CANADA COURIER: The boys of summer (06/13/99)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

The boys of summer

This Father's Day, my dad is the sports hero he probably never thought he would be.

On June 5, he and the other "Boys of Summer" from the Canadian Ukrainian Athletic Club (CUAC) in North End Winnipeg were inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame at a banquet in Morden, a town southwest of Winnipeg and 12 miles north of the Canada-U.S. border. This year's event marks the third time the province's star athletes from days past were so honored. The evening was highlighted also by the opening of a museum dedicated to hall of fame inductees. The CUAC Blues - Greater Winnipeg Senior Baseball League champions from 1941 to 1944 - are among the three teams and 20 individuals this year who will join the ranks of the elite.

Frank Guly joined the team in 1944. By then, he had been playing competitive ball for nearly a decade, first with the Exhibition Tigers midget team and then with the East Kildonan Rangers.

Inspired by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and New York Yankees catcher Bill Dickey, my father was mainly motivated by instinct. He had the game in him, as did his fellow CUAC Blues teammates - the likes of Peter Ezinicki, Nick Melnyk, Wally Romanow, Joe Popiel and the Shaley brothers (coach Nick and Stan, who served as player and manager).

During the dog days of summer, they'd practice batting balls and catching them. Only rain would prevent them from playing. Their field of dreams was the Old Exhibition Grounds - a stone's throw from where my dad grew up.

Dad was one of the lucky ones. He and his older brother by five years, Walter, honed their baseball skills together. They'd go behind their home on Arlington Street: Frank practiced pitching and Walt did the catching.

"We'd be in the back and he'd hold the glove up there and I'd have to hit it smack center," my dad recalled.

Walt, who played first base for the CUAC Blues, became known as "Wham," a nickname he earned from the sound produced when he would bat an oncoming ball, hitting homers "like crazy." Dad, meantime, became known as "Fireman" Frank Guly, thanks to a sports writer with the Winnipeg Free Press who so dubbed him after watching my father putt out fires when he would pinch-hit as the team's pitcher.

A CUAC history recounts one game in 1945, when the team "used young Guly to do the pitching chore for the club," noting that "although getting himself in hot water several times, he came through with some fine hurling."

Actually, Dad began his baseball career as a catcher. One day, when there was a shortage of pitchers, he was called upon because he had a good arm. "I could throw fast," he explained. "My main strength was in control. That is, I could put the ball any place I wanted to." Believe it.

"I remember pitching one game 12 innings against a semi-pro team on CUAC grounds. I pitched the whole bloody game. I must have thrown 200 pitches. The next day I could hardly lift my arm," he continued.

Today, the game is different.

"Right now, baseball is very scientific. They don't look at how many innings [a pitcher] has pitched, but how many pitches he's thrown. When he reaches a hundred, they take him out of there." Throwing the ball has also become more sophisticated, my father continued, "When I was pitching, all I threw was a fast ball and a curve ball, and maybe try a knuckle ball."

Sounds simple, but so was life. Fans would throw nickels and dimes into a hat to cover their admission. Simple.

But it was also a tough time. The period when my father played ball on five teams spanned the Depression and World War II. Baseball was an irresistible respite for him and the other men - claiming Ukrainian and other ethnic backgrounds - who dignified their world with athleticism and a pure love for the game.

Perhaps Guly could have been a Ruth. But scouts back then didn't frequent senior amateur games and nurture up-and-coming players. My uncle went beyond the CUAC and played semi-pro ball in Calgary, where he eventually began a contracting business.

Though his brother asked him to head west, my father remained in Winnipeg where he followed his father's footsteps and worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway as a carman looking after freight equipment. Dad continued to play baseball until he started dating my mother, Ollie, in the early 1950s.

"She didn't like me being away all the time," he said. "I'd be playing three times a week." While my dad fell head over heels for my mom's charm, a piece of his heart was broken when he hung up his mitt.

As a lad - pudgier longer than Dad was as a teen before sprouting into a lean, 175-lb six-footer - I remember my father playing ball with me in the lane behind our home. I certainly didn't possess his pitching strength. His face sometimes showed his heart break. But he never said a word.

That was part of the graciousness he acquired from the game and his years with the Tigers, East Kildonan Rangers, Army - Navy Vets, Elmwood Giants and the 1999 Hall of Fame CUAC Blues.

Now that he's in the big leagues as a star athlete, Fireman Guly can reflect on how good a ball player he truly was.

"The best thing I can remember about all my playing days was when I faced Stan Shaley and I struck him out," my dad said referring to the time when, as a Giants player, he faced his old CUAC teammate a decade his senior. "Oh, I'm telling you, I felt as if I had the world by the short hairs. He came up to bat and I struck him out with the stuff that he taught me how to throw. Boy, I'm telling you, that was a great thing. And he patted me on the back."

And now, I pat my hall-of-famer dad on his back.

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