Who’s Who in the England team: Doc Holden—Captain, Scarboro' Seagulls, 1937. Now catches for Greenfield Giants. A safe hitter. Known as the crooning baseballer.[1]

In an era of baseball in Britain—the 1930s—when most players from overseas had come to the country to play either specifically baseball or another sport, Leo ‘Doc’ Holden’s story harkened back to an earlier era when the majority of North American baseballers in Britain had been connected with the world of entertainment. In an update on that old formula, whereas players from the 1890s like R.G. Knowles and Charles Carey were stars of the music hall, Leo Holden was a performer in the new medium of radio.[2] In another departure, while many overseas players of the 1930s arguably had their biggest successes as players in Britain, shining more brightly on a smaller stage, Leo Holden’s best days on the diamond were back in his native Canada. His career in Britain represents a case of what might have been made all the more interesting by the fact that he suffered from a disability—restricted mobility as a result of a childhood case of what was diagnosed as tuberculosis of the knee[3]—and had overcome much to get to where he was.

There are families and families. There are the Barrymores who profile their way to fame in filmdom; the Bennetts in the same place, but right here in our town, there is a famous baseball family…having become so in the last few years.[4]

Leo Joseph ‘Doc’ Holden (1909–1967) was born in 1909, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, one of the, eventually, six children (five boys, one girl) of local ice hockey and baseball star Barney (Bernard) Holden and his wife, Mary Holden, née Wilkinson. All five Holden boys would go on to find success in baseball, mostly at the amateur level, although the youngest, ‘Danny’ (Terrance) Holden, made it all the way to the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system.[5]

In Winnipeg, Barney Holden played professional ice hockey for the [Winnipeg] Maple Leafs and baseball for the Union club. However, by 1922, he had retired from playing and moved his still-growing family to Vancouver, British Columbia.[6] There, he began coaching local amateur baseball teams.

Readers interested in the full stories of the contests I sketch in this next section can do no better than to consult the Western Canada Baseball website maintained by Jay-Dell Mah.[7] I will focus on the contribution of the Holden boys to the BC baseball scene.

By 1925, Barney Holden had found a berth as coach of the St Augustines team (aka ‘the Stags’) in the city’s second-tier Senior B league. The Stags’ main rivals in the Senior B loop that season were the now-famous Asahis team of Japanese-Canadian baseball players. Despite some intense competition from the Asahis, under Barney Holden’s coaching, the Stags went on to win both the city and provincial Senior B championships.[8]

Alongside Barney Holden as coach, a large measure of the Stags’ success was due to their captain and star pitcher, Larry Holden—Barney’s son, and Leo Holden’s big brother. Larry Holden was described as a ‘class by himself’, striking out 42 players in three games while allowing only seven hits. One of those games, against another Japanese-Canadian team in the Senior B loop, the Mikados, was a two-hit, no-run shutout in which Larry Holden fanned 14 players. Whatever lessons his father had taught him growing up, he had learned well. It was no surprise that he was awarded the medal for best pitcher in the Senior B league at the end of the season.[9]

Larry Holden moved up to the Senior City League for the following season, pitching for the Elks, and winning another medal as a star player. By 1927, he was working as a city fireman and playing for the Firemen baseball team, a berth he would keep for the next 6 years—the whole of the Firemen team’s time in the Senior City League. After spending a further two years in the Senior circuit with the Arnold & Quigley team, he moved to teams in the Commercial league. In 1942, he was one of 422 Canadian firefighters who volunteered for the Corps of Canadian Fire Fighters for service in England. He was stationed in Portsmouth; while there, he played in the Canadian Fire Fighters softball team in a league comprising Canadian and American service teams. He ended his baseball playing career in 1947 with Nat Bailey’s Vancouver White Spots in a reconstituted post-war Senior amateur circuit.[10]

Meanwhile, by 1928, Barney Holden had found a new position as coach for another team in the Senior B loop, the Knights of Columbus (the ‘Caseys’).[11] His new star pitcher, someone who would prove as potent a twirler as Larry Holden, was his second son, Leo.

