A History of Baseball in Ottawa: From Amateurs to Professionals
Ottawa's baseball history is rich and varied, spanning from the earliest days of the sport to modern professional leagues. From amateur clubs in the 19th century to Triple-A affiliates and independent teams, baseball has been a recurring feature of the city's sporting landscape.
Early Days: Amateur Baseball in Ottawa (1860s-1890s)
While the exact origins of baseball in Ottawa are unknown, the sport's presence dates back to at least the mid-1860s. The earliest documented game occurred on September 13, 1865, at a Sons of Temperance picnic in Metcalfe village. The Sons of Temperance, founded in the 1840s, was a men's organization that strongly discouraged alcohol consumption. Over 600 people gathered in a grove for a communal meal, followed by an afternoon of entertainment featuring music and games, including "cricket and base ball.”
The brief mention of a baseball game at the picnic suggests that local readers were already somewhat familiar with the game's rules. An August 1867 game report from Ogdensburg, New York, offers another clue that baseball was still in its early stages in Ottawa during the mid-1860s. The score-Ottawa’s New Dominion Club suffered a crushing 141-20 defeat-suggests the two teams weren’t evenly matched. The Ogdensburg Daily Journal wrote, “In explanation it is proper to say that the Ottawa boys were not well posted on the rules of the game, and consequently missed making several tallies, and also got out several times when they should have avoided it. They have, however, good material to make base ball players, and will do better next time. Their pitcher and catcher are as good as average, and all will do well when they understand the game better. They did not come boasting, but requested the privilege of coming to learn the game."
By 1868, baseball was gaining popularity in Ottawa, with the New Dominion Club emerging as the city’s leading team. The New Dominion Club planned to play a Victoria Day game against Metcalfe. When that fell through, they ended up playing a game among themselves. The New Dominion first nine triumphed over the second nine with a resounding 94-25 victory. “The spectators were very numerous, including a large number of the fair sex, which gave the ground quite a lively appearance, and added to the spirits of the players,” reported the Ottawa Times. “Further interest was thrown into the game by two prizes being offered, namely, a beautifully finished bat for the highest scorer, and a regulation ball for the best general player.”
During the 1868 Dominion Day festivities in Ottawa, the New Dominion Club held its own against a visiting team from Ogdensburg. By the third inning, Ottawa had built an impressive 24-run lead over their opponents. But Ogdensburg somehow rallied to win the game by a score of 57-49. It seems like there were no hard feelings, as the players dined together after the game, which was customary at the time. “The reception our boys met from Ottawa was princely and the supper provided most magnificent,” the Ogdensburg Journal wrote.
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Back in Ottawa, the New Dominion Club dominated local baseball. A team of local mechanics fell to the New Dominion Club by a score of 109-15. In late July, they defeated the Ottawa Cricket Club in a game of baseball by a much-closer score of 36-27. However, the tables turned in the return cricket match, with the New Dominion Club suffering a heavy loss of 173-54. Ottawa returned to Ogdensburg for a return match in late August. This time, they lost by a score of 53-19.
The next and final mention of Ottawa’s baseball team appears the following year in an Ogdensburg Journal article, previewing a July 4, 1869, game against the St. “Sir: In your issue this morning your reporter incorrectly states that the Maple Leaf Club of Ogdensburg is a newly organized one, and not the old Maple City Club. “Four years ago we played against this same club under the name of the Ogdensburg Club, for the purpose of learning the rudiments of the game, and we were beaten by some one hundred and twenty runs. The Ogdensburg Club was then organized about six years. We played against them during the following season in Ottawa, and were again beaten, but by a majority of only eight runs. Unfortunately for our old New Dominion Base Ball Club we were unable to continue practice on account of the grounds on which we played being subdivided and sold, and our club became defunct. This season a new organization was formed, with four or five of the old players as members, under the name of the Ottawa Base Ball Club, and on the 30th June we plated at Prescott against our old opponents from Ogdensburg, who had in the interval changed their club name to the more euphonious one of ‘The Maple City.’ The result of this match was that we were beaten by only one run. Two members of the New Dominion Club who went on to play for the Ottawa Base Ball Club were Harry Cluff and his brother, Tom. Tom Cluff has been credited with being of the most important early figures in Ottawa’s baseball history. He was born in Ottawa in 1843 (although some records list a later birth year) to Irish immigrants.
In the summer of 1870, Cluff was once again in Ohio, where his older brother, Edward (who also went by Ned), lived. The story goes that Tom Cluff fell in love with baseball after watching three Cincinnati Red Stockings players put on a show for picnic-goers at a rural Ohio farm. The dazzling display apparently left Cluff spellbound. He sought them out afterward, eager to learn more and bring that knowledge back to Ottawa. The problem with this story is that we know Tom Cluff was already playing baseball in 1868 for the New Dominion Club-two years before he purportedly saw the Red Stockings’ exhibition in Ohio.
