Inside baseball: a new book celebrates the sport’s legacy in Vancouver and beyond
Posted June 22, 2025 2:22 pm.
Last Updated June 22, 2025 2:25 pm.
Baseball has long been a part of the fabric of Vancouver and, indeed, British Columbia. Now comes a new coffee table-style book celebrating this legacy, from the first recorded baseball game in Victoria in 1863 to today’s Vancouver Canadians.
The project was the brainchild of now-former Vancouver Canadians co-owner Jake Kerr. He and Jeff Mooney owned the baseball club from 2007 until their retirement in 2023.
“[Kerr] wanted to create a legacy, both of their ownership and of the history of baseball in the city, and so he essentially commissioned this book,” said Tom Hawthorn, author of Play Ball! The Amazing Stories and Captivating Characters Who Have Made Baseball a Winning Ticket in Vancouver for Over 100 Years.
“And we’ve put together this incredible collection of photographs and images, both from the City of Vancouver Archives and some provincial archives and from private collections that people have never seen. So, it’s just a wonderful legacy for sports fans in Vancouver.”
Hawthorn says he tried to make the book as accessible as possible with stories and pictures that would please both fans and non-fans alike.
“I’ve spent my adult life with a partner who thinks baseball is too long by at least six innings. So, my thought was, how do we write a book for the non-baseball fan that also satisfies the baseball fan? And that was our approach,” he said.
One of the many captivating characters covered in Play Ball! is legendary play-by-play broadcaster and CKWX alumnus Jim Robson.
Robson was with WX from 1956 to 1970, not only calling baseball games for the Vancouver Mounties but also covering the BC Lions and the WHL Vancouver Canucks before a storied run as the play-by-play broadcaster for the NHL Canucks from 1970 until 1994.
“One of the things he had to do back in the day, since they wouldn’t send him as an announcer to cover the [Mounties] road games, was they would get the ticker tape of the game and recreate the atmosphere and the sound in the studio.”
“Today, we might not think that’s entirely the right way to approach it, but it was very popular,” he said.
Robson, now 90, also wrote the foreword to the book. Hawthorn says he was an incredible resource.
“He has such a razor-sharp memory. He would tell stories, and I’d go look up the dates, and he’d have them all right,” said Hawthorn. “Wonderful man.”
Hawthorn takes the reader back to the beginnings of the game in B.C. The first recorded baseball game in what would become British Columbia was in Victoria in 1863. The game was brought over by gold miners, most of them from the U.S., who arrived by boat from San Francisco.
“People would ride their horses out to Beacon Hill Park on the flat lands; there are soccer pitches there now, but some softball is still played on the very grounds that the first baseball games were played here,” he said.
“And then, of course, the game spread through the miners into these various mining communities throughout British Columbia.”
Fast forward to the spring of 1887, when Al Larwill formed Vancouver’s first baseball team on the Cambie Street Grounds at the corner of Cambie and Dunsmuir, today’s Larwill Park and the future home of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The modern era of Vancouver baseball began in 1978 with the founding of the original Canadians franchise. Ex-player Harry Ornest was granted a team in the Pacific Coast League. At the time, Capilano Stadium, which opened in 1951, underwent extensive renovations and was renamed Nat Bailey Stadium, after the recently passed founder of the White Spot restaurant chain who was also a co-owner of the Vancouver Mounties baseball team.
Another big change came in 1980, when Vancouver City Council finally approved beer sales in Empire Stadium, the Pacific Coliseum, and Nat Bailey Stadium, “ending decades of sporting teetotalism,” as Hawthorn put it.
The current Canadians team dates to 2000. The original Cs had left town for Sacramento the previous year, and the Southern Oregon Timbersacks were moved from Medford, Oregon, to take their place. A few years later, Jake Kerr and Jeff Mooney purchased the team. Under their leadership, Nat Bailey Stadium again saw extensive renovations. The start of an affiliation agreement with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011 was another key element to the club’s survival. Just before the 2023 season, Kerr and Mooney sold the Canadians to Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH), an American sports ownership and management group.
Hawthorn says pro baseball in Vancouver remains in good hands.
“The minor leagues used to be an absolute hodgepodge of crazy owners and crazy promotions and players that were there and then not there. It’s kind of become professionalized,” he said.
“Major League Baseball wants a much better organization in the minor league system. After all, the players you see playing for the Vancouver Canadians today are possibly future Toronto Blue Jays, so they really wanted a high level of professionalism. So, [DBH] is an American company that does a good job of maintaining facilities, having high standards, and protecting the players.”
“We’ve lost a little bit of the idiosyncrasies that made minor league baseball so crazy and fun, but it’s still a wonderful place to watch a game.”
Play Ball! is a rollicking ride through more than a century of baseball history, pushed along by Hawthorn’s sharp writing and sense of fun. It’s a worthwhile read for baseball fans and local history buffs alike.
Play Ball! The Amazing Stories and Captivating Characters Who Have Made Baseball a Winning Ticket in Vancouver for Over 100 Years is published by Echo Storytelling Agency. All proceeds go to the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
