Diamonds were Leamington's first baseball team

By C. Scott Holland

The formation of a baseball team in Leamington goes back to the late 1800s when some of its male citizen’s played an occasional exhibition game against another town’s team. But there were no leagues or development system. Some of the earliest recorded games date from 1891.

However, any type of organized league play did not happen until circa 1908. The high school had a team that often played but, until 1908, there was no formal summer league.

Teams from Ruthven, Kingsville, Essex, Tilbury and one from South Windsor, helped initiate inter-county play. Rivalries were developed, despite only a few contests being played. Nevertheless, the league thrived until WWI arrived and many of those young men joined a branch of armed services and went overseas.

The 1912 Leamington Diamonds were a forerunner of later Leamington Junior and Senior baseball teams like the Cardinals and Barons.

Photo courtesy of the Scott Holland Collection

The uniforms and equipment were different from what is used today, but the fundamentals of the game were there. Of course all contests were played in the afternoon or early evening hours before dusk, until the advent of lighted fields came in the 1930s. For those early pioneers, spirited crowds were a large part of every game. Yet despite that first league’s demise, post WWI saw its resurgence and the newly formed Essex County Baseball League would rise.

The players’ names have been lost over time but junior and senior baseball has thrived in Leamington during the past century and to those original organizers and the young men who played, we owe a tip of the cap.