By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

I’ve known about signs and stealing them since I was a bat boy in the early 1960s.

Some moments on the subject of signs stand out ...

_ In the 1995 post season -- an off day _ I was given a lesson.

Cincinnati Reds future Hall of Famer Barry Larkin explained how newly acquired lefty David Wells had some odd habits.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“He uses multiple signs,” Larkin said.

“Everyone does that,” I countered.

“Maybe with a man on second, but on the first pitch of the game?” Larkin asked.

* * *

When I was a bat boy for my father’s team he’d call me over about the third inning and say “Tell our guys I’ve got their signs.”

Usually it meant a catcher was lazy and my father could see from the third base coach’s box if the catcher put down one finger or two. I forget how it worked. Either he called out a player’s first name if it was a fastball or if he called a number, it was something off speed.

The thing I remember is that two hitters didn’t want any help with the signs. Wouldn’t look down. Thought they were better off on their own.

* * *

And then there was Guy (Nick) White. He played first base for years for my father’s teams, Cliffy Earl, Gerry Wager and other coaches. But my father always wanted White to catch and a few times in junior ball he was successful. The best pitcher on that team was Jim Sprott.

White would yell: “Throw the hard one Jimmy!” (Fastball)

Or “C’om Sprotter throw the funny one.” (Curve)

And that was it. Zero hand fingers between the legs ... unless it was to fool the runner on second.

Zero different positioning of the catcher’s mitt.

Everything was verbal.

We thought of White, that memory plus about 1,000 others this week when he passed at age 76. The private funeral is on Thursday morning at St. Joseph’s Church.

We recalled all kinds of memories ...

* * *

How on a bus trip to Orillia we once polled the best three arms -- Arty Leeman, Doug McIlroy and Keith Weese -- who was the toughest out in the Kingston Baseball Association? They all answered SS Ron Earl. Earl hit .383 in the stats we have for Kingston and with Stratford in the Intercounty League he hit .329 in five seasons (426 at-bats). Then he brought his line-to-line John Olerud swing back to Kingston. He was a tad faster on the bases.

Earl may have been the best hitter, but OF Charlie (Goose) Pester hit them the farthest. 1B White usually hit third or fourth, batting .361 including 72 doubles, 14 triples, 18 homers and 229 RBIs from 1967-1978.

“The thing about Nick was that he was a double-edged sword,” second baseman Bobby Gilmour said. “He could hit for power and hit for average. He could hit them a long way.”

Remembers teammate Elwood Johnston from Arnprior, Ont. “Guy might have had the most line drives. He used to tell me how he wanted to be at the plate facing their best guy and smacking his butt.’”

* * *

Sometimes during batting practice a man in a trench coach would follow a path from left field to short right crossing the spacious outfield. It didn’t matter what was happening. It could be infield practice, outfielders throwing to the bases or batting practice. He was oblivious to line drives sailing past him.

Someone asked who the guy was? Nick said he was a “secret agent on a secret mission -- so he could walk where ever he wanted.”

After that it was like Guy has eyes in the back of his head. When the man was still in foul ground in left, Nick would begin to boom out Johnny Rivers hit “Secret Agent Man.”

There’s a man who leads a life of danger

To everyone he meets he stays a stranger

* * *

Earl was Nick’s teammate with the Red Sox in the Kingscourt Little League, the two played senior ball together for eight seasons, they were teammates in junior hockey and then they played old-timer’s hockey together.

And it was Earl who hung the moniker on White, transforming Guy white into Nick White. There was a defenceman named Nick Polano, who “had a weathered beat up looking face.”

“Guy got hit in the face with a puck,” said Earl. “Guy was cut and his face swelled. He looked worse than Nick Polano -thus the nickname ... Nick.”

Polano played with the Hamilton Tiger Cubs, Louisville Rebels, Sudbury Wolves, Edmonton Flyers, Omaha Knights, Hershey Bears, Syracuse/St. Louis Braves, Omaha Knights, Baltimore Clippers, Amarillo Wranglers, Providence Reds Albuquerque Six-Guns and the Cape Cod Cubs.

He also played 17 games with the WHA’s Philadelphia Blazers and then coached the Detroit Red Wings for three seasons.

