Bleacher seat memories
Former Wildcat player restores Memorial Park benches
Nova Scotia baseball fans of a certain age will have vivid memories of the Halifax & District Baseball League. The semi-professional circuit operated from 1946 to 1959 and featured some of the best baseball players in Canada at the time — including more than two dozen who went on to the majors — with teams in Halifax, Kentville, Liverpool, Stellarton and Truro, among others.
Then in 1985, Kentville played host to the national senior baseball championships, with the hometown Wildcats capturing the national title in a thrilling late-inning comeback in the final game.
The late 1990s saw a classic rivalry between the Kentville Wildcats and the Dartmouth Moosehead Dry. Three years in a row the two teams clashed in the finals of the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League, with two of those going to a game seven.
As the venue for so much drama, Memorial Park holds a prime position in the collective memory of Kentville and the entire Valley. Not just for baseball, but for festivals, concerts, picnics and even weddings.
When the old wooden bleachers were replaced with aluminum ones last year, former Kentville Wildcat outfielder Shawn Fuller decided to preserve some of that history.
“Memorial Park holds great memories for a lot of people in the Valley,” Fuller says. “I didn’t want to see all of that history get lost.”
He collected four truckloads of discarded bleacher seats and, despite having limited experience in woodworking, began to restore and re-paint them with the Wildcats red, white and blue colours. He also had a sign-making company create a Wildcat logo, which he added to the benches, creating authentic memorabilia.
“You can still see the cleat marks in the benches,” Fuller says.
Many long-time Wildcat fans sat in the same seat gameafter-game, year-after-year. He used a sharpie to mark every bleacher seat he removed from the scrap pile and was able to match it up with the fan who regularly sat in that seat.
He describes the first bleacher seat he restored as a “practice” and the first one that was actually good enough to present to somebody was given to Trish Mosher, wife of the late Ian Mosher, a longtime member of the Wildcats, who was named MVP of that famous championship game in 1985.
“Ian coached and played in Kentville for at least 40 years,” Fuller recalls. “He is fondly remembered.”
So far, Fuller has given away four benches, with another four under construction, and has he enough benches for several more.
An Avonport native, Fuller played for 16 years in the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League, eight of those with the Kentville Wildcats, and has his own special memories of Memorial Park. More than a quarter century ago, he met his future wife, Maria, at his cousin’s wedding in Wolfville. The Wildcats had a game the following day, and so he invited her to come and watch.
“The first date we went on, she came to see me at a game at Memorial Park,” he recalls. “We’ve been married for 25 years.”