Dartmouth Marine Union Workers
- Type: Team
- Sport(s): Fastball
- Year: 2017
Dartmouth Marine Union Workers fastball/softball —Maritime Senior A Champions (1957).
The Marine Union team had played in the Intermediate A League for years and had dominated local leagues, so in 1957 coach Cyril “Slats” Lahey and the team were invited by Jack Gray to join the Halifax Senior A League to balance the number of teams in what regarded as the premier softball/fastball league in the region. Coach Lahey and Mr. Gray agreed that if the team did not fare well, they would return to the Dartmouth intermediate competition at registration time the following year.
The team assembled by Coach Lahey was sponsored by the Dartmouth Marine Workers Union, Local 13. The team was nick-named the “Cinderella” team by sports writers of the day and the team was quoted in many sports articles as being too inexperienced to to do well in the Senior “A” League; with perhaps some, if not many, simply expecting them to be “also rans”, but not only were they were highly competitive all season long and played exceptionally well in the playoffs, first locally in the Senior A League, including against Armed Forces teams, then provincially and in the Maritime playoffs. This was the first time since 1946 that a Dartmouth team had accomplished this feat – and for many decades following.
All team pitchers threw an orthodox pitch, while many others such as Reg Beaver (who is here today to represent the team) also threw a whip pitch.
The team members included:
In the provincial playoffs the first game was won by the Dartmouth Marine Workers by a score of 4-3. They lost the second game 9-4 and won the third game 7-4 in Glace Bay. In a 33 game season the Dartmouth club had 23 wins, 1 tie and 9 losses (a 72% winning percentage – great for a fastball team where pitching can often dominate in a given game) with 16 of their wins coming from behind in later innings in the tough Halifax Senior A League and Nova Scotia/Maritime championships.
They beat Glace Bay Byes for the NS title and Fredericton Phalanx two straight for the Maritime title … the Maritime Championship honour was never again accomplished by a Dartmouth team, duly acknowledged in October, 1987 in the Mail-Star edition of the day, when team members met for a 30-year reunion. This fastball team was the one and only year to be so sponsored by the Marine Union local, although other Dartmouth sports teams would bear this name.
An interesting fact: When the New Brunswick team arrived, each member of the NB team used gloves at every position, while the Dartmouth team, under Nova Scotia rules of the day, gloves were only worn by the catcher and first baseman. New Brunswick had adopted fastball rules, with Nova Scotia the last province to do so in the following year 1958. [It is interesting to note that the same issue occurred with the Maritime Intermediate Championships between the same two provinces with a different solution, but a similar outcome.]
Up to 2000 people would come to watch the playoff games held in Dartmouth, and when Mayor Akerley and other dignitaries honoured the team with dinner sponsored by the Dartmouth Free Press at the Belmont Hotel, complete with pipers, a spontaneous parade of vehicles and people erupted when they arrived home, after winning in Saint John.