Canadian Baseball Network.
