Great Bambino’s home run at Digby Pines

We don’t usually take a vacation from our vacation home on the east coast, but this September, with Kris no longer tied to a Grade 4 classroom, we set out from the Island to explore some parts of Nova Scotia we hadn’t seen before.

Some friends in P.E.I. said we must stop by Digby, famous for its scallops and its view of the Bay of Fundy. No arm-twisting required there.

But when I heard the word Digby something inside my golf brain also twitched, as I was pretty sure there was a well respected golf course attached to the Digby Pines Resort. A little Googling confirmed that indeed there was a Stanley Thompsondesigned layout there.

Turns out the resort and golf course were part of that familiar business model conceived by Canadian Pacific Railways back in the 1920s and ‘30s. The pioneering Canadian company constructed not only world class, architecturally significant hotels in important railroad towns, but also commissioned the increasingly popular and prolific golf course architect to build top notch golf courses right next door.

Many of these courses are now world famous and consistently find themselves in any world rankings of the top Canadian courses; Banff Springs in Alberta, Highland Links in Cape Breton National Park, The Algonquin in New Brunswick; even St. George’s Golf Club, which was originally called Royal York Golf Club as it was connected to one of CP’s most important hotel properties, The Royal York in downtown Toronto.

Although Digby Pines was no longer owned by CP, or Fairmont like many of the grand old properties, it was obvious as we drove up the laneway that it hearkened back to that era. Architecturally described as a Norman style Chateau, it felt both grand and cozy, and casual enough to be the kind of place you could nicely end your summer vacation.

As we checked in, my eyes lit up when I saw that the resort had a special behind glass display in its lobby profiling a fascinating story about one of the resort’s most famous guests. It’s a story worth sharing.

It was 1936, and Babe Ruth was enjoying his first year of retirement from baseball. It must have been quite a whirlwind tour of Nova Scotia as there are many stories of his activities in the area that summer, including hunting and fishing, eating and drinking, and even giving a home run demonstration at a local ballpark.

By all accounts his connection to the province was an important one for him, going back to his close friendship with Brother Matthias, one of his teachers and coaches at his elementary school in Baltimore.

Brother Matthias was born in Cape Breton and clearly passed on his love for his homeland to Ruth. So the legend goes, and confirmed by club and local newspaper archives, that the Great Bambino was as long off the tee as he was in the batter’s box. The 11th hole at The Pines is a 280 yard, uphill par 4 that until the Babe stepped on the tee box that July day, had never been driven before.

Course designer Thompson had even built a right corner fairway bunker in the shape of a question mark to egg on golfers to go for the green in one. Kawartha and Peterborough members will no doubt be able to picture in their mind precisely what a Stanley Thompson bunker in this strange shape would look like.

The hole was no match for Ruth and his trusty Bludgeon, the nickname for his custommade driver that was said to have weighed in at a whopping 16 ounces. That’s one pound. Yes, you heard that right.

There’s no record of whether Ruth flew the ball on the green or if it rolled up the hill and just snuck on, but by all accounts his ball did make the putting surface and the gallery that day was in awe. Who knows what the mischeiveous Stanley Thompson would have thought when word of Ruth’s 11th hole heroic swat reached him.

I think he would have toasted him, and maybe even taken some credit for encouraging Ruth to go for the green.

I’m not sure if these two legends ever did meet, but I think it would have been an interesting conversation if they had.