Nick Polano was a big man in Detroit and a whole bunch of minor-league towns. Yet, he didn’t have the same stature as his namesake Nick White in Kingston.

* * *

Elwood Johnston was an all-star pitcher in the Kingston Baseball Association before moving to Nepean and coaching Steve Yzerman. Nick was his catcher in those juvenile, junior and KBA days. Then Guy moved to first.

“Guy knew I couldn’t throw the across the plate,” said Johnston from Arnprior. “Because if I did they usually hit a line drive. So he’d set up on the corners and I was able to hit the mitt. When Guy moved to first that was the end of me as a pitcher.”

Then, Mac Druce, Billy Kyle, Jim McDonald and Craig Gavel took over catching duties.

“Guy impressed me as ball player, as a hockey player, as a school teacher as a principal and a man,” Johnston said, who also said car rides with White turned him on to the group Three Dog Night.

White was part of the Eastern Ontario Senior B football champion with Regiopolis College in 1961 and later coached football, basketball, soccer and cross-country at Regi.

* * *

In 1967, the OBA had each player sign a yellow lineup card. It was my job to make sure everyone signed in the proper place, because if you were not on the card you could not play.

Often I would look down and see hitting fourth in Nick’s spot was Gordie Howe. Other times it was Eric Nesterenko or Eddie Litzenberger. Then, I’d have to start the signing exercise over. Eventually, I learned to get Nick to sign a blank card rather than him being the 10th of 15th signature and avoiding the do over.

Our first year as the Kingston Lakeview Centennials our third baseman struggled with his throws to first. Of his first 15 chances he had eight errors, seven of the throwing variety. All were over Nick’s head at first.

At the time we had asked the city for dirt to fill in home plate after games. The city worker asked where did we want it “at either end of the backstop ... close to the plate.”

So, we show up at practice and there is a 10-foot high pile of dirt in foul ground behind first base. My father always started a workout with an infield. Everyone took their positions. Everyone but Nick. I asked if he was injured? He said ‘wait ... until everyone is ready, and then he sprinted out and stood atop the dirt pile.

“Hit the mitt,” he yelled across the diamond to third.

* * *

We thought of the time in 1973 we hosted the OBA senior eliminations. We were asked to build a new outfield fence or replace the holes at Megaffin Stadium. So, we begged for plywood from Mutart’s Lumber on Princes Street.

Nick was driving the half-ton truck with the lumber in the back. The back door was down. Clyde Harris and another player were in the front. I sat on the lumber. It was around 5 p.m. as Nick waited patiently for a break to cross four lines of traffic.

Finally, he saw his opening, gunned it like one of the Duke boys and about six sheets of plywood and I wound up in the middle of the road. Harris said I looked like Ali Baba on a magic carpet ride. Quickly I stood and stopped traffic.

It took awhile to reload since the guys in the front were laughing so hard. We installed the fence where the Kingston Ponies played in 1948-52 and painted it green.

We beat the Orillia Majors in the final for the right to represent Ontario in Edmunston, N.B. Now Nick knew the route since he had played hockey for the University of St. Thomas University Tommies in Fredericton, N.B., which represented New Brunswick in the first-ever Canada Winter Games in 1966-67. Nick was team captain and the school’s Athlete of the Year in 1967.

He even told us after Quebec City but before you entering New Brunswick there was a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!

In the words of the immortal Montreal Expo Jim Gosger “Yeah sure.”

Sure enough 14 hours into our road trip there it was a green road sign with an arrow pointing to Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!. We piled off the bus over and had our pictures taken like tourists walking around Manhattan looking up at the skyscrapers.

I’ve told people moaning about the long drive to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and how a highlight would be stopping at Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!. They’d either laugh or scoff. But the next day I would get a picture via email or phone of them standing besides the Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! sign.

In Edmunston we stayed at a university -- with all the other provinces -- where it seemed like every three hours an announcement would be made “Last call for dirty laundry.” One day we recognized Nick’s voice on the mike “Last call for dirty laundry ... if you want some you have five minutes to pick it up.”

We started off 3-0 with wins over Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and the host Edmunston team. Then we lost 2-1 to Alberta, coached by Dr. Ron Taylor and 2-0 to Nova Scotia ... missing the medal round on run differential.

