The San Francisco earthquake on the San Andreas fault destroyed much of the city, leaving at least 3,000 dead and up to 300,000 homeless.
Tommy Burns became Canada’s first and only Heavyweight boxing champion.
Ageless pitching legend LeRoy “Satchel” Paige, a Hall of Fame inductee, was born on July 7. His career spanned five decades and included a number of appearances in Canada with barnstorming teams.
Six Canadian-born players graced the line-ups of Major League rosters. Two Chicago teams, the White Sox and Cubs squared off in the World Series with the American League champion White Sox prevailing four games to two.
With the amateur version of the American pastime still in growth mode in the lower mainland of B.C., the press of Vancouver showed little interest in reporting amateur activities on the diamond in 1906 as cricket and lacrosse grabbed the lion’s share of what sports coverage appeared in print.
Baseball within the new province of Saskatchewan also received little or no coverage.
Winnipeg and Brandon had stable amateur baseball circuits in 1906 while rural Manitoba leagues consisting of Dauphin, Grandview and Gilbert Plains in the central part of the province and Killarney, Deloraine and Cartwright in the south, also flourished.
Our 1906 coverage may have provided the early version of "there's no crying in baseball".
"After feeding the Wetaskiwin bunch honey all week and throwing in a big fill about what nice folks they were, the Edmonton bunch turned on them last night like a band of hungry wolves and tore them loose from their collateral and their fame, leaving the young bears a wreck to limp home on three legs and tell the story in their own camp of how cruelly they were traduced and buncoed. It was cold-blooded, but as sympathy has no place in baseball it was a la mode." (Edmonton Bulletin, July 7, 1906)
The 1906 Alberta game reports present a near complete view of the Calgary season, including some batting and pitching statistics and game reports.
A highlight of the season in Northern Alberta was the arrival of the Anacortes team from Washington for a series of exhibition games. A member of the team was William F. “Deacon” White who became enamoured by the new province and in particular, Edmonton, and decided to stay. He went on to quickly establish himself as the area’s first promoter of big-league sport by helping to build baseball, football and hockey organizations in the thriving Capital city.