Various baseball guides from the first half of the 20th century. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop , Vancouver Sun

Edward Bradford loved baseball. He was also a bit of a packrat. He kept old baseball programs; he kept old baseball annuals; and he kept old baseball magazines. He even kept his old bats and an old glove. And we’re talking old. Bradford was born in 1891, and his playing days were in the early 1900s. Two of the bats are the Louisville Slugger Ty Cobb Model 40 TC, which were sold between 1916 and 1920. The glove was made by the long-defunct A.J. Reach company, and may date to 1908. It is designed like a hand, with a distinct thumb and four fingers, as opposed to a uni-body modern glove. It is so small and thin that it’s more like a leather glove you would wear to ward off the cold than to catch a hardball. Bradford died in 1977, and his baseball memorabilia was stored in the attic of his New Westminster home until his family sold it two years ago. His grandson, Gerald Thomson, contacted me after I wrote a story about local baseball collector Max Weder. I sent him Weder’s email, adding that the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame might be interested in any local memorabilia. Thomson emailed the Hall of Fame’s curator Jason Beck, who went out to see the collection. “All he showed me at first was the bat and the glove,” said Beck. “I thought, ‘Brilliant, this has been worth my trip out to New Westminster.’ Because you never know when you get these calls — sometimes it’s junk, people have a soiled Vancouver Grizzlies lunch bag.” Then Thomson started showing him the ephemera. And Beck was stunned. “It’s one of the best collections we’ve received in the past five years,” said Beck. “Baseball-wise it’s probably the best baseball collection I’ve ever acquired here.” There were Reach and Spalding baseball guides from as early as 1907, and a 1942 Sporting News “Dope Book” guide with Ted Williams on the cover. A copy of Baseball Magazine from February 1920 includes an article called “The Advantages of Being a Port-Sider” by left-handed pitcher Claude Williams. The story was published a couple of months after Williams helped to throw the 1919 World Series — and a few months before he was charged and banned from baseball as part of the “Black Sox” scandal. But it was the Vancouver stuff that caught Beck’s eye. “You’ve got Vancouver Beavers scorebooks and programs from 1909 to 1913,” he said. “I’ve never seen any of these before. Kirk (Sorensen), who’s our baseball expert, said the same thing. They’re works of art, (with) the print and the inscriptions.” The 1913 scorecards feature a cover illustration of a left-handed batter in warm-up swing mode, à la period stars like Ty Cobb or “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. The player is wearing one of those tiny 1913 caps, his uniform is gloriously baggy, and his socks are dark and go up to the knee. His cleats look like something you would wear to a dance, not a baseball field.

The ads in the scorecards are just as cool. In 1909, the Bismarck Café at 106 West Hastings advertised it had an “orchestra in attendance”. In 1913, the Globe Theatre on Granville Street boasted it was “the most beautiful, best ventilated and coziest photoplay house in Vancouver.” The most unusual item might be a hand-held “scoring tablet” for fans put out by the Vancouver News-Advertiser in the 1910s. “It tracks runs, hits, errors, outs, everything for the visiting and home team,” said Beck. “I’ve seen general ones, but I’ve never seen personalized ones that are local.” There was something else in the collection that Beck had never seen: a pair of Vancouver Millionaires scorecards from the season they won the Stanley Cup. One is from Dec. 11, 1914 against the Victoria Cougars, the opening game of the 1914-15 season. The other scorecard is from a Dec. 18 game against the Portland Rosebuds. “I’ve never seen these,” marvelled Beck. “I brought (Millionaires expert) Craig Bowlsby over here, because I was really excited — and he’s never seen anything like this. The only program we have from the Millionaires is for five years after this.” The cardboard scorecards are four pages, with ads on the front and back and a list of the players and a scorecard in the middle. Five of the nine players listed on the Millionaires roster are in the Hockey Hall of Fame — Cyclone Taylor, Si Griffis, Mickey Mackay, Frank Nighbor, and Hugh Lehman. So is their coach, Frank Patrick. Gerald Thomson isn’t sure why his grandfather kept the Millionaires scorecards amidst all the baseball memorabilia. In fact, he wasn’t even aware the Millionaires scorecard was in the collection — it was just part of a big stash Gerald and his brother Bruce found in the attic. “(We thought) the attic isn’t much, just a trunkful,” said Gerald Thomson. “Well, we started at three in the afternoon and finished at 3:30 in the morning. All told, Bruce took about 50 boxes of stuff home and sorted it all out. “It was all war medals, Life magazines from the 1950s, family photographs, just all thrown in boxes. And then we came across the baseball bats.” It’s somewhat odd that Edward Bradford should be so into baseball. He was born in London, England, and probably didn’t know anything about the game until his family immigrated to Deerfield, Illinois (near Chicago) in 1906. But he started playing, and just loved it. He remained obsessed with the game after the family moved to Vancouver in 1908, and New Westminster a year later. Family lore is he was once fired from a job because he played hooky to watch a baseball game. Before the First World War, he played for the 4th Avenue Presbyterian Church baseball team in New West’s Queen’s Park. He also attended pro games at long-gone Vancouver stadiums like Recreation Park (at Cambie and Nelson) and Athletic Park (at 5th and Hemlock). His baseball career ended after he joined the Canadian army during the First World War.