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Community Corner

The Wayback Machine: Before Dem O's, There Was the Aberdeen Canners

Aberdeen's passion for baseball started before the Orioles.

Since it’s baseball season, this seemed like a good time to explore Aberdeen’s love affair with the game.

The roots of baseball run deep in Aberdeen, as well as in Harford County. In fact, the town had its own team as early as 1910.

The Susquehanna Baseball League began in 1920, but it wasn’t formally organized until 1946. In the beginning, it was a six-team league with Harford teams from Aberdeen, Bel Air and Havre de Grace. Cecil County had teams from Perryville and Rising Sun, and there was also a team from Oxford, PA.

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The semi-professional Susquehanna League played in the All American Amateur Baseball Association (AAABA). 

The AAABA was formed in 1944, in large part due to Glen L. Martin to promote the sport of amateur baseball.  Martin even funded it with his own Lockheed Martin aviation money and left a substantial donation upon his death in 1955, according to the AAABA website.

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The post-1946 Susquehanna League encompassed 14 communities and there may have been six to eight teams that played in any given season. At the time, the Aberdeen Canners were considered to be a Class D team, which is today’s equivalent of a lower Class A team.

The Aberdeen Canners were the only team to play every season in the league’s eight-year span. And, according to league rules, players had to live within 25 miles of the team for which they played as of Jan. 1 in the season in which they played, as stated in an article by Fred Liedlich in the Harford Historical Bulletin #90, “History of the Susquehanna Baseball League,” Part I.

Presumably this rule was in place to prevent out-of-town ringers from creating unfair advantages within the community of local players.

Given the scope of the canning industry in Harford county, one needn’t wonder why the team had the name it did. I’ll be relating much about this facet of Aberdeen’s history in the coming weeks.

Baseball in the time of the Aberdeen Canners wasn’t like Major League Baseball as we know it now. “Most of the players were adult men working fulltime jobs,” and most had played in college or high school and all were white, according to Liedlich’s article.

However, there was a Negro League, which was active in Harford County and included teams such as Darlington’s Kalmia AllStars.

The ages of the Canners’ players ranged from teenagers to men in their 30s and even early 40s.

The Aberdeen Canners were very much a local effort. In fact, the proceeds from a game played between the Canners and the Havre de Grace Rivermen in September 1946, were given to the Aberdeen American Legion Committee to purchase an iron lung.

Norman Lee, later of Lee Buick in Perryville, not only played for the Canners at one time, but later became their sponsor. Local lawyer and judge N. Paul Cronin was the president of the Susquehanna League from 1947-1952.

The Canners first played on what was called Community Field, which was behind the old Aberdeen High School, and is now . In 1950, a new field was created, Lee Field, on Perryman Road.  Complete with grandstands, the new ball field could accommodate 1,100 fans. 

Ticket prices made going to see the games an affordable pastime, with admission being 60 cents for adults and children were free.  A 1951 season ticket would set you back a whole $5.

By 1953, the heyday of the Canners was over, due to a variety of sociocultural reasons.

“Increased mobility provided by the automobile, competition from television, player shortages caused by the Korean Conflict, and other factors led to both players and fans becoming less interested in local baseball,” according to an article by Liedlich in the Harford Historical Bulletin #95, “History of the Susquehanna Baseball League,” Part II.

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

Next week, we’ll explore the careers of some of the Aberdeen Canners’ players. You may have heard of one of them:  Cal Ripken, Sr.

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