GLACE BAY, N.S. — In the early 1970s, it wouldn’t be uncommon for you to go past a baseball field in Glace Bay in the summer and see games and practices ...
The Glace Bay Section One All-Stars made history in 1972 when they captured the Eastern Canadian Little League Championship, becoming the first team from the Maritimes to beat a Quebec team for the title. Members of the team are pictured. Front row, from left, Gerard McPhee, Michael Clarke, Barry McCarthy, Martin Marangoni, Stephen Hogan, Ernie Jackson, and Paul MacNeil.
For the Glace Bay Section One All-Star team, which consisted of 11-and-12-year-old players, they had no expectations going into the tournament with the other half of town — Section Two — being the favourites to win the event. “A lot of times when a team would leave Nova Scotia, the best team they would have had to beat at the time would have been the other side of town and we both knew that,” said Jackson.
After a rain delay postponed the opening day of the tournament, Glace Bay was put in a difficult position, having to win a pair of games on Aug. 5 to move on to play Sherbrooke, Que. “Johnny Miles and Bob McNeil asked the priest to have a small service for us and we were there for a half hour,” laughed McPhee, noting at the time most of the players went to church with their families every Sunday.
Instead of putting any extra pressure on themselves to perform, the Section One All-Stars focused on playing their game and not worrying about what may have happened in previous years. “They had a desire to win and came through every game they played,” said McNeil. “There were teams from Glace Bay in the past that had gone away and had good showings, but this team was different, and they wanted to win and knew that they could do it and trusted each other.”
North Vancouver would score three runs in the top of the 10th to take a 5-2 lead before Glace Bay responded with pair of runs to make the score 5-4 in the bottom half of the inning, but that’s as close as they would come and were eliminated from the tournament.
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