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Labatt Park historical tours swing for the fences
July 22, 2021
Modern-day Labatt Memorial Park, in sepia tone, is Canada's oldest continuously operated baseball field. Photo by Debora Van Brenk / Western News
Labatt Memorial Park, the venerable ball field at the forks of the Thames in London, Ont., has been custodian of thousands of stories – of athletics exploits, Hall of Fame plays and players, floods, and real and mythical creatures.
Now historians from Western are telling some of those stories for the first time in guided public tours that will run throughout the summer.
One of tour guide Dryden Choban’s favourite tales recounts a mammoth blast from the 1970s: “London Majors first baseman Larry Haggitt hit a home run over the fence and the crowd was going wild. What they didn’t know at the time was that the ball hit his wife’s car and broke her windshield just as she was driving past the park. Of all the people in the city to hit, he just happened to hit his wife’s car.”
