20 years after the Western Canada Baseball League refused to allow a black man to play the game, Calgary's Russ Gideon was a local sports star. He not only played the centre field for the Calgary Dodgers, but he was the playing manager and led the club to the Alberta Senior Championship.
Gideon, whose family had moved to Calgary from Nova Scotia, went on to become a star in track and field, baseball and rugby (football) in high school, one of the best all-around athletes in the city's history.
In a 1929 item, the Calgary Herald noted Gideon was "one of the most popular rugby players in the city" and highlighted his tackling ability, "renowned for always bringing his man down". A few weeks previous, he'd become one the first players to receive a forward pass in Canadian football (until 1929, the Canadian version had been a strictly running game).
Gideon went on to a career as a pharmacist in Seattle and was a business and community leader who received national acclaim for his activism and good works. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was recognized by Ebony Magazine as one of the 100 most influential black Americans.
In another notable step forward, Gleichen teenager Clifford Bogstie pitched against then joined the barnstorming Chicago Colored Athletics during a tour of Alberta. On July 8th, the 19-year-old southpaw gave up three runs in the first inning but settled down to pitch Meadowbrook (strengthened with players from Gleichen) to a 6-5 victory over the Athletics. Later in July, it was announced that the Athletics had hired Bogstie "at a good sum" to pitch five games for them in "Calgary, Edmonton and other big towns". On July 20th, in Drumheller, Bogstie was on the hill for the Athletics in the first game of a double-header against another black touring team, the Texas Colored Giants. It would be roughly two decades before Wayne :"Wimpy" Stephenson (1949) and Carmel Risenhoover (1954) would fill a role similar to that of Bogstie.
In June, 1931, Bogstie threw a perfect game, with 14 strikeouts, for Gleichen in a 7-0 win over Cluny. It was the lefty's ninth straight victory.
There was an operative senior league in Regina for the spring and summer of 1930, known as the Regina Northwest League. The defending provincial champions (1929 vintage), the Regina Balmorals, won both halves of the short 1930 schedule, negating the need of a playoff series. The Regina senior Shamrocks finished dead last in the first half and tied for last in the second half of the schedule and their season was over without any expectations of advancing provincially. With an abbreviated regular season schedule, much of the summer saw exhibition games composed of an aggregation of select players from the loop plying their skills against touring opposition from both Canada and the United States. When it came time for senior amateur provincial playoffs to begin, the Balmorals were simply disinterested in defending their title and packed away the gear for the season. That decision left the door wide open for the junior titlists from the Queen City to get into the fray. The results obviously speak for themselves, as the teenagers were overmatched against a veteran Saskatoon St. Joseph's Athletic Club.