Ashley Stephenson’s career recognized by CBHOF amid growth for women’s sports

TORONTO – Ashley Stephenson started T-ball at four, hockey at five and quickly became obsessed with sports. She played through her teens and then into adulthood, when she emerged as a star on the women’s national baseball team. Her stint on the national team persisted for 15 years at a time when there were no avenues to a pro career afterwards, and when she had to find ways to remain dominant at an elite level around the real-life demands of work, a mortgage, family.

“Women’s sports was light-years away from where it is now, unfortunately. But the growth of women's sports has been amazing, honestly, probably in the last 10, 15 years,” says Stephenson, who is preparing for a second year as position coach for the Vancouver Canadians, the high A affiliate for the Toronto Blue Jays.

“The WNBA has been a real leader in that, in particular, USA women's soccer has been a huge leader in that, and now the PWHL, which is exploding beyond most people's wildest dreams. I think people knew that there would be a fanbase ready for it, but I don't think people really expected it to take off like it has. The saying if you build it, they will come – for me, we've always been here, we've always been playing, we've always been competing. We just didn't necessarily have a place to call home in each of our sports and now you're starting to find that. Baseball continues to grow and hopefully will reach the heights of some of those sports. But 20 years ago, things like that weren't even imaginable.”

Furthering that goal on the baseball front is recognition of her career by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (CBHOF), which on Tuesday named her for induction along with former Blue Jays Russell Martin and Jimmy Key, former Blue Jays president and CEO Paul Godfrey, men’s national team stalwart Rod Heisler and Toronto coach, umpire and builder Howard Birnie.

Stephenson will be the second woman enshrined individually by the Hall, joining 1940s All-American Girls Professional Baseball League star Helen Callaghan. But Stephenson’s the first member of the inaugural national team generation to be recognized with more sure to follow (Kate Psota and the late Amanda Asay among them), which should only further raise the profile of female baseball players.

After all, when Stephenson, a native of Mississauga, Ont., first started taking the field, there wasn’t even a women’s national team for her to aspire to. She was part of the inaugural squad in 2004 and over her 15 seasons, helped her team win silver at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto – a personal highlight because it was the first ever multisport Games for women’s baseball – plus two silver and four bronze medals at the WBSC Women’s World Cup.

Moreover, toward the end of her playing days, women were just starting to break through Major League Baseball’s longstanding barriers, an evolution that led to the long overdue opening of a door to coaching in the Blue Jays farm system. Now in a job she never believed possible growing up, she hopes her achievements will inspire others.

“It's so important for young girls to be able to see opportunities and to see people who look like them represented in a number of different areas,” says Stephenson. “I actually had the luxury of going to the first PWHL game … and as I looked around, I thought, this isn't just an amazing opportunity for the players, which it is, but also the officials who are female, the broadcasters who are female, the in-game PA announcer who is female, the athletic trainers, which were female. They have really tried to do a great job of building out a professional sport that is built for women, by women and really supporting women. …

“For young kids, especially young girls, I've always tried to be a positive role model,” she added. “I just want them to be able to chase their dreams, like I was lucky enough to chase mine. I actually had no idea where they'd take me and probably got me further than I ever could have imagined. So for a young girl to be able to maybe see herself in me, that's pretty special.”

Read on for a look at the four others who will be inducted to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont., on June 15.

Russell Martin

A four-time all-star and veteran of 14 big-league seasons, the catcher born in Toronto and raised in Chelsea, Que., is among the best players to emerge from Canada. He batted .248/.349/.397 in 1,693 games with 191 homers and 771 RBIs, his strong bat coupling with dynamic defending and renowned game-calling to make him a valued two-way player.

A lasting lesson behind the plate came during his rookie season of 2006 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, when he caught Greg Maddux’s first start after his trade deadline acquisition.

“I remember going to him and asking him, 'Hey, what can I do for you behind the plate?' And I remember him telling me, 'I want you to set up the same way every single time. I want you to look like a painting behind the plate,” Martin relays. “When he said that, it just made me realize how differently he saw the game of baseball.”

Maddux threw six no-hit innings at the Cincinnati Reds that Aug. 3 outing, but was removed after a rain delay in what finished as a 3-0 win. For the rest of his career, Martin ensured that his “main focus is to get as much as you can out of that pitcher on the mound that day.”

