Terrier Town: Summer of '49

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

David Menary is a journalist and a former sports editor. In this
wonderful collection of baseball stories, he recreates the summer of
1949, mixing fact with fiction. The fictional narrator of the stories is
Charlie Hodge, who relates his year with the real-life Galt Terriers,
many of whom once played with major league clubs. Charlie has made the
Terrier’s roster and the small Ontario town is abuzz with excitement.
The stories centre on historic Dickson Park where Charlie meets the
characters and the legendary players who were involved with the Galt
team in the summer of 1949.

The book is meticulously researched. We revisit the home run that Goody
Rosen hit out of the park and into the Grand River and, climactically,
the pitcher’s duel in Game 7 of the Terrier’s semifinal series with
the Brantford Red Sox—a game in which the centre-field player (a
convicted gambler) made one of the most controversial plays ever seen at
the park.

Recalling books such as W.P. Kinsella’s Field of Dreams and Elot
Asinof’s Eight Men Out, Terrier Town evokes an era when baseball was
played for love rather than a six-figure salary and nobody knew what a
steroid was.