History of the A's

Manager Fred Conradi

THROUGH THE SPORTS GATE

by Jack Gatecliff

The St. Catharines Standard

Wednesday June 20, 1956

For a man who never caught a lacrosse ball in a lacrosse stick, Fred Knute Conradi has established a pretty fair record in Canada’s National Pastime.

Born in Brooklyn, N. Y. (he’s still an American citizen), brought up in St. Catharines and educated in such scattered schools as Appleby in Oakville, Ridley and some five St. Catharines public schools, Fred, or Knute as he was known at that time, didn’t come into close contact with lacrosse until 1938.

Returning to this town after living in New York City and traveling to most of the civilized parts of the world – and some that were not too civilized – Fred was caught up in the lacrosse fever which gripped St. Catharines at that time.

For many this was just a fleeting thing. Saturday night was lacrosse night in the Garden City and if you couldn’t boast at church Sunday morning that you had either seen or heard the game on the radio, you were regarded with something akin to disdain.

While it was a “phase” for probably 35 per cent of the fans, it stayed with Conradi and hasn’t left him yet. If anything  he is more tied up in the old gutted stick game now than even at the height of its popularity in 1938 – 41.

“Just can’t understand why the interest is lagging,” he stated the other day while discussing his favorite subject in the service station office. “I’ve seen just about every sport that is played, including a bull fight in Barcelona, Spain and for my money lacrosse is head and shoulders above them all.

And Fred is qualified to speak on the subject. As a genuine world traveler in his younger days of not so long ago, he saw just about all there was to see in the sport line.

As an avid lacrosse follower, he acted as enthusiastic chauffeur for the Athletics in their Mann Cup days and actually put in more miles than the players themselves. At that time he owned a service station in Hamilton.

Not only did he drive to St. Catharines for each home game, he also came here for the away trips, picked up his “carload,” drove to Brampton, Orillia or Mimico, deposited the boys back in St. Catharines, then drove home to Hamilton.

The game he remembers best was in Orillia one late summer night in 1938. This was the year the Athletics had reclaimed Wandy McMahon and Joe Cheevers from the same Terriers and Billy Wilson from the west coast. They had finished in first place and the elusive Mann Cup seemed finally headed to St. Catharines.

Then near disaster struck. The Terriers, with Bucko McDonald in control, upset the A’s before 4,000-plus fans right in the Haig Bowl in the opening game of the semi-finals. All Orillia had to do was win its home games and they had their fourth straight Ontario senior title.

“There were real tears in the boys’ eyes that night at the bowl, but they were determined to make amends the following night, the next one in St. Catharines and then knocked off the Terriers for good right in Orillia.”

Fred has been on the Athletics executive longer than any present member, his service dating back to 1941 and while he is still vitally interested in the senior club, his chief concern the past few years has been junior.

After organizing the Port Dalhousie lacrosse groups in 1945, he bent an ear to the pleas of several junior-age players to form a St. Catharines team in 1946. With Jay MacDonald as his assistant and Doug Cove as coach, the junior Athletics were re-assembled.

The A’s were finalists that first year, then won the Ontario title in 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950. Mel Soper coached the Athletics to this city’s first Minto Cup in 1947 and with Doug Cove at the gate, they added a second Canadian championship in 1950 on the west coast, defeating the Vancouver Burrards in three straight games. The 1950 team he considers the best balanced of any junior outfit he has seen.

About five years ago the St. Catharines Norsemen were formed (the name coming from the Norwegian ancestry of the Conradi clan) with Fred’s son Pete as coach and “pop” as manager.

This team won bantam, midget and juvenile championships and now is in junior. “They could win it all too,” says Fred. “When they want to play ball there’s not a team in the country that can touch them.” Last night they made Manager Fred’s prediction look good by defeating the Canadian junior champs of 1955, the Long Branch Monarchs.

Covering the walls of the Conradi office are pictures of teams and players with which he has been connected either as coach, manager or sponsor – or in some instances all three capacities.

