Howard Birnie

Baseball has been Howard Birnie’s life work. 

Born in Toronto in 1937, Birnie began playing at the old Pape Playgrounds when he was fourteen. He focused his attention on coaching and umpiring beginning in 1958, and over the next three decades led his teams to seven league championships, one provincial championship, and even a gold medal in 1964 with the Toronto Leaside All-Stars. In his role as umpire, Birnie officiated two Junior World, six national and three international championships, as well as three Pearson Cup matches in 1982, 1984 and 1986. A few Jays games at the SkyDome in 1991 rounded out his MLB credentials.

Glowing histories of Birnie’s career reveal him as a beloved figure of the Toronto suburb of Leaside. Dubbed “the heart and soul of Leaside Baseball,” he has supported the Leaside Baseball Association in numerous roles, including as the groundskeeper, registrar, treasurer and president, the last of which is a position he has held for fifty-one years. He was president of the Toronto Baseball Association from 1978 to 1985, as well as of the Ontario Baseball Association from 1991 to 1992.

In 2012, Bob Elliott penned an article about Bernie to celebrate his fifty years of volunteering with Leaside. In it, Elliott paints a vignette of the president doling out nickel candy at the snack bar to kids not unlike the baseball veteran when he himself was starting out. It is an image which aptly symbolizes Birnie’s commitment to baseball not just in pursuit of his many professional accomplishments, but for the youngsters learning how to swing a bat. Birnie’s deep and long-lasting involvement at the community level is the reason he has been honoured again and again by his peers and by award committees, and now in 2024 by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.