Connections between Philadelphia and Vancouver
Once you get beyond the fact that both cities have NHL teams, there doesn't appear to be much that Philadelphia and Vancouver have in common.
One is situated between the Pacific and the Rockies, the other between the Delaware and Schuylkill. One is populated by outdoors enthusiasts, the other with coach potatoes.
But there are few remote connections.
Connie Mack, the longtime manager/owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, actually managed a baseball game here in 1934.
Mack, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and several other big-league names stopped here en route to Japan. Their tour of that nation is widely credited with igniting its passion for baseball.
Anyway, a day before sailing to Japan from here, they played an exhibition on Oct. 18 at Athletics Park, which no longer exists.
Babe Ruth's All-Americans played Mack's American League Stars.
In a steady rain, a crowd estimated at 3,000 watched the stars muck around in the mud.
Ruth, who had done it in 1927, predicted that day to a Vancouver Sun sportswriter that no one would ever hit 60 home runs again.
Benjamin Tingley Rogers is a lot less well-known than Mack, unless you're into granulated sugar. Still, the Philadelphia native is a member of this city's Hall of Fame, which probably says more about the Hall of Fame than Rogers.
Anyway, Rogers, whose father, Samuel, was in the sugar-refining business, emigrated here in 1889, at 24, and soon founded B. C. Sugar Refinery.
He came after learning that the Canadian Pacific Railroad had just extended into Vancouver. The west-coast city, he knew, would be a convenient port for all the sugar cane then being grown in the Phillipines.
Before opening his refinery, though, Rogers extracted several concessions from Vancouver officials -- free water for 10 years, 15 years without taxes and a $40,000 bonus.
In 1901, he built the largest mansion on this city's west side, Gabriola. Not long afterward, his refinery was Canada's largest. It still exists as Rogers Sugar Ltd. He died at 52 in 1918.