The Ottawa Base Ball Club was one of several amateur teams in the city at the time, and probably the most ambitious. They built new baseball grounds on a 10-acre plot of land at the southern foot of Elgin Street near the Rideau Canal, the city limits at the time, which featured a grandstand as well as concession booths that did not serve alcohol. This is where Ottawa played their August 1872 game against the Boston Red Stockings (which they lost by that score of 64-0). Tom Cluff managed to hit a single off future Hall of Fame pitcher Albert Spalding, while his brother Harry hit a double.
By the early 1870s, baseball fever had gripped the nation’s capital. Newspapers of the day are filled with a kaleidoscope of colorful names like the Clippers, Unions, Nationals, Hurons, Pastimes, Capitals, Victorias, Olympics, Merchants, Electrics, and Diamonds. Like many other cities in this era, Ottawa had a team called the Mutuals-a moniker commonly associated with volunteer fire companies. Other clubs, like Brittania and Billings Bridge, drew inspiration from their local neighborhoods. Workplaces, fraternal associations, and Ottawa College (now the University of Ottawa) all fielded teams. So did several government departments. Even the young messengers of Parliament, the House of Commons pages, fielded their own baseball team. Teams from the surrounding towns and villages came to Ottawa to compete against the city’s amateur teams.
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Local leagues-which only ever lasted a season or two-offered a platform for competition, but issuing open challenges in newspapers was another popular way for these clubs to prepare to face off. The teams played all around the growing city. Ballclubs that wanted to play at Cartier Square faced the bureaucratic hurdle of first having to seek written permission from the Department of Militia and Defence to use the grounds, which were used mainly for drilling and training by two infantry regiments, the Governor General’s Foot Guards and the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa. This practice is documented as early as 1872. Senator Robert William Weir Carrall petitioned the Department on behalf of the Victoria Base Ball Club, requesting permission to play at the parade grounds.
The Ottawa Amateur Athletic Association provided a platform for mostly young men to engage in a variety of athletic and recreational pursuits, promoting physical activity and social interaction. In 1894, the athletic club also became affiliated with the Ottawa Base Ball Club.
The Arrival of Professional Baseball
Despite a thriving amateur baseball scene in the latter half of the 1800s, the professional game wouldn’t arrive in Ottawa until nearly the turn of the century. The Eastern League’s struggling Rochester franchise relocated to Ottawa midway through the 1898 season. That team-which local sportswriters referred to as the Senators-finished with a record of 53-70 and disbanded after the season ended. The most notable thing about this team might just be the tartan uniforms they wore. In fact, if you go to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, you can see a photo of the players in these outfits.
Baseball continued to thrive in Ottawa after the city’s first professional team folded. Ottawa competed in the outlaw Northern League during the early 1900s, while another team called the Senators found success in the Canadian League.
The Ottawa Senators: A Long-Standing Baseball Brand (1912-1948)
It took 14 years for baseball to find its way back into Ottawa, this time in the form of the Ottawa Senators. The Senators became Ottawa’s traditional baseball brand for many years, lasting in different forms from 1912-1948. In each of their first 4 seasons, the Senators won the Canadian League championship, beating out the likes of the Brantford Red Sox and London Tecumsehs to do so. After their Canadian League days finished, the Senators returned for separate stints with various amateur leagues in 1922, 1936, 1939, and 1948-1949.
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Triple-A Baseball in Ottawa (1950s & 1990s-2000s)
For a brief stint in the 1950s, Ottawa served as a Triple-A affiliate, first for the New York Giants and then for the Philadelphia Athletics. The International League’s Ottawa Giants/Athletics franchise made their home at Lansdowne Park from 1951 to 1954, never posting a record above .500. Their only multi-season manager was Frank Skaff, who went on to become the manager of the MLB’s Detroit Tigers. Interestingly, the franchise still exists today - after multiple relocations and affiliation switches, the franchise currently lingers as the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees.
The 1990s and 2000s saw Triple-A baseball return to Ottawa with the Lynx. After the departure of the Ottawa A’s, baseball disappeared from Ottawa at the professional level for nearly 50 years. That was until 1991, when an Ottawa group was granted another International League franchise, it was set that baseball would return to the nation’s capital in grand fashion. A state-of-the-art 10,000 seat ballpark was built and dubbed Ottawa Stadium, later JetForm Park and Lynx Stadium, that at the time was regarded as one of the nicest minor league parks in North America. Today, Ottawa Stadium remains Canada’s largest minor league ballpark.
The Lynx first season went down as one for the history books, as Lynx fans packed Ottawa Stadium. Baseball was at peak popularity in Canada, with Blue Jays fresh off of back-to-back World Series titles and the Expos embarking on a successful season. The Lynx took full advantage of that, pulling in a record full-season attendance of 693,043. The total went down as a single-season attendance record in the International League, surpassing a mark set by the minor league version of the Baltimore Orioles 47 years earlier. With the NHL’s Senators arriving the fall prior to the Lynx, the sports craze had hit Ottawa hard.