Knights of Columbus turned loose a bunch of heavy hitters and a clever hurler on the one-time champion St Augustines nine in the opening City Senior B League fixture of the season […] Leo Holden, brother of the better-known Larry of the Firemen’s senior nine, displayed real talent on the mound for the Knights. He struck out six men.[12]

Leo Holden’s arrival on the Vancouver amateur baseball scene was every bit as impactful as that of his brother’s three years earlier, regularly striking out 14 or 15 players a game, as the Caseys made it all the way to the City Senior B championship and BC Senior B provincial playoffs. Leo and Larry’s little brother, Eddie, was also on the team.[13]

Leo Holden’s star turn was all the more remarkable because he had been left so infirm by a childhood illness that he needed someone to run the bases for him.[14] Described at the time, in the language of the time, as ‘stiff legged’, ‘lame’, and even ‘crippled’,[15] Leo had been diagnosed as a child with tuberculosis of the knee.

Pulmonary tuberculosis—tuberculosis of the lungs—was one of the biggest killers of the age; Christy Mathewson was the most famous baseballer to succumb to the disease, but he was far from alone.[16] Tuberculosis in other parts of the body (‘extrapulmonary’) was not as potent a killer, but treatment could be as life-changing as the disease, with resistant cases of tuberculosis of the knee requiring amputation of the infected limb to save the patient’s life. Lou Criger, longtime battery mate of Cy Young and the man who caught Young’s 1904 perfect game, was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the knee in 1914, ending his career. A year later, surgeons had to amputate his leg to save his life.[17]

Although as Lou Criger’s case showed, tuberculosis of the knee could strike adults, it was primarily a disease of the young. It was also often misdiagnosed. The story of Star Wars actor Dave ‘Darth Vader’ Prowse is informative in this respect: Prowse was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis of the knee at the age of 12 and spent three years wearing metal splints on the affected limb. Later, it was determined that, whatever the source of the swelling of his knee was, it was not tuberculosis (it may just have been growing pains—Prowse would famously grow to be 6ft 7in tall).[18]

This issue of a misdiagnosis may also apply in the case of Leo Holden, as, by 1941, it was said that the limp that the disease had left him with had gone.[19] One possible explanation for this return to a normal gait was that Leo Holden, correctly diagnosed or otherwise, had, like Dave Prowse, spent part of his childhood in metal splints. This was known to result in the splinted leg growing at a different rate to the unsplinted leg, causing a limp; however, over time, and with appropriate diet and exercise, this difference could diminish, resulting in the recovery of something approaching a normal gait.[20]

That Leo Holden should take to the field as a baseball player despite his infirmity cannot be seen as a surprise given his family background: it is easy to see that Barney Holden would let a little thing like tuberculosis hold back one of his boys. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that Leo may not have been given a chance to prove himself if not for his father being the coach of the team for which he debuted. However, as we will see, having demonstrated his talents, he would find no shortage of other teams, and other coaches, clammering for his services in the future.

The 1929 season saw Leo Holden still pitching for the Caseys, now in the Terminal League (one step up from the Senior B league, but still one step below the Senior City League[21]). Although the Caseys started strong, topping the table at the halfway point, they faded in the second half of the season, finished second from the bottom. That said, Leo Holden still managed to put in big games, including a no-hit seven-inning game against the C.N.R. team.[22]

A smiling-faced young fellow with a stiff leg treated a record opening crowd of Victoria baseball fans to a pretty display of pitching at the Royal Athletic Park Saturday afternoon, when the Jokers, last year’s champs, downed the Sons of Canada 7–3 in the first game of the Senior Amateur League’s 1930 schedule. He was Leo Holden, who the Jokers have imported from Vancouver, and who proved himself if a class just about head and shoulders above the twirling talent that has been shown in these parts lately.[23]

