Who’s Who In the England Team

Irvine Ruvinsky—One of the finest catchers seen in this country. Played senior "ball" in Canada. Came to England in 1936 and played with Hackney Royals. Reverted to amateur status and now plays for De Havilands in London Amateur Senior League.

Author Harvey Sahker has covered Ruvinsky’s career in depth.[i] Arguably, the second-most important player in the England side after Ross Kendrick, catcher Irving ‘Snooker’ Ruvinsky (1908–1956) was, like Frank Cadorette, Jerry Strong, and Larry Marsh, a veteran of the Montreal amateur baseball scene—Strong and Ruvinsky were battery mates the season that the Royals won the League and City Championship in a team that included Larry Marsh at centre field. The measure of how highly he was valued as a catcher can be judged from the fact that he was one of only two players in the England team who played in an amateur league, not the semi-pro Yorkshire–Lancashire League (the other was Sid Bissett). The oldest player in the team (albeit only by one year), in a game renowned for attracting big personalities, Ruvinsky was one of the biggest, famous for keeping a near-continuous stream of insults aimed at batters from behind the plate.

Starting his senior amateur career with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) team in the Montreal Senior City League, Ruvinsky would end it with the Royals catching for Jerry Strong in its 1935 championship season, earning a suspension from the league along the way for catching games in the semi-pro independent Northern New York League (NNYL).

Ruvinsky then joined the raft of Montreal players crossing the Atlantic to play in the newly minted English professional leagues (who joined Montrealer Frank Cadorette, already in England thanks to ice hockey commitments), men like Roland Gladu, Abe ‘Happy’ Kasnoff, Jerry Strong, Pamphile Yvon, and Bill Turner.

Ruvinsky started his English baseball career with fellow YMHA alum ‘Happy’ Kasnoff in the Hackney Royals (Kasnoff was probably the best player in England not to receive an England call-up). Ruvinsky was captain and catcher for the Royals, but his time in the London Major League was to be brief: in an echo of his troubles back in Montreal, he was suspended indefinitely near the end of the season for delaying the start of a game.[ii] He sailed back to North America and back to the NNYL.

Ruvinsky returned to Britain in 1938 and found the baseball scene very different from how he had left it. The London Major League had folded at the end of the 1937 season after just two years. Elsewhere, the North of England and Yorkshire Leagues had been merged and downgraded to semi-pro, thanks to the introduction of a cap on the number of professional players a team could employ. In the face of this, Ruvinsky joined company team the DeHavilland Comets in the amateur London Senior Baseball League. The Comets were in with a good chance of winning the title under Ruvinsky’s leadership, but they came up against former pro team the Romford Wasps and its ace hurler Hidezo ‘H’ Nishikawa, who swept all before them. The Comets finished second in the league.[iii]

Ruvinsky joined fellow England player Ross Kendrick in the Oldham Greyhounds for the 1939 season, but left mid-season to return to Canada for reasons unknown. He served in the Canadian Navy during World War Two, catching for the Navy baseball team. He died in Montreal in 1956.[iv]

Ruvinsky was a skilled but irascible player, a catcher who elevated the game of any pitcher he was partnered with. Although he could never last long in any tean, or circuit, the game in England would have been poorer without him.

[i] Harvey Sahker, ‘“Snooker” Ruvinsky: World Champ from the YMHA’, Journal of Canadian Baseball, 2022, 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.22329/jcb.v1i1.7697., https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/jcb/article/view/7697/5465, accessed 2 August 2025.

[ii] Ruvinsky and Kasnoff in Royals: ‘Week-End Baseball’, Evening News (London), 16 May 1936. Ruvinsky suspended: ‘Baseball Star Suspended’, Daily Herald, 22 July 1936.

[iii] Ruvinsky and Comets: ‘Wasps Lose Joint Lead’, Daily Express, 1 August 1938; Nishikawa: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-ace-hurler, accessed 2 August 2025.

[iv] Sahker, Note i above.