West Van’s Ernie Kershaw was a star pitcher in B.C. senior amateur ball and then with Vancouver Capilanos of the Class-B Western International League way back in 1939-41 and 1946.

Now he is one of professional baseball’s oldest-living former players.

And his memory of ball games long past is amazing, which he can prove by reeling off details of games played decades ago with astonishing accuracy.

Mind you, if he can’t recall the score of the opening game of the 1909 Pittsburgh-Detroit World Series, he has a great excuse. He was only two days old at the time.

That means he was born on Oct. 6, 1909. Next Tuesday he’ll be 100.

He could be the third oldest living ex-pro ballplayer. Emilio Navarro, born Sept. 26, 1905, celebrated his 104th birthday last Saturday. He’s the oldest living Negro Leaguer. Tony Malinosky, who played for Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937, is the oldest living major leaguer. He’s just one day older than Kershaw.

Ernie was a popular teacher at West Van High from 1936 to 1973 with time out for RCAF duty during World War II between 1941-45.

He has lived on the North Shore since 1936, initially as a boarder in various West Van homes including that of colleague and basketball star Dick Wright, who much later became Hillside’s first principal.

After marrying on July 18, 1947, Ernie and wife Audrey (Jones) lived briefly in West Van and then for 10 years in a home 100 yards from the original Tomahawk Barbeque on Marine Drive in North Van. For the past 50 years, they’ve resided just a few blocks from the classrooms where he taught.

Born in Ladner where he first played on senior men’s teams at 15, Kershaw earned his Bachelor of Applied Science degree at UBC in 1931 intending to be an electrical engineer. But when the Great Depression nixed a job with Westinghouse in Hamilton, Ontario, he took teacher training and embarked on a different career.

After teaching a year in Mission and three in Smithers, he accepted a position for a handsome $1,450 per year in West Van teaching mostly math, coaching badminton and tennis teams and acting as pianist for school functions.

He replaced Jimmy Sinclair who left teaching for politics and to eventually represent the Coast-Capilano riding and become Federal fisheries minister. One of Kershaw’s students, Kathleen “Bubbles” Bernard, married Sinclair. The Sinclairs’ daughter, Margaret, married Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

All this time Kershaw was playing ball during summers in the City League at now-demolished Athletic Park at Fifth and Hemlock. The park, owned by Vancouver’s “Mr. Baseball” Bob Brown, became the home of Brown’s Capilanos in the WIL in 1939 thanks in part to a pitching performance by Kershaw as we’ll see shortly.

Kershaw has put together an all-encompassing, 20,000-word draft of his memoirs, detailing the first 38 years of his life. He covers his amazing, if not amusing, survival as an infant along with other threats to his health, memories of the Great War, Great Depression, World War II and his ballplaying exploits.

“[My] Birth was premature at seven months,” he writes, “and I started my career at two-and-a-half to three pounds in a shoe box in the warming oven of our Gurney-Oxford kitchen range being for some time fed partly with honey and water via an eye dropper. I survived against heavy odds at that time and at two years was still quite small but very active…

“In 1918 at age nine, I barely survived the deadly ’flu epidemic” which claimed at least 20 million lives worldwide by 1919. Then at 16 he came down with typhoid fever but recovered after dwindling from 170 pounds to 125.

“[In 1923] I became very interested in baseball. From the Spalding Athletic Library at 25 cents each I bought three booklets: How to Pitch, How to Bat and How to Punch the Bag… I soon developed these three skills fairly easily, particularly the pitching with tips from famous pitchers such as Walter Johnson, Joe McGinnity, Babe Ruth and others.”

His pitching career was about to begin and there were many memorable games ahead.

There was a 3-1 victory on the hill for Ladner in their only win during a best-of-three provincial senior “B” semi-final against eventual B.C.-champion North Shore Smith-Airlines at Athletic Park in 1932. Kershaw “pitched a first rate game” in the words of The North Shore Press, scattering four hits, whiffing 10 and producing three hits of his own.

He pitched a 23-inning, 27-strikeout complete game for Mission in 1933, “on a very hot day to win a very tight game and develop a very severe case of sunstroke” as Ernie recalls. His only no-hitter came in the City League for United Distillers Ltd. against Vancouver Athletic Club on June 18, 1937.

In 1938, he twice beat Arnold & Quigley’s previously unbeaten Bill Sayles, who later pitched in the majors with the Red Sox, Dodgers and Giants; and also gave Arrow Transport’s undefeated lefty Hal Straight his first loss.

“At the end of this season,” explains Kershaw, “Bob Brown was considering taking over the franchise of the professional Maple Leafs team, then playing out of Con Jones Park in the PNE area, and entering a new team, the Vancouver Capilanos, in the Western International League… There was some debate about the level of play in the WIL and the Senior City League. Yakima Pippins were then leading the WIL so an exhibition game at Athletic Park – Pippins vs. UDL – was set up.”

Kershaw beat the Pippins so Brown forged ahead with the Capilanos for the following season with several City League stars on the roster, including Ernie who pitched the home opener on April 27, 1939, at Athletic Park, hurling a five-hit, 4-0 shutout over the same Yakima team.

Ernie says his most memorable game on the mound took place June 24, 1940, when the Caps beat Seattle Rainers, then the Pacific Coast League’s top team, 5-3 in an exhibition contest in aid of the war effort before an overflow crowd of 5,000 at Athletic Park.

But there was also Ernie Kershaw Night at Athletic Park on Aug. 2, 1941, the day before he left for the east to be an instructor in the RCAF, as team officials, teammates and fans showered him with gifts.

Upon returning in 1945, he was just in time to pitch a 10-1 win for Arrows over Norvans in the senior playoffs on Aug. 13. He rejoined the Capilanos the next season and on Oct. 18, 1946, threw an inning of hitless ball against a team of touring major leaguers.

Now he’s one of pro ball’s oldest ex-players. Happy 100th Ernie.

This is episode 348 from Len Corben’s treasure chest of stories – the great events and the quirky – that bring to life the North Shore’s rich sports history.