In 1930, Leo Holden left his family behind on the mainland and moved to Victoria on Vancouver Island, where he found work as a glazer. There, he really got down to work and would eventually emerge as an ace twirler, playing for a succession of teams in the Victoria Senior Amateur League. Alas, in 1930, not helped by some wild pitching from Holden, his first team in the new city, the Jokers, finished second from bottom in the league and were knocked out of the city playoffs in the semifinals.[24]

In 1931, Holden started the season with the Tillicums and showed some of his old fire, striking out 15 Sons of Canada players in a shutout 1–0 victory early in the season. The Sons took note and stole Holden from the Tillicums as the season began to shake down into a two-way contest between the Sons and the Elks. The Elks emerged the winners, but in the measure of how much of an impression Holden had made, used the rule that allowed teams entering the playoffs to recruit two players from local rivals to face opposition from elsewhere in the province, recruited Holden into the team to face Vancouver Senior City League champions, Begbie, Carter, and White. In the first game of the play-offs, in front of a crowd of 1200, the Elks brought Holden on in the seventh inning, and he held Begbie to two hits and no runs to hand the Elks a 9–8 clinch victory. Alas, despite two further strong performances on the mound by Holden, the Elks lost the series 1–2.[25] Holden ended the 1931 season as one of two pitchers for a scratch Victoria team in a doubleheader against a visiting Japanese-American team, the Seattle Taiyo Athletic Club. Victoria won both games, with Holden pitching a no-hitter in the second.[26]

In the 1932 season, Holden pitched for the Green Mill café team in a what turned into a closely fought tussle with his former team, and eventual league-winners, the Sons of Canada. Along the way, Holden was caught using the spitball contrary to the league’s rules, leading to a game against the Elks having to be replayed; Green Mill lost the replay, which helped the Sons leapfrog them into first place. Holden also suffered a loss of form and return to wild pitching mid-season.[27]

At the end of the 1932 season, in a repeat of the events of the previous season, the Sons exercised their right to recruit players from local rivals to sign up Holden for a three-game quarterfinal playoff series against the famous [Vancouver] Asahis, whom, of course, Holden would have seen play many times back in Vancouver. Alas, the Asahis were at the height of their power and won both of the first two games, giving them the series.[28]

The highlights of the 1933 season, in which Holden pitched for Slinger’s Winery in a lackluster league run, were further loan-outs to other teams to take on out-of-district opposition. In June, Holden was recruited into league leaders, the Camerons, to face the visiting Tacoma Kittens in a doubleheader. Another draftee was ‘Sheiky’ Ashikawa, shortstop of the Japanese-Canadian [Victoria] Taiyos team, who played in the city’s Twilight Baseball League. The two-game series ended honours even. Then, in September, the Asahis were back, and Holden was again recruited into the Sons of Canada to take them on. Alas, the result was a repeat of the previous year’s drubbing, with only Holden holding his own against the ascendent Asahis.[29]

The 1934 season was the quietest of Leo Holden’s ball career, in part because the Victoria Senior City League was reduced to just three teams, with Holden turning out for the Poodle Dog Café team,[30] but, more particularly, because this was the year that Holden began to pour his energies into his entertainment career.

Leo Holden is playing ball in Victoria. Does real well, and there is no reason why he shouldn’t, because he could win in this league. It seems Leo is quite a crooner; that every Wednesday at 6:45 he is on the air with Slim Hunter of Victoria, and they B-B-B-Bing Crosby their way into many feminine hearts.[31]

In this early part of his entertainment career, Leo Holden was billed as ‘Victoria’s own singing cowboy’ and the ‘yodeling cowboy’.[32] Jimmie Rogers, ‘father of country music’, was the original yodeling cowboy, but by the 1930s, Canada had a yodeling cowboy of its own, Wilf Carter, who, since 1929, had been hosting a radio show from his home in Calgary that could be heard right across Canada. It seems probable that Leo Holden was inspired by Wilf Carter, if not directly copying him. His own 15-minute radio show went out on local Vancouver station CKMO. Importantly, in light of subsequent developments, he did not yet have a stage name; he was simply ‘Leo Holden’.[33]

