As the MLB season gets going, the Toronto Blue Jays are entering the 2026 season as American League champions for the first time in 32 years. Their recent success sparked nationwide excitement, with expectations of a major spike in baseball registration.
The timing is perfect: The Canadian Baseball League, founded in 1919, is set to become fully professional for the first time this year. Last week, Team Canada’s World Baseball Classic roster advanced beyond pool play for the first time in tournament history.
All that means a busy time for the dedicated few Canadian baseball historians.
“There was this flurry of activity of people looking back at baseball’s history in Canada because of what was happening,” Andrew North, director of the Canadian Centre for Baseball Research, said.
It’s a rich and relatively unknown history — one lost in the shadow of the U.S.
Canadians have all but jettisoned baseball for hockey as a national pastime. But for those who inquire about baseball in Canada, North and his colleagues have a fascinating history to share.
Few know that baseball, America’s pastime, is just as Canadian as it is American.
Part of the story starts with Bob Addy. As the first Canadian ballplayer to make it big in the U.S., North always stops by his plaque at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in Saint Marys, Ont.
Born in 1842 in Port Hope, Ont., Addy was the first Canadian player in pro baseball. He later became an umpire, then manager.
Addy went on to play for clubs now called the White Sox and Reds, and with Hall of Famers Al Spalding and Cap Anson. The Canadian also toyed with a version of baseball on ice. Some sources even credit him with the advent of the slide.
He also had a habit of playing in important games, including the famous defeat of the Nationals in 1867. Along the way, he was heralded by teammates and observers for his toughness and courage, especially as a catcher crouching “behind the bat” in baseball’s early days.
Addy joined the ranks of the praised Rockford Forest City team almost immediately after moving to Illinois around age 20, honing his skills in Port Hope. This lends weight to what North and his Canadian Centre for Baseball Research colleagues have long argued: that Canada played a central role in the early development of the sport.
“People who say that baseball was born somewhere are just wrong,” North said.
“It wasn’t as if some U.S. Johnny Appleseed-type came into places like Guelph and Woodstock and these places and said, ‘Here’s what I think you guys should be doing, and here’s how to do it.’ That didn’t happen.”
“It was Canadian locals that were taking the initiative and saying, ‘I’m going to form this team and I’m going to get local players to play, and it’s going to be funded by my neighbours and me in my local community.’ So it was all a Canadian initiative,” North said.
The New York Clipper’s description of an 11 per side Canadian rules version of baseball in 1860 proves baseball was being developed independently up north.
Additionally, with records of a June 4, 1819 game in Hamilton and a June 4, 1838 game in Beachville, Ont., the evidence to say that baseball burst from its folk game cocoon first in Canada, not the U.S., is strong.
And to the surprise of many American historians who “looked high and low” across the northeastern U.S. before the official confirmation, the first international baseball game was played in Clifton (Niagara Falls), Ont., in 1860.
Crucial to the story, as well, is Order of Canada author Bill Humber’s research. Humber found that Addy was a heralded cricket player before moving to Illinois.
Bat and ball games are thousands of years old. But as England urbanized circa 1800, cricket grew in prominence and baseball-type games faded; the country began to view them as juvenile and unsophisticated.
This didn’t happen in North America, despite Canada’s close ties with Britain.
That’s partly because the infrastructure necessary to play cricket (including equipment, officiating and field standards) wasn’t available across the pond until the 1830s.
And it’s also because Englishmen needed a sport to affirm their status, while men on the rough-and-tumble frontier did not.
Plus, North Americans chose to play a game they found better, faster and more inclusive.
According to Humber, it’s North Americans who say, “‘Well, we don’t have to play that way.’
For Canada, its independence.
Ultimately, as work by the Society for American Baseball Research has demonstrated, Addy denied his Canadian heritage throughout his career, seemingly with vitriol. For unknown reasons, he claimed to have been from Rochester, N.Y.
It’s noteworthy because Canadians, too, have shunned their own shared game. As a result, the self-determination and success in building it — stretching back as early as the beginning of the 19th century — has been overlooked.
And for a long time until well after the Second World War, baseball was “the game of Canada,” said Humber.
“To some extent, we’ve been the authors, shall we say, of our own forgetfulness when it comes to baseball. It’s as much a Canadian game as an American game,’” Humber said.
“We have a phenomenal story.”
Featured image provided by SABR
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