* * *

When Wager coached, Nick said his signs at third base were “too complicated.”

After the two talked about it, Wager agreed to let White coach third base the next game.

The next game, from the third base coach’s box, White held up hand-written signs which read “take,” “bunt,” and “hit and run.”

Returning to the dugout the skipper told the 1B “that didn’t work too well, they saw our signs.” White countered with “Yeah but our guys got them for a change.”

* * *

If there was one thing Nick disliked more than catching pitchers it was catching pop ups.

As soon as the pop up went up to the right side of the infield, Nick would yell “Gilly, Gilly, Gillly!” and vacate the area.

“I swear one time I caught a pop up and was so close I could have stepped on the base,” said second baseman Gilmour. “Oh Nick used to tease your father and Cliffy Earl. They’d ask about catching and Nick would say ‘Ah my trick knee is acting up ... but I think I can play first.”

Gilmour and White were teammates since midget.

One night in a close game in Belleville against the Kenmores, who had runners on second and third with two out, Nick fielded a hard one hopper. He came up and did a fake pump home before strolling over and stepping on the base for the third out.

Coach Cliffy Earl screamed at Nick when he came into the dugout: “Are you trying to give Elliott (my father) a heart attack, that’s not funny for John’s sake.”

When my father became ill after a second stroke his former 1B Gord Wood showed up and took him for drives three times a week. Am unsure if anyone will be there for me, but Gilmour was there for Nick.

Three times a week Gilmour, the uncle of Leafs star Dougie Gilmour, took Nick either golfing or curling. A left-handed hitter, Nick used right-handed clubs.

* * *

The whole infield has been inducted into the Kingston and District Hall of Fame: 1B White (baseball, hockey, basketball), 2B Gilmour (baseball, fastball, basketball, hockey golf and managed Kingston Vogelzang Insurance Ponies to the OBA title in 1993), 3B Don Goodridge (baseball, only OHA referee east of Toronto) and SS Earl (baseball, hockey, officiating).

Nick, Gilmour and Earl were at St, Marys when I was honoured in 2015. Nick and Goodridge were in Cooperstown in 2012.

Of course my children, Alicia and Bobby, knew the names before meeting anyone. Apparently I was find if telling st at the dinner table ... They could have been ball stories or life lessons. “I remember one night Gilly was on third and Nick was second -- no wait Squirrel Earl was on third and Gilly was on second ...” Right about then my daughter would ask “Does it matter .... can we get to rhe point?”

Nick was with the Kingston Lakeview Centennials in 1967 when they won the city’s first OBA senior A championship since 1932. It would be the first of four senior championships with titles in 1973, 1975 and 1978.

* * *

When Buck O’Neill was honoured with the Buck O’Neill trophy rather than being inducted into Cooperstown, someone asked if he hated the fact he was not elected. O’Neill said, “I hate cancer.” Nick was felled by the terrible disease Alzheimer’s, which also took one of his parents, his brother Danny and has his sister Mary Charotte in a home. I hate Alzheimer’s.

Both Nick’s wife of almost 52 year Carol and Gilmour will have Disney-like Fast passes when they get to St. Peter’s Gates.

Gilmour told my sister Elizabeth, his GM when Kingston won the OBA title “Your dad and Cliffy will be rolling their eyes when they see Nick walk throw those gates of heaven. But they will be smiling ear to ear. Guy was a good friend to many and will certainly be missed.”

Sympathies to daughters Amy (Joshua Bullock), Gillian (Ryan Boughton), grandchildren, Benjamin, Jesse, Christopher, Chuck, Madison, Ashlynn, and Mitchell. sister Mary Charlotte Mahood (Don), sisters in law Mary Clancy, Marilyn Bowie (Gord), brothers in law Wayne Clancy (Pat), and Paul Clancy (Sheila Marleau).

In lieu of flowers, donations in Guy’s memory may be made to the Alzheimer Society of KFL&A.

* * *

Am forgetting where the expression came from -- maybe Jack Crawford who was on the executive. but Nick often said “It’s been a labour of love.”

Nick would say it in silly situations, in heartfelt greetings or last August when I saw him for breakfast after a Little League banquet in Kingston.

Knowing Nick was truly a “labour of love.”