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Family members Of Black Players On Ontario Baseball Team That Broke Barriers Taking To The Field In Their Honor 

The Chatham Colored All-Stars, in a photograph from the scrapbook of the group of Wilfred (Boomer) Harding, one of the players in the 1930s Ontario group. 안전놀이터

Thirteen years before Jackie Robinson broke the shading boundary in the MLB, the Chatham Colored All-Stars turned into the primary ball club with Black players to contend in a title in Ontario. 

The group played the Penetang Shipbuilders in the Provincial Ontario Baseball Amateur Association title in 1934 in its second year in the association. 

The All-Stars dominated the match, in a memorable triumph that resounded far away the field also. 

The All-Stars' heritage is being remembered Saturday with a cause ball game in Chatham-Kent in southwestern Ontario at Fergie Jenkins Field, named after the Chatham-conceived top pick MLB pitcher who resigned in 1983, and turned into the main Canadian drafted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. 

Blake Harding is among colleagues' relatives who will take to the field in an occasion called Field of Honor, a piece of proceeded with endeavors to get the group into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont. 

Harding, 73, wasn't conceived when his dad, Wilfred (Boomer) Harding, was the middle defender and one of the group's stars, however he grew up hearing the accounts, including about the difficulties the players confronted in light of the shade of their skin. 

"He would discuss the things that they ran into, the difficulty and the issues, yet the brotherhood they shared on the field and off their field," said Harding, who additionally had a couple of uncles in the group. 

At the point when the players went to Penetanguishene for the Ontario title game, they couldn't discover a spot to remain. They needed to travel about 100 kilometers, nearly to Meaford, Ont., where they discovered a few lodges. 

The proprietor permitted the group to remain, yet let them know they must be gone before sunshine. 

"This was '34, and it seems like quite some time in the past, however that was here, southern Ontario, southwestern Ontario," Harding said. "Furthermore, they played through it." 

It was genuinely normal that the group needed to "battle right away" on the off chance that they won. On the off chance that they lost, they were criticized away, Harding said. 

He caught wind of one game in West Lorne, Ont., where five-and six-year-olds tossed stones, spit, swore and heaved the N-word at the group after they left the field — all empowered by their folks. 

"They didn't need to play the game, yet they cherished the game," Harding said. "This is the thing that I took from it." 

A portion of the All-Stars might have played in the majors, said Harding. 

Brock Greenhalgh, coordinator of the game on Saturday, and who's composed a kids' book about the group, is additionally among those pushing for the group to be accepted. 

The All-Stars story resounds right up 'til the present time, Greenhalgh said in a meeting on CBC Radio's Afternoon Drive over the late spring.