“Give me my pick of those boys and brother we’d have a team which would just walk to the Mann Cup.” He said. Few would dispute this statement. Every present member of the St. Catharines senior lacrosse club for instance has come under the Conradi direction during some phase of their development, some traveling all the way from peewee with Fred as manager-sponsor.

Other outstanding players from the Conradi “stable” include Harry Wipper, playing coach of Nanaimo Clippers, present leaders in the British Columbia league; Jerry Fitzgerald, playing-coach of the Fergus Thistles; Leo Teatro, top scorer of the Hamilton Tigers; Derry Davies and Jim Bradshaw, both in the top five scorers on the coast.

Steve Oneschuk, backfield star with the Hamilton Tiger-Cat football team played lacrosse for Conradi as did Max Woolley, one of the best all-round athletes in this city until he retired from sport. The list is virtually endless.

For six years he has been on the executive of the Ontario Lacrosse Association and this spring was elected first vice-president. With his contacts on a provincial scale, Fred has a pretty fair idea of the health of the old game of baggataway . . . now lacrosse.

“If lacrosse had been given the proper promotion and financial backing a few years ago that was given hockey, the two sports would now be on an equal basis in general popularity,” he says. “The interest in senior seems to be down now but there are actually more youngsters playing than ever before – and I’ve got the figures to prove it.”

“The intermediate is booming too. In Streetsville with a population of about a thousand, they get eight or nine hundred out every game and I really think its only a question of time and a little more push before it’s back on its feet here.”

“Perhaps we’ve got the right formula now. The juniors could win the Minto Cup and the seniors have the best team in the province, man for man. Two championships in one year in St. Catharines and the fans would just have to realize that we have something to offer.”

THROUGH THE SPORTS GATE

by Jack Gatecliff

The St. Catharines Standard

Friday June 18, 1976

It was not that long ago we wrote a short item about Fred Conradi and mentioned that if the article sounded prejudiced, it was so intended. When you're writing about a friend, it is virtually impossible to keep those feelings to yourself. And so it is today as we recall the more than three decades of close friendship we enjoyed with a man they use to call Knute, and the entire Conradi family.

Fred died yesterday at 68, much too early for someone who had given such a great deal of himself to so many others.

Where do you start?

Would it be the years when we were a kid watching the "old" Athletics leave the Haig Bowl for their away games with friend Fred driving one of the cars?

Or perhaps a few years later when we were at school in Toronto and he was owner-manager of the junior Athletics. He'd go out of his way to pick us up somewhere along the highway for road games and take the smelly equipment back to his home in Port Dalhousie for his wife Eve to look after.

And it was the same in senior. Fred was always there as manager, president - you name it - as recently as 10 days ago when he got out of bed to see that the Raiders (Niagara Raiders Jr. football team) didn't roast us to a crisp. They didn't.

Running down the list of offices he held in lacrosse - from sponsor of the lowest minors to president of the Canadian Lacrosse Association and a Hall of Famer - doesn't begin to tell the story of Fred Conradi.

There was all the work he did for what use to be called the Department of Indian Affairs, how he kept in touch with all the players who had been with his teams, helping them when they were in any kind of difficulty...financial troubles, ill health, family problems.

But despite all the positions he held, Fred was one of the shyest men we ever knew. He'd arrange all details for national lacrosse finals or a world lacrosse championship (in Canada, 1967) or a provincial or Canadian annual lacrosse meeting, then almost disappear when the preliminary work was completed. If Fred Conradi ever made a speech longer than 45 seconds, in public, then we weren't there at the time.

But he was always there FIRST when a friend required help, as we can attest from personal experience.

His passion for lacrosse has been handed down to sons, Pete and Butch and now to a third generation, grandson Pete Jr. Pete Sr. is manager, Butch (Fred Jr.) is trainer and Pete Jr. statistician for the St. Catharines junior Legionnaires.

To his wife Eve, and the entire family, deepest sympathy from his thousands of friends here, across the country and abroad.

It has been said that a man who has one close friend is rich beyond comprehension. With Fred's death Thursday, we lost that kind of friend.

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