Elliott: R. I. P. Buck Reed
The 1968 Leaside Maple Leafs which included Bob Hawton (8) and Jim Wilson (6) top row, with Bob Booth (21) and Buck Reed (31).
May 19, 2025
By Bob Elliott
Canadian Baseball Network
Over the years we have visited Talbot Park many a time.
And we’ve met all kinds of good people there.
Like Howie Birnie, keeper of the shrine.
Like Dr. Ron Taylor, the former major leaguer with two World Series rings, who we once spotted hiding high on the hill. The next half inning we figured we knew why ... so he would not make his son nervous as LHP Drew Taylor was on the mound.
Like umpire Joe Sawchuk, who we’d later see as the official scorekeeper at Toronto Blue Jays games at Exhibition Stadium.
And many others they introduced me to ... and others I recognize every time I see them. On my worst trip, I met a man named George (Buck) Reed.
Buck was playing for the Leaside Maple Leafs in the spring of 1968 when my father was in the third base coach’s box in the top of the second. Down my father went with a stroke at age 58.
Both the Kingston Centennials and Leaside stood around.
“What do we do?”
There were not any cell phones in 1968. Someone mentioned that there was a hospital nearby.
All of a sudden my uncle Sam Sheridan drove his car onto the outfield from the school parking lot in right field.
He lifted my father into the car and my cousin Geoff and I jumped in and off we sped up Bayview to Sunnybrook.
When I visited my father, he told me Alfie Payne and Buck had been in for a visit and they had brought a Get Well card from the Leafs. Plus Ted Reeve, who coached father with the Queen’s Golden Gaels and Neil MacCarl, who covered curling for the Toronto Star and followed Jake Edwards rink and my father to Port Arthur for the Brier.
Years later, I was at an indoor winter workout for high schoolers when Alfie and Buck showed. They showed the next Wednesday too. They showed again. They’d watch, listen to coach Rick Johnston and then about 10 coaches would go for eats at our regular table at Montana’s.
Finally, it became clear what was up. Alfie, GM of the Brantford Red Sox, wanted to hire Johnston as his manager. And under owner Paul Aucoin, Alfie’s decision started a dominant run ... from 2006 until 2013 the Red Sox won seven times in eight seasons, losing in the final to the Toronto Maple Leafs the other summer.
From time to time, we would see Buck: we went to Brockville to celebrate Brian McRobie’s 70th (except baseball-reference said he was only 66 ... Brian explained his area scout knocked two years off his age when a scout liked him at a Philadelphia Phillies workout and then the scout’s supervisor knocked off two more).
All three of us went to visit Alfie in the hospital. Great memories. Lots of laughs. And one nurse asked, “Are any of these stories true?”
Buck would sometimes talk without moving his lips “Hello 41” he’d mumble, because he knew my favourite player was Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews, who wore No. 41 with the Milwaukee Braves. Buck had a fantastic memory.
1B Buck Reed does the splits and then looks for the verdict from the umpire.
Like the time in Peterborough at a tourney the Leafs and the Belleville Kenmores had a bench clearing brawl. Buck wound up face-to-face with Larry Mavety, the ex-pro minor league hockey player, known for his hulking stature and a volatile temper.
Buck emerged from the clubhouse alone, only to find Mavety and four other Belleville players standing around having a beer at the trunk of a car.
Mavety yelled, “HEY!” Buck feared the worst. He was outnumbered. Mavety said, “So, you’re not stopping for a beer?”
Someone at our table years later asked, “Buck, what did you do?
“Well, looking at my options ... I walked over and had a beer,” Buck explained. “Larry Mavety turned out to be a good guy. A real good guy.”
Just like Buck.
Buck would email once in a while and tonight I feel guilty that I didn’t answer them all or was more prompt.
His son, John, emailed the other day.
Buck left us around 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday at the age of 78. A sad day.
I asked John, the biggest Coastal Carolina Chanticleers fan in all of Canada and probably 49 states, to send me a link when arrangements are made. John explained his dad didn’t want any type of services or a newspaper announcement ... just let his friends know.
I was honored to be considered a friend of Buck Reed’s. It didn’t make the news any easier to handle.
John remembers his father telling him “in best Broadview and Queen rough upbringing,” you have very few friends in life and plenty of acquaintances. What is a friend?
"A friend is the guy you will walk into any dark alley for and stand shoulder to shoulder or back to back without ever asking why. You're there for whatever happens no matter what because they need you. And you won't have more than a handful of them in your life,” is the way John remembers his father’s message.
I passed on the news to Howie Birnie, who had coached Buck at Pape Playground around 1961-62 before he went to play in the Western City Junior League at Christie Pits. Howie, like Buck, were part of first Leaside Maple Leaf team in 1968.
Birnie remembered Buck as a “very good hitter from a baseball family. His dad played and his three brothers all were good players too.”
When Alfie passed in 2012, we wrote:
“If they lined up all of Alf’s pals, friends, players he’d coached at home plate, Buck Reed and Brian McRobie, two loyal members of entourage, would be at the head of the line, which would reach down the first-base line, circle the warning track, come back down the third-base line and start all over again. And again. And again and again.”
I could have written the something similar about George (Buck) Reed.
Labor lawyer Cindy Watson said it much more eloquently on Facebook writing
“The trade union movement lost a strong leader. It’s with a heavy heart that I share the passing of Buck Reed. He spent a lifetime fighting for workers’ rights always pushing the bar to get better conditions and ensure workers were treated with dignity and respect. He exemplified the values my dad instelled in me and I thought of his as a surrogate father. You will be missed Buck.”
When we would be in a restaurant and either Buck or Alfie decided it was time to go ... one would call the other by a nickname I’d never heard of before or since. Once I even asked Buck about it.
“Not sure what you are talking about, do you know Alf?” nodding towards Alfie, who quickly shook his head. It was obvious they had been friends for decades.
I am not a very religious person, but I do believe that someday I will see my late mother and father again.
And someday Buck and Alfie, too. We will sit around a table ... and someone will start ...
“Remember the night ...”
Just as I believe Alf and Buck are doing as you read this.
As No. 13 always used to sign off ... in email or in person …
“Be well.”