“A lot of that's done not in between the lines,” he says. “It's in batting practice. When you're shagging. They all have their own philosophy. As a game-caller, there isn't just one right pitch. I think that normally the right pitch is the pitch that the pitcher believes he can execute. So there's no one way to go about navigating a way through a game. Knowing your pitchers, knowing what they're capable of doing, knowing what's working that day, knowing how to get them back in the zone if they're struggling and throwing balls, knowing if you need to poke at them, or if you need to give them a pat on the back. Psychologically, they're all built different. So you've kind of got to know them inside and inside and out. ... I knew that I could impact winning the most by getting the most out of that pitcher and if I could help out a little bit with the bat, that was great. But you impact the game a lot more with every pitch on defence than you do any other way as a catcher.”

Jimmy Key

The crafty lefty from Hunstville, Ala., was the definition of a pitcher, keeping hitters guessing by putting his array of pitches wherever he wanted. A four-time all-star, he broke the 200-inning barrier six times in his nine years with the Blue Jays, topping out at 261 frames in 1987, when he led the AL with a 2.76 ERA and finished second to Roger Clemens for the Cy Young Award.

Key was also pivotal to the first championship in franchise history, throwing 7.2 innings of one-run ball to beat Atlanta in Game 4 of the 1992 World Series and then coming out of the bullpen in extras to throw 1.1 frames and earn the win in clinching Game 6.

Paul Godfrey

First as an alderman and later as Metro Toronto chair, the Toronto native helped lay the groundwork for the Blue Jays by lobbying baseball officials until a franchise was eventually granted to an ownership group led by Labatt Brewing Co. He later was part of the crown corporation that built SkyDome, now known as Rogers Centre, and in 2000 was hired as president and CEO of the Blue Jays, a position he held through the 2008 season.

“We visited every major league owner and sold them on the good things about Toronto and the good things about Canada. And because of that, I think it caught on,” he said of how he convinced the American League to grant him an expansion franchise.

“We also had, for instance, the wife of (former Royals owner) Ewing Kauffman (Muriel), who happened to be a Canadian, who said to Ewing, 'You better get the team there or else I may not be your wife very much longer. I love Toronto, and you've got to get them a team.' We always found some way of convincing Major League Baseball that Toronto was a big city, and it worked. But it didn't come easy. ... You've got to be committed. You've got to continue to concentrate on it and you can't just make the one call and say, well, I think I got that right now. You've got to make sure they understood why Toronto was the great city that it is today.”

Rod Heisler

The lefty from Moose Jaw, Sask., appeared in 14 different international tournaments with the men’s national team, which is believed to be the most ever among Canadian baseball players. A two-time all-conference winner at Bemidji State University, he first pitched for Canada at the 1978 Amateur World Series and his resume includes two Olympics, three Pan Am Games and three trips to the Intercontinental Cup, along with six seasons of pro hockey in Germany.

The national team made massive strides during his decade suiting up.

“We were in tough a lot, but as true Canadians, we battled,” he says. “When I started, we accepted sometimes that we were going to get 10-run (mercy) ruled. That's just the way it was until it wasn't a few years later, when a lot of our players were going to the States and playing against some of the players on the U.S. national team, and all of a sudden our guys were realizing, hey, we're ballplayers, we can play with those guys. And as soon as the attitude changed, it didn't take long. In my time with Team Canada, it probably took a couple of years, in 1980, and all of a sudden we were starting to beat the Americans. And that was a thrill. So the progress I've seen in amateur baseball has been tremendous. And the opportunity to play for Canada was phenomenal.”

Howard Birnie

The Toronto native has been involved in local baseball for seven decades, winning seven city titles and a national championship as coach of the Toronto Leaside All-Stars, serving as president of the Leaside Baseball Association since 1973 and president of the Ontario Baseball Association in 1991 and ’92. He also spent 34 years as an umpire, working six national championships, three international championships, two world junior championships and three Pearson Cup games, the annual exhibition that used to feature the Blue Jays and the Expos.

One of them produced a memorable exchange with a beloved Blue Jays outfielder that emphasized how difficult a task umpiring can be.

“Jesse Barfield came to bat in the first inning and took a pitch that to me was a perfect strike above the belt, and he said, 'That was up,’ Birnie relays. “And I said, 'Oh oh,' because that's a strike every game I ever umpired. I watched Jimmy Key pitch from right behind the plate one night and not one pitch was straight, every pitch moved on the corner. When you do amateur baseball, you get a lot of pitches right down the middle or nowhere near and it makes it easier.”

As a baseball leader, that's why he’s always stressed respect for all at the ballpark.

“One of the things in my organization I always say to coaches, I don't really care if you win or lose, but your teams better behave,” he says. “Because you're representing you and you're representing us. And generally they've adhered to that.”