The Secret History of Black Baseball Players in Canada’s Great White North

When Jackie Robinson broke the Major League color barrier, it was a step forward. It also meant the end of the Negro Leagues, sending hundreds of players across the border.

Photo courtesy Marvin Ligon, from the Jay-Dell Mah Collection

It’s mid-September and a championship is on the line. Through seventeen innings, game five of this best-of-seven series has offered high baseball drama for the shoulder-to-shoulder fans in attendance. On the mound, a jelly-armed Leon Day – the future Hall of Fame pitcher who started the game and is still going – just saw his team, an enviably skilled squadron of Black players, take a tenuous 1-0 lead in the top of the inning. Leftfielder Robert Lomax “Butch” Davis scored on a hard single and now Day has his mind set on finishing things. He’s already worked out of a bases-loaded crisis in the eighth, then in the fourteenth inning, a sharp throw home from second base, nailing a speeding runner, bailed Day out. After all that, Day doesn’t want to let down his manager Willie Wells, who was ejected from the game in the tenth inning for relentlessly arguing a call at first base. Another future Hall-of-Famer, Wells departed the fie…