Over The Fence Is Out!

As featured in the Ottawa Citizen article "Open and shut."

This new book by Ottawa writer Jim Shearon tells the exciting stories of Canadian baseball players. OVER THE FENCE IS OUT! highlights the career of Larry Walker, who will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009. Another chapter describes “The Year the Montreal Expos Would Have Won the World Series.” That was 1994 when a players’ strike and owners’ lock-out wiped out the World Series for the only time in 105 years.

From 1885, when two brothers from Hamilton formed a pitcher and catcher battery for Buffalo in the National League, to October 2008, when New Brunswicker Matt Stairs became the 15th Canadian to play in the World Series, OVER THE FENCE IS OUT! tells the story of Canadian baseball success and includes many photos never before published. The book includes an alphabetical list of the 230 Canadians who have played in the major leagues, from 1871 to 2008.

OVER THE FENCE IS OUT! explains why Napoleon Lajoie is the greatest Canadian who never was; introduces Elijah Pinnance, Canada’s first aboriginal big leaguer, and tells the story of a Little League team with a left-handed shortstop. Jim Shearon interviewed players, relatives and teammates to learn stories that, in some cases, had never been told before; such as how three boys who played at the same park in Chatham, Ontario made it to the major leagues. One of them is the only Canadian in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York.