The Guinness record is now being disputed: photo at link.
http://www.nationalpost.com/sports/story.html?id=862251
Canada’s claim to oldest baseball field ‘in limbo’
Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, October 05, 2008
Photo courtesy City of LondonAn 1877 picture showing the Tecumseh baseball team playing against a team from Guelph, Ont., during the first year the Tecumseh Park — now called Labatt Park — was in use as a baseball field.
A controversial Canadian claim that the world's oldest baseball field can be found in London, Ont., remains "in limbo" pending an American challenge and a final ruling by Guinness World Records, says a city heritage official leading the bid for international recognition.
Labatt Park, a designated historic site at the forks of the Thames River in the southwestern Ontario city, is believed to have been used non-stop for baseball since at least 1877 - the year it was christened Tecumseh Park after the heroic War of 1812 native leader who helped Canada thwart a U.S. invasion.
But Guinness's listing last month of Labatt Park as the world's oldest ball park - on page 179 of the 2009 printing of its famous book of records - has sparked cries of protest south of the border and suggestions that Canada has "usurped" a Massachusetts community's claim to fame.
The town of Clinton, located about 50 kilometres from the historic Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, argues its diamond - Fuller Field, built in 1878 - is truly the world's oldest because its home plate and base paths have never been moved.
A severe Thames River flood in July 1883, which washed away Tecumseh Park's fencing and benches, prompted London sports officials to reorient the diamond, moving home plate so that batters would no longer have to stare into the sun while facing pitches.
Another major flood in 1937 also forced a rebuilding of the London diamond that year. Support for the project from the Labatt beer company led to the renaming of the park, which is still used today by the city's top baseball teams.
"If any old baseball diamond can qualify regardless of it is still in its original location, then Civil War prison grounds could still qualify," Clinton historian A.J. Bastarache told a Massachusetts newspaper last week. "The dispute would be endless."
His complaint to Guinness has re-opened the debate, but London is not conceding the cherished title.
Joe O'Neil, chair of London's municipal heritage advisory committee, describes the Clinton challenge on the home plate matter as a "pure technicality" and told Canwest News Service that he believes "we're sitting pretty" despite the review being undertaken by the British-based records arbiter.
"But we're not taking anything for granted," he added. "For now, it's still in limbo even though it's on the Guinness website and in three million copies of the latest records book."
He said researchers are now gathering more details to convince Guinness officials that London's claim is valid.
"We know we've got the Americans' noses out of joint because there's a feeling we're stealing the game of baseball from them," said O'Neil. "We never claimed our diamond didn't move, and we weren't trying to take away the oldest diamond record from Clinton. But we're saying ours is the oldest baseball field – the same ground, the same land."
The London claim is already backed by solid documentary evidence. There's even an 1877 picture of the park - published that year in the long-defunct Canadian Illustrated News - showing the London Tecumseh baseball club playing a visiting team from Guelph, Ont.
One hitch, though, is proving the field was used in the years immediately following the big flood of 1883 - a fact city researchers are trying to confirm from old newspapers or municipal records.
A plaque mounted at Labatt Park already boasts that the site is the world's oldest continuously operated baseball grounds.
"It's got to be worth millions of dollars in terms of tourism and publicity," said O'Neil.
A Boston Globe story published about Fuller Field last December makes clear that Clinton residents are very protective of their diamond's special status in the history of America's favourite pastime.
"It's like a real-life ‘Field of Dreams,' " municipal councillor Joseph Notaro Jr. said at the time. "It's always been a gem, a wonderful old field. But to be the oldest is just an awesome thing. There's a tremendous sense of community pride around this."
O'Neil says he doesn't begrudge Clinton its place in U.S. sports history. But he added that the bid to secure Labatt Park's spot in the record books is already fuelling an interest in further research into southwestern Ontario's seminal role in the evolution of baseball.
A vintage description of an 1838 game played in the London-area village of Beachville is already considered a key document in the early history of baseball. The 2002 unearthing of Canada's first baseball guide - published in London in 1876 - was hailed as a major discovery by Library and Archives Canada.
"If we can lock this (Guinness record) down solid," O'Neil contends, then tourists will eventually be able to drive from one historic site to another in the London area and "discover the origins of baseball."