Holden had plenty of time to develop his musical career, performing around the local area as well as on radio, as, in 1935, the Victoria amateur baseball scene was undergoing a transition. There was no senior circuit at the start of the 1935 season; instead, teams from the former Twilight League opened the season playing in the new Commercial League. This would be renamed the Senior League before the season’s end. Rather than join this circuit, Holden umpired some games and stuck with the Sons of Canada team that had played in the old Senior League, which had morphed into a kind of Victoria select team taking on out-of-town visitors. The Tacoma Kittens were back for another doubleheader, which the Sons swept once more.[34]

The big occasion, however, was the doubleheader against the Dai-Nippons. The Dai-Nippons (aka the ‘Tokio Giants’) were a team of professional baseballers from Japan on a tour of the West Coast of North America. The team had been assembled in Tokyo the previous year to take on a visiting all-star American team led by Babe Ruth—the storied 1934 All-American Tour of Japan.[35] The Sons of Canada, billed in some reports as the ‘Victoria All-stars’, played three games against the Dai-Nippons, a doubleheader on 15 May 1935 and a single game on 16 May. The Victoria team lost all three games. Holden pitched only in the final game of the series but produced his usual strong performance, allowing only one hit, walking one player, and striking out another.[36]

The Dai-Nippons series effectively marked the end of Leo Holden’s playing career in his home country. He continued to umpire in the Commercial/Senior League for the rest of the 1935 season, but did not play in the 1936 season. He had been a star of the local Senior scene for 5 years, the league’s leading pitcher in the 1932 season with a PCT of .692, but now his focus was on his entertainment career. In July 1936, at an event in Grand Forks, British Columbia, he debuted his new stage name ‘Doc Holden’; by September, he was on his way to England.[37]

PITCHER CHANGED. Scarborough now put E. Bradley on the mound in place of Holden, a much-needed change, as Holden had been pitching badly.[38]

Leo Holden’s playing career in England is a tale of what could have been. By the time he took the field for the Scarborough Seagulls in the professional Yorkshire Baseball League in 1937, the efforts by Liverpool businessman John Moores and his National Baseball Association (NBA) to popularise American baseball in Britain had already peaked.[39] Holden would spend much of his time playing in circuits on the decline, competing against a growing number of players without berths for spots in a diminishing number of teams. Allied to this, he seemed to have lost much of his old form on the mound—although he could still swing a bat to good effect. To the bemusement of the folks back home, he would do little in the way of pitching in his 8 years of playing baseball in England (3 years pro and semi-pro, 5 years amateur (the war years)). The best explanation that I can find is that he had too many distractions—on top of his entertainment career, the thing that had brought him to England, by the start of the 1938 season, he was also married (to Ivy Rushforth) and starting a family.[40]

Typical of Holden’s experience in the English leagues, he was selected for the 1938 England team to play America in what became known as the first World Amateur Baseball Championship, an opportunity that came about when his first coach in the English game, George McNeil, was made England captain. However, Holden, billed in game programmes and newspaper reports as ‘Doc Holden’, the ‘crooning baseballer’ and ‘radio entertainer with guitar’, would warm a bench for the five-game series.[41]

(As an aside: Holden seems only to have ever been known as ‘Doc Holden’ in English sources—no given name provided—it is only from Canadian newspaper reports and official records that we can connect Leo Holden, Canadian baseball player, with Doc Holden, player in the English leagues[42]).

