In a year that Guelph will play host to the Canadian Junior Baseball Championship, a junior team from over a half-century ago is being inducted into the Guelph Sports Hall of Fame. In 1949, the Guelph Leaflets Junior Baseball team won both the Inter-County and Ontario championships in one memorable summer. In the Inter-County championship game, Bill McCarthy pitched all 14 innings and Jack Taylor scored the winning run on a wild pitch in a game that took over three hours to play. A newspaper story from that time told about how the St. Thomas fans honked their horns during every pitch McCarthy threw in the extra innings but failed to rattle him. That wild pitch gave Guelph the win over St. Thomas Lions to earn the Inter-County crown. But that league title was only an appetizer for the Ontario Baseball Association provincial title. Guelph took the first game 7-1 on the road against the Oshawa Hunters. That set up a Sunday afternoon game in Guelph that would make the Leaflets the provincial champs with a win. The championship game packed 3,000 fans into Exhibition Park and they weren’t disappointed. When the Leaflets scored a run in the bottom of the 10th for the win, the celebration began. The players did a victory parade through the stands, then piled on the back of a fire truck for the traditional ride through Guelph’s main streets to the steps of City Hall. The team was coached by two Guelph sports legends: Bill Robinson and Swat Mason. Many members of that team went on to play senior ball through the 1950s and ’60s for Guelph. The Guelph lineup for the championship game included Guelph Sports Hall of Fame inductees Nick DiCarlo, Ron Gumbley and Ted Hastings along with Ray Patterson, Jack Lyons, Jack Taylor, Bill McCarthy, Cliff Hicks, Tommy McKenna, Reg Berry, Marty Philp, Johnny Hewer, Jimmy Beasley, and Jim Milne.
Inducted into the Guelph Sports Hall of Fame – Team category – on May 10, 2006