Ottawa won their first and only International League championship in 1995 when they handed the Norfolk Tides a 4-0 shutout in the final game of the championship series on a rainy day in September. The championship acts as the proudest moment in Lynx history. After the 1995 season, however, attendance for the Lynx began a fast descent, resulting in the team eventually relocating. In 2006, the Lynx were purchased by a Pennsylvania group and were slated to relocate to Allentown, PA after the 2007 season. The Lynx played out the year in 2007, finishing with a 55-88 record and last place in the International League. As a final send-off, Lynx fans came by the thousands to watch the Lynx play their final game in Ottawa, losing 8-3 to the Syracuse SkyChiefs. Lynx Stadium was packed with 7,368 fans on the final game day, leaving baseball executives wondering if Lynx Stadium had really seen its final pitch.
Independent Baseball Era: Rapidz & Champions (2008-2019)
That answer came at the end of 2007 when the Can-Am League announced a deal had been made with the City of Ottawa - the Ottawa Rapids were on their way to the Ottawa baseball scene. Shortly before the season began, the Rapids were bought by local ownership and renamed the “Rapidz” to coincide with their new parent company, Zip.ca.
The Rapidz represented Ottawa’s introduction to the independent baseball scene. While the Rapidz did not fare well on the field, posting a record of 31-63, they did somewhat rejuvenate baseball in Ottawa, boosting the attendance up from the 2007 Lynx average to 2,150. Local players such as Tanner Watson, a former Seattle Mariners draft pick, Danny Desclouds, and Mike Kusiewicz populated the Rapidz roster and the mood was good after the 2008 season. However, at the end of the season, ownership declared bankruptcy and the Ottawa Can-Am franchise was never able to live up to its potential, as they did not return for a 2009 season.
The abrupt ending to the Rapidz era left baseball’s future in doubt. The City of Ottawa left Ottawa Stadium vacant in 2009, which marked the first season that no team would play at the stadium since its opening 17 years earlier. However, as a quick fix to this problem, the city sold off the lease of the ballpark to the Intercounty Baseball League, a semi-professional league based mostly in southern Ontario which includes teams with a long history such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Brantford Red Sox. The team was announced as the Ottawa Fat Cats.
While the Fat Cats were intended to be a quick fix, with a year-by-year lease on the stadium, they experienced a rapid surge in 2011. After a modest 16-18 regular season record, the Fat Cats ripped through their first two playoff opponents, embarking on a miraculous run to the championship series against the powerhouse Brantford Red Sox - a storied franchise almost 100 years old. The underdog story gave Ottawa a ball team to love again, as fans packed Ottawa stadium to near capacity in the playoffs, a feat that hadn’t been seen for years prior to the arrival of the Fat Cats. While the Fat Cats lost the championship series to the Red Sox, the spirit of the Lynx had been found again in the form of a semi-pro team. The 2012 season saw the Fat Cats return to impressive crowds and drove up the interest in the market from professional leagues.
In 2014, Miles Wolff returned to the Ottawa market with news of the Can-Am League willing to expand from four to six teams for the 2015 season. Wolff brought the Ottawa Champions to life - and it began with a bang. First, the club appointed highly decorated manager Hal Lanier, a former big leaguer and the 1986 National League Manager of the Year, to lead the coaching staff. Lanier had been in independent baseball after his Major League days with stops in Winnipeg, Joliet, Sussex, and Normal before taking the Ottawa position.
The Champions made a big splash on their first-ever signing when they inked local product Sebastien Boucher, a former seventh-round choice of the Seattle Mariners in the 2004 draft out of Bethune-Cookman College - who spent four seasons in the Seattle and Baltimore organizations, reaching as high as Triple-A. He also played for Canada at the 2006 World Baseball Classic, while also being one of the most prolific hitters in the history of the now-defunct Can-Am League. Boucher was the all-time league leader in hits (981), runs (597), and RBI (545). The inaugural 2015 club featured some high-profile players, such as a pair of former Major Leaguers in Andrew Werner and Wilmer Font, to lead the rotation. Later on, Font would make his way back to MLB after his days in the Capital. Overall, the team featured other ex-big leaguers during their tenure such as Scott Maine, Adron Chambers, Bill Lee, 2003 NL Cy Young winner Eric Gagne, and Gatineau's Phillippe Aumont.
The Champions lived up to their name in just their second season in 2016, after coming from behind in the league championship series to win in five games over the Rockland Boulders. A few weeks later, the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks were crowned Grey Cup champions and for the time being, Ottawa was deemed Canada’s “City of Champions.” It would be their only title, let alone their only playoff appearance in five Can-Am League seasons.
Ottawa University Braves
The Ottawa Braves are the athletic teams that represent Ottawa University, located in Ottawa, Kansas, in intercollegiate sports as a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), primarily competing in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference (KCAC) since the 1982-83 academic year; which they were a member on a previous stint from their charter member days in 1902-03 to 1970-71). Ottawa University first put a football team on the field in 1891. As of the conclusion of the 2008 season, the total record of the football team is 132 years, 1,135 games, 597 victories, 491 defeats, 47 ties. Ottawa has won the KCAC Conference Championship 21 times and the Heart of America Athletic Conference 1 time.
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