The timing could not have been worse.  

On September 19, 1951, fifty-five years ago, just hours after the Sherbrooke Athletics baseball club had defeated the Quebec Braves before an ecstatic overflow crowd at Sherbrooke’s Park Avenue stadium to claim the Provincial League championship, the old ballpark burned to the ground.

Victory celebrations had not even properly begun when word filtered out that the weary wooden structure was ablaze. The fire, which seems to have broken out around 4:30 am, raged through the stands unchecked, until by 6 am little remained but smoldering embers – and the charred hopes and dreams of every baseball fan in town.

“It was a pretty depressing sight,” recalls, Normand Dussault, the team’s long-serving centre fielder who visited the ruins the next day. “There was nothing left at all, except a bit of the stands at the far end.”

The Sherbrooke nine was the class of the league in 1951. Led by such outstanding performers as Silvio Garcia and Claro Duany, Ray Brown and Roland Gladu, the Athletics had captured the league pennant by holding off strong challenges from both Granby and Drummondville. They then dominated the playoffs, rolling past first Drummondville and now Quebec, wrapping up the title with a 7-6 victory over the Braves in that last game at home.

And what a beautiful victory it was. In the soft fresh air of an autumn night, 4,200 frenzied fans had cheered as the Athletics scored 5 runs in the last two innings to seal the win.  They had cheered again when League President Albert Molini presented the Brouillette trophy to manager Roland Gladu with team officials beaming in the background, and then once more they – this time for themselves. They were the champions. For the first time since 1948, the laurels had returned to the Queen City.

When the lights were finally dimmed and the multitude filed out through the stadium gates and onto Park Avenue, their joy was palpable. How could they have known that it was all about to go up in smoke? Literally. 

Park Avenue Stadium had been built in 1938, with a seating capacity of 3,600. It was considered more than adequate in its day, but by 1951 it had grown tired. The timbers and planks that made up its main structure were weathered and warped - and very dry. Although no one liked to admit it, the stadium was a fire hazard.

As La Tribune observed, “We got lucky this time; for the disaster we avoided has always been there, lurking. Had the fire broken out while the final game was still underway, the consequences could have been tragic.”

“The building was all in wood,” says Dussault. “The seats were bleacher type – you sat on large boards – except in the reserved boxes in front for the rich people. They had folding chairs, like picnic chairs. When it went up, it went fast.”

Small fires under the stands, usually started by a cigarette butt dropped through the floorboards, were not that unusual. Ivan Dugré, team president, speaking in the aftermath of the conflagration, recalled that on May 27, three different fires had broken out, all within a few hours of each other.

“The next day,” he said, “I asked M. Delauriers [town representative] to send the fire department after every game to check for fires, and what was the answer? Three days later the council wrote to say that we could no longer sell peanuts at the ball park! This story appeared in every newspaper on the continent and made Sherbrooke the laughing stock of baseball.” Indeed, peanuts had been outlawed. It seems the discarded husks were thought to be a fire risk.

How unfortunate both for the dignity of Sherbrooke and the fate of the ball park that the city had not taken M. Dugré’s suggestion more seriously. Compared to the economic calamity now facing them, the cost would have been – well, peanuts.

No one could be certain how the fire started – indeed a discarded cigarette was the prime suspect - but its source appeared to lie in the centre section of stands. From there the blaze spread quickly in two directions, so that by the time help arrived the whole structure was an inferno, impossible to control.

 It was reported that flames climbed hundreds of feet into the air, even reaching the tops of the light standards; while the intense heat completely bent the metal posts supporting the protective netting behind home plate. There was little firefighters could do except hose down neighboring trees to keep the blaze from spreading.

Apart from the stadium lights and a few blackened seats along the third base line, the fire consumed everything in its path - right down to the players’ gear, restaurant fixtures and supplies, and even boards for a nearby hockey rink that were stored inside. Damage was estimated at $100, 000; the stadium had been insured for $30,000.

Planning for the Future

As soon as it learned of the fire, the municipality responded. “Reacting with unaccustomed speed,” (La Tribune), city council convened that same night to discuss rebuilding the stadium and adopting the mandatory loan by-law that this would require. Preliminary estimates set the cost of a modern re-enforced concrete facility at about $325,000.  

To borrow such an amount required the approval of ratepayers by referendum, and it was first thought that this could be accomplished within the month. There seemed little doubt that the vote would carry.  As the local press observed, “It is evident that a large portion of the population of Sherbrooke and environs has a keen interest in baseball.”

In fact, a somewhat envious president of local hockey operations wondered aloud if “it would be nasty of me to suggest that a similar disaster would bring to Sherbrooke a new, spacious and modern arena?”

Two weeks later, on October 3, council formally ratified its course of action and engaged architect Jean-Paul Audet to prepare plans for a 4000-seat baseball stadium.

It looked as though all was falling in place – but rough spots were beginning to appear. Indeed, following the reading of the resolution, one councilor called out, “I though we had decided on 3000 seats,” to which Chairman Armand Fisette replied, “In principle, it is for 4000 seats.” The flummoxed councilor could only retort. “In principle! You are adding 1000 seats in principle!”

And then, as the enormity of the task set in, everything came to a standstill.

It became evident that management of the loan by-law and referendum would take longer than first thought. Essential building materials were in short supply and increasingly difficult to acquire. And the contract to clean up the site of the stadium fire had not even been issued.

Although council continued to declare that “a baseball stadium, either temporary or permanent, will be available to the Sherbrooke Athletics for the 1952 baseball season,” these words offered cold comfort to local sporting types.  They were, it was reported, “waiting with barely contained impatience for news about the baseball stadium,” and already betting that it might not be ready on time.

Columnist Jean-Paul Lainé began warning that “unless firm actions come from the council now, in favor of the reconstruction project, local baseball will end.” But he was already too late.

The death blow came on November 15.

On that day club directors announced to an uncomprehending and shocked community that there would be no baseball in 1952. It mattered not that Sherbrooke had drawn more that 100,000 souls to its games last year, or that the Athletics were reigning champions of the Provincial League. Too much was still unsettled, they claimed, the risks too untenable. Team president Ivan Dugré made it official.

 “We have asked for a written response from council and we have not received it,”’ he declared. “We cannot take the risk of a financial disaster based on unofficial answers. It will soon be two months since the stadium was destroyed by fire and the council has done nothing. ..There was time to hold the necessary referendum, but now two months later all we get is unofficial promises.”

The team owners were not bluffing. Their decision was final.

Although municipal authorities, reeling from this unexpected turn of events, tried to push things ahead faster, there was little they could do. Council was bound to a set of formal regulations and procedures governing municipal loans and referenda that could not be short-circuited. Their best hope – really their only hope - was to be ready for 1953.

League President Albert Molini, who had remained aloof throughout these discussions, now sought to cover his tracks. “After a season like the one you had last year it make no sense for Sherbrooke to abandon baseball,” he pronounced. “There absolutely has to be a solution to this problem, and from what I read in the papers, the city is willing to do even more than its share.”

However, ever the pragmatist, Molini did leave the door open for the following year, assuring that “there will always be a place for the Sherbrooke club when they are ready to return in 1953.”

And with that Organized Baseball vanished from the playing fields of Sherbrooke in 1952.

The city did come through in the end, successfully conducting the promised referendum in February, and in late March issuing tenders for a modern concrete stadium. It would be built on the site of the old one, a fact that Dussault found wryly amusing.

“They built in the same place. I know because of left field. There was an up-slope in left field and it made it tough to get up there and catch the ball without falling down.” He laughs about it now. “I was a centre fielder but sometimes I had to chase a ball in left-centre and it was hard. They built a new ball park but they didn’t do anything to left field!”

The team kept to its plan, shutting down operations and liquidating assets. Most players were sold to other clubs at an average price of $500; a few were declared free agents. Share holders received a return of $58 per $100 invested. And then on March 30, 1952, the directors closed the books. And resigned.

Meanwhile people were turning their attention to the fortunes of their local entry in the Quebec Senior Hockey League. The Quebec Aces had unveiled a new star, Jean Beliveau, and he was becoming a sensation right across the circuit. They forgot about baseball.

Until the spring, when neighboring towns began announcing player signings and preparing for another round of the summer game: when all that Sherbrooke could offer to remind of past joys were the twisted ruins of an old ball park and blistered echoes of a  final game. There was nothing then to do but turn away.

Postscript

Baseball and the Provincial League did come back to Sherbrooke in 1953, as Molini had promised. The new team, now called the Indians, did get to play in a modern concrete stadium. It even finished first in the league. However, the team only attracted half the number of spectators that had cheered on the Athletics before the fire. 

Nothing would ever match the glory of 1951: that had been lost forever.