Even the Babe Came to Play: Small-Town Baseball in the Dirty 30s

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

St. Stephen is a small town in the southwest corner of New Brunswick,
separated from Maine by the St. Croix River. During the Depression of
the 1930s, work was provided to its inhabitants by the Ganong chocolate
factory and the Canada Cotton mill. But it was the entertainment
provided by amateur baseball that allowed the town’s spirit and soul
to survive.

The St. Stephen senior baseball team, known variously as the Mohawks,
Kiwanis, or St. Croix—won nine provincial and seven Maritime amateur
championships from 1930 to 1939 and established itself as a true
sporting dynasty. Ashe has chronicled the accomplishments of part-time
athletes who played mostly for the love of the game and became heroes to
their local followers. He has provided a social history of the “Dirty
Thirties” in St. Stephen and the other Maritime areas where
competition for baseball supremacy was strongest. Interspersed with
descriptions of games and their memorable moments are character studies
of the players who accomplished these feats and how they contributed to
both their team and their community.

Opponents with colorful names like the Springhill Fence Busters,
Yarmouth Gateways, and Liverpool Larrupers provided formidable
opposition in an era of prohibition, rumrunning, and relief camps.
Touring barnstorming teams such as the House of David and the Black
Colored Giants—and the appearance of the legendary Babe Ruth at a
Westville Miners game—provided diversions during hard economic times.

Ashe has written an informative and entertaining book that is both
humorous and candid. Even the Babe Came to Play provides an easily read
popular history of small-town Canada and its triumphs during the
difficult era of the 1930s.