WINDSOR, ONT. -- Plans to commemorate the historic 1934 Chatham Coloured All Stars team with a charity softball game are underway.
The game will feature living family members from the original barrier-breaking team with a goal of creating enough momentum to get the All Stars inducted into the 2022 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
“We’re in that sort of vibe right now where it’s in people’s minds and we want to keep it there,” says Chatham-born author Brock Greenhalgh.
He has been advocating for the team to get the nod and recently wrote the book, “Hard Road to Victory: The Chatham All-Stars Story.”
“If not this year, if not now, then when? Is there something that I’m missing that I’m not privy to that there’s a reason why the team hasn’t been inducted,” Greenhalgh says.
The 1934 Chatham Colored All-Stars were the first Chatham team to win an Ontario Baseball Association title and were also the first-ever completely Black team of athletes to enter the OBA playoffs.
Their success came 13 years before Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in Major League Baseball.
Greenhalgh says the idea is to play the game in either September or October when things get “better than normal” in relation to the current COVID-19 global pandemic.
“It’s time to get this team inducted in,” Greenhalgh explains. “There’s t-shirts, there’s hats, there’s pennants that we’re going to have made up too. Just to build this groundswell of support in Chatham-Kent and hopefully, it’s going to go further than that as well.”
Greenhalgh notes the team has been on the ballot for several years and can remain there for up to 9 years, so long as one nomination comes into the 24 member HOF committee.
“I look at this and I think, this would make a great movie! Someone had said if this had happened in the states, Disney would have already been all over it and turned it into a movie,” Greenhalgh half-jokingly adds. “If Disney wants to give me a call, I’m here.”
Living descendants are excited about the upcoming Chatham game. Pamela Olbey is the nice of right and centre field player Cliff Olbey and tells CTV News she believes an induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame is long overdue.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea and I jumped right on it when I heard about this baseball game,” Olbey notes she has recruited her grandson and nephew to play.
“I thought about it and I thought we’re a little too old to be playing ball, so we went to the next generation!”
Horace Chase, son of Earl ‘Flat’ Chase says he too supports the hall of fame push, saying his family will be proud to take part.
“We’ll find some kind of family members to represent us,” he says. “I’ve got grandsons that are ballplayers and I said I know they would want to go out there and represent their grandfather.”