George McNeil recruited Holden to be the Scarborough Seagulls’ catcher, not pitcher, when Holden settled in Yorkshire in the summer of 1937. Holden did do some pitching for the Seagulls, but, as can be seen from the quote above, not with much success.[43]

By the start of the 1938 season, Holden, like many of the pro players in the NBA leagues, had defected to the breakaway International Baseball League (IBL). The IBL came into being as a result of the NBA merging its two professional leagues, the North of England League and Yorkshire League, and degrading the combined league to semi-pro status by introducing a cap on the number of pro players per team to two. The pro players put out of work by this move banded together to form the IBL. Alas, the circuit was a disaster. The whole reason that the NBA introduced the cap was because British fans had proved adverse to supporting teams loaded with imported professionals; the IBL was nothing but that. Fans stayed away in droves.[44]

Holden, now settled in Leeds with new wife Ivy, played first base for the Leeds team during the IBL’s brief existence. Then, like the best of the IBL’s players, Holden had to go cap in hand to the NBA for a berth in a Yorkshire–Lancashire League team when the IBL folded. Thus, it was while playing as catcher for the Bradford (Greenfield Giants) team that Holden, on a good day, one of the best pitchers in the English leagues, was selected for the 1938 England team. One further thing of note about the 1938 season is that a newspaper report of one of the Bradford games provides us with proof that Holden still had other players doing his running for him, in this instance, fellow Canadian Scotty Milne, who played ice hockey for the Perth Panthers in the Scottish league in the winter.[45]

…the only “homer” of the afternoon fell to “Doc” Holden of Leeds. His batting was the most consistent of any player in the game, for in his other three innings, he obtained a “two bagger”, a one-base hit, and was “walked” once. He scored two of the losers’ three runs...[46]

Holden began the 1939 season playing for Leeds in the Yorkshire–Lancashire League. He sparkled at the bat but once more found himself relegated to catching duties. For a reason that I cannot determine, he disappeared from the Leeds roster midway through June. It was probably a blessing, as the Leeds team would go on to have one of the worst runs of any team in any NBA league, losing every one of its 12 games.[47]

Holden remained in Leeds throughout the war, raising a family, working in a glassmaking factory by day, and managing a cinema in the evenings. Unable to serve in the army due to his infirmity, he instead served in the Home Guard. He also continued to play and coach baseball in a local amateur league. Another of the baseball-playing Holden brothers, Roy, paid Leo a surprise visit in 1941 when he arrived in England with the Canadian Sappers. As stated above, older brother Larry was stationed in Portsmouth with the Corps of Canadian Fire Fighters from 1944; Leo found time to visit him there. He also found time to travel up to Scotland to play baseball in a team run by his old Greenfield teammate (and runner) Scotty Milne. Leo Holden returned to Canada with his English family after the war. He died there in 1967.[48]

What could have been. Leo Holden had a dazzling career in the British Columbia amateur scene and could have lit up the English leagues, too. Fellow BC baller Merrick Cranstoun, after a relatively undistinguished career with the Arrow Transfer team in the Vancouver Senior City Amateur Baseball League (the league that featured the Firemen team with Larry Holden on pitching duty), came to England to play ice hockey in 1935. He was recruited into London Major League team Romford Wasps in 1936 and came alive as a baseball player, a big swatter who also turned into a brilliant, if erratic pitcher.[49]

Leo Holden should have excelled in such company. For a player who had overcome a disability to go as far as he did in the Victoria baseball scene, to fade into the background in the English baseball scene would seem to have been the result of a lack of motivation. He had, by the time he boarded the boat that would take him across the Atlantic in September 1936, found other things that drove him forward, to the baseball scene in England’s loss.

 Jamie Barras, August 2025

Notes

[1] Quote from short biographies of players in the 1938 England team presented in game programmes for the series against America; see: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/anthony_taylor/1938a_4.jpg, accessed 6 August 2025. For the story of this seris and biographies of the other members of the England teams, see: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-wearing-the-flag, accessed 6 August 2025.

[2] For the story of the intersection of entertainent and baseball in Britain in the 1890s, see: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-behind-the-mask, accessed 6 August 2025. Leo Holden, radio entertainer: Radio entertainer: ‘Baseball Exhibition at Thrum Hall’, Halifax Evening Courier, 17 May 1938.

[3] Tubercular knee and limp: Stu Keate, ‘Reunion in Leeds’, Province (Vancouver BC), 19 February 1941.

