Trailblazing, all-Black Ontario baseball team gets the video game treatment

It's all a bit surreal for Ferguson (Fergie) Jenkins Jr., to see his father faithfully recreated in Major League Baseball's video game MLB The Show '22.

From their vivid facial features to their swift moves, the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Stars champions, including Fergie Jenkins Sr., have been brought back to life and are ready to play ball.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) partnered with the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society and Major League Baseball (MLB) