Where does the time go? Keith Bridgeo is amazed how many years have passed since the Yarmouth Gateways were the reigning champions of the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League.
Bridgeo was a player/coach with the Yarmouth squad that won three straight senior league titles between 1977 and ’79.
One of the things he remembers most about that team, he says, is how dedicated the players were.
“We always had full-attended practices,” he recalled in an interview. “We’d practise religiously every Wednesday because we played on the weekends. I remember the commitment of the guys.”
And there were some long road trips too, not only to Cape Breton – where the Gateways clinched all three of their championships during their late-1970s run – but also to P.E.I., which had teams in the Nova Scotia league in those days.
“One summer, because of playoffs, we had four trips to Sydney and two to Prince Edward Island,” Bridgeo said. “We’d leave here three or four o’clock Friday afternoon, get in Cape Breton at 2:30 in the morning, play two games Saturday, two Sunday, and then come home and creep in around three in the morning and get up and go to work. Hardly ever did we not field a strong team.”
Another word that comes to mind for Bridgeo when he thinks about those Gateways of 40 years ago is versatility, with players who were able to play several different positions and play them well. Others perhaps did their job by filling a specific role.
Bridgeo remembers a pretty stable starting roster that included Don Rodgerson behind the plate, Paul Boudreau at first, Blair MacDonald at second, Donnie MacDonald at short and George Purdy at third, along with outfielders Paul Blades, Kent Bain and Bruce Gould.
“We had Bobby Devine, we had Cory Cook,” Bridgeo said. “Then we brought along Ronnie White and Allen Nickerson, Paul Jacquard. Younger guys joined as we got moving along.”
It was a different era of baseball, to be sure, not just in terms of the players on the field but also the number of people who turned out to watch them.
“We had big crowds,” Bridgeo said. “You hear people say ‘I remember Mom and Dad sitting in a lawn chair down the leftfield line’ or whatever. That was just regular games. (For) playoffs, it was packed. We probably had over a thousand at some of our playoff games.”
He says it would have been nice to win a championship in front of the local fans, but the Gateways were in Sydney for the clinching game each year during that run of three straight league titles.
The team was inducted in the Yarmouth area’s sports Hall of Fame in 2000. (Two years earlier, in 1998, a great Yarmouth baseball team from another generation – the Gateways of 1929-’37 – was inducted.)
Bridgeo’s Gateways had been playing intermediate league ball – under the name Yarmouth Mooseheads – before moving to the provincial senior league in 1977. Today, Yarmouth has neither a senior team, nor an intermediate one.
The Gateways of the late 1970s represent a big chapter in the history of Yarmouth baseball and in the life of Bridgeo, who has been involved in the sport in just about every way imaginable – player, coach, umpire, instructor, minor baseball executive – and who has seen the local popularity of the game rise and fall, especially at the minor ball level.
He recalls the sport getting a boost, for example, when the Toronto Blue Jays were in their heyday.
He acknowledges that young people these days have various options besides baseball when it comes to sports, which can have an impact on the baseball numbers.
As for his own baseball plans for 2019, Bridgeo says he may do a few clinics this season like he did last year.
“It keeps my fingers in the pie,” he said. “I imagine I’ll be around the ballfield in some capacity.”