[4] ‘Straight Dope on Baseball’, Vancouver Sun, 5 May 1934.

[5] The biographical details for Leo Holden can be assembled from: the entry for ‘Leo Joseph Holden’ in the passenger lists for the SS Andania, arriving Liverpool, 4 October 1936, UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960; the entry for ‘Leo Holden’ in the 1916 Prairie Provinces Census, Selkirk, Saskatchewan, the entry for ‘Leo Joseph Holden’ in the 1931 Canada Census, Victoria, British Columbia; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/249420345/leo-joseph-holden; all, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 6 August 2025. Danny Holden: https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/stats/p-4cf4090e, accessed 6 August 2025.

[6] Barney Holden’s ice hockey and coaching career is sketched out in his 1948 obituary: ‘Barney Holden Dies at Coast’, Winnipeg Tribune, 30 October 1948; paying baseball for Union club: ‘With Stick and Steel’, Winnipeg Tribune, 20 November 1905; moving to Vancouver 1922: ‘Hockey Star of Old Days Settles Here’ Vancouver Sun, 24 December 1922.

[7] https://attheplate.com/wcbl/index.html, accessed 6 August 2025.

[8] Barney Holden, St Augustines’ coach: ‘Craig Will Likely Hurl For Liberals’, Vancouver Sun, 5 August 1925; Competition with Asahis in Senior B League:  ‘Senior B’s to Play at Robson Tonight’, Vancouver Morning Sun, 11 May 1925; Stags win city and provincial championships: ‘Stags Capture B.C. Senior B Baseball Title’ Vancouver Morning Sun, 1 September 1925.

[9] Larry Holden, class by himself and stats: ‘News and Notions aout Vancouver’s Baseball Players’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 10 May 1925; game against Mikados: ‘Larry Holden Fans Fourteen Mikados’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 3 May 1925. Best Pitcher medal: ‘Bus Vollans Heavy Hitter in Senior B Baseball League’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 7 October 1925.

[10] Larry Holden in Elks: ‘League Leader’s Lose Saturday Baseball Tilts’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 6 June 1926; winning another medal: ‘Collies and VAAC Win Senior Opener’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 8 May 1927. Larry Holden in Firemen baseball team: ‘Famous Diamond Team Here Wednesday’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 16 May 1927. Job as fireman: entry for Lawrence Bernard Holden, Canada, British Columbia, Marriage Registrations, 1859-1932, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 1 August 2025. Canadian Corps of Fire Fighters: https://firemuseumcanada.com/cdn-firefighters-overseas-wwii/, accessed 7 August 2025. Larry Holden in Corps in Portsmouth, playing softball: Alf Cottrell, ‘On A Sunbeam’, Vancouver Sun, 6 June 1944. Plymouth-based Canadian Fire Fighters softball: ‘Plymouth Base-Ball’, Western Morning News, 10 June 1943. Larry Holden’s later playing career: assembled from Western Canada Baseball website; see Note 7 above. Nat Bailey: https://baseballhalloffame.ca/hall-of-famer/nat-bailey/, accessed 8 August 1948.

[11] Barney Holden, coach for Knights of Columbus: ‘K. of C.’s Still Unbeaten in City Senior B League‘, Province (Vancouver BC), 15 May 1928.

[12] ‘K. of C. Nine Wins From Stags, 9 to 5’, Province (Vancouver, BC),  29 April 1928.

[13] ‘Leo Holden Whiffs Fourteen and Beats St Pats by Four Runs, Province (Vancouver, BC),  9 June 1928; ‘Leo Holden Fans Fifteen Batters in Sr B Contest’, Vancouver Sun, 9 May 1928. Eddie Holden, Kaycees in playoffs: ‘Britannia Baseballers Too Good’, Vancouver Sun, 13 September 1928.

[14] ‘…Townsend, who ran for Leo Holden, was the deciding factor’, ‘Three-ply Swat by Poushi Wins for Caseys over C.N.R.’, Province (Vancouver, BC),  9 May 1929.

[15] ‘Stiff leg’: ‘Holden Keeps Sons in Check as Jokers Smash Out Victory in Opener’, Victoria Daily Times, 5 May 1930; ‘lame’: ‘Straight Dope on Baseball’, Vancouver Sun, 5 May 1934; ‘crippled’: Alf Cottrell, ‘On the Sunbeam’, Vancouver Sun, 23 May 1945. ‘Tubercular knee’: Stu Keate, ‘Reunion in Leeds’, Province (Vancouver BC), 19 February 1941.

[16] https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/christy-mathewson/, https://sabr.org/journal/article/bacteria-beat-the-phillies-the-deaths-of-charlie-ferguson-and-jimmy-fogarty/, accessed 6 August 2025.

[17] Lou Criger catching Cy Young’s perfect game: ‘Cy Young Does Not Let One of the Athletics Reach First’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 May 1904; diagnosed with tuberculosis of the knee: ‘Sporting Gossip’, Altoona Tribune, 3 Aprl 1914; amputation: ‘Operation on Lou Criger’, Carrollton Daily Democrat,1 May 1915.

[18] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/29/david-prowse-obituary, accessed 6 August 2025.

[19] See Note 15 above, final reference.

[20] Frederic Shapiro, Chapter 8 - Lower Extremity Length Discrepancies, Pediatric Orthopedic Deformities, Academic Press, 2001, 606–732, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012638651-6/50009-5.

[21] Six Baseball Leagues Operating’, Province (Vancouver, BC),  31 January 1929.

[22] ‘Leo Holden Hurls No Hit Contest Against C.N.R.’, Vancouver Sun, 14 June 1929. Story of the 1929 season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1929_100i.html, accessed 6 August 2025.

[23] Note 15, first reference.

[24] Story of the 1930 Victoria Senior League Season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1930_120i.html, accessed 6 August 2025. Wild pitching: ‘Elks Defeat Jokers in First Game of Amateur Ball Play-offs’, Victoria Daily Times, 5 August 1930.

[25] ‘Tillicums Nick Sons for One Run to Win Ball Game’, Victoria Daily Times, 14 May 1931. ‘Sons Will Meet Elks’ Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 10 July 1931. ‘Elks Meet Vancouver Here To-morrow in B.C. Baseball Play-offs’, Victoria Daily Times, 21 August 1931. ‘Elks Gain One Game Lead in B.C. Baseball Play-off’, Victoria Daily Times, 24 August 1931. ‘Begbies Qualify to Meet Cafemen’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 27 August 1931.

[26] ‘Gandy, Holden Star as City Win Baseball’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 8 September 1931.

[27] ‘Elks Win Protest on use of ‘Spitter’’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 13 July 1932. ‘Leo Holden Appears to Have Lost his Fine Early Season Form’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 22 July 1932.

[28] Story of the 1932 Victoria Senior League season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1932_120i.html, accessed 6 August 2025. Leo Holden versus the Asahis: ‘Asahis Capture First of Series From Native Sons’, Vancouver Sun, 10 September 1932. Asahis win series: ‘Great Fifth Inning Rally Gives Asahis Second Straight Win’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 12 September 1932.

[29] Story of the 1933 season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1933_120i.html, accessed 6 August 2025. ‘Ashikawa and Holden Star’, Victoria Daily Times, 26 June 1933. ‘Asahis Make it Two in a Row Over Victoria by 4–1 Victory, Enter BC Final’, Vancouver News-Herald, 18 September 1933.

[30] Story of the 1934 season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1934_120i.html, accessed 6 August 2025.

[31] Note 15, second reference.

[32] Victoria’s Own Singing Cowboy’: ‘Benefit Performance Carded for Tonight’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 10 July 1935; ‘yodeling cowboy’: Peter Sallaway, ‘Sports Mirror’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 30 August 1938.

[33] Wilf Carter: https://whytemuseum.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-yodeling-cowboy.html, accessed 6 August 2025. Leo Holden’s radio show: ‘What’s On the Air’, Province (Vancouver, BC), 25 August 1934.

[34] Story of the 1935 season: https://attheplate.com/wcbl/1935_120i.html, accessed 7 August 2025.

[35] Roy Fitts, ‘Murder, Espionage, and Baseball: the 1934 All-American Tour of Japan’ https://sabr.org/journal/article/murder-espionage-and-baseball-the-1934-all-american-tour-of-japan/, accessed 7 August 2025.

[36]Sons of Canada to play Dai-Nippons: ‘Japanese Professional Ball Team Plays Here To-morrow,’ Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 14 May 1935; ‘Tokio Giants Nose Out Victoria Ball Club in Third Game’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 17 May 1935.

[37] PCT: ‘Ball Teams Resume Play’, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 26 August 1932. Doc Holden: ‘The Terraplaners Present an Amateur Contest’, Gazette (Grand Falls, BC), 16 July 1936. On his way to England: See Note 5 above, second reference.

[38] ‘Sheffield Dons Do A Spot Of Seagull Swatting’, Star Green ‘un, 5 June 1937.

[39] The most succinct account of the rise and fall of the Moores leagues is: Daniel Bloyce, ‘John Moores and the ‘Professional’ Baseball Leagues in 1930s England’, Sport in History, 2007, 27:1, 64–87.

[40] The story that the folks back home heard was that Leo Holden had done no pitching during his time in the game in England: Pete Sallaway, Sports Mirror column Victoria Daily Times, 28 March 1944. Marriage to Ivy Rushforth: UK Marriage records for Leo J Holden, Leeds North, 2nd quarter 1938, accessed at freebmd.org.

[41] I tell the story of the 1938 World Amateur Baseball Championship here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-wearing-the-flag, accessed 7 August 2025; for a short biography of George McNeil, see:  https://www.ishilearn.com/george-mcneil, accessed 7 August 2025. For an academic treatmentof the series, see: Ian Smyth, ‘Baseball Put to the Test And England Emerge Victorious’, Baseball Research Journal, 1995, 24, 131–133. Holden as ‘crooning baseballer’, see Note 1 above; ‘radio entertainer with guitar’: ‘Baseball Exhibition at Thrum Hall’, Halifax Evening Courier, 17 May 1938.

[42] See, for example, Note 40, first reference.

[43] Catching for Seagulls: ‘Baseball: Hull’s Cup Tie Success’, Hull Daily Mail, 2 July 1937; pitching for Seagulls: ‘Baseball: Hull Again Beat Seagulls’, Hull Daily Mail, 2 July 1937.

[44] Harvey Sahker tells the story of the IBL: Harvey Sahker, ‘The Blokes of Summer’, (Free Lance Writing Associates, Inc., 2011), 115–117.

[45] Holden in IBL: ‘Baseball: Giant Win Three-Run Game’, Hull Daily Mail, 4 June 1938. Playing for Bradford: ‘Baseball: Teams for League Cup Match at Bridlington’, Hull Daily Mail, 2 August 1938. Milne running for Holden: ‘Narrow Margin: Greenfield Baseball Win at Halifax’, Bradford Observer, 25 July 1938.

[46] ‘Hull Still in National Baseball Cup, Hull Daily Mail, 12 June 1939.

[47] Holden sparkling with the bat in 1939: see note 45 above. Leeds bottom of the table, no wins, 12 defeats: ‘Baseball: Grey’s Final Visit to Halifax’, Rochdale Observer, 5 August 1939.

[48] Leo Holden’s life in Leeds during the war: Note 40, first reference. Leo Holden playing baseball for Scotty Milne: Alf Cottrell, ‘On a Sunbeam’, Vancouver Sun, 16 March 1945. Roy Holden’s visit: Note 15, final reference.

[49] I tell the story of Merrick Cranstoun here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-slugger, accessed 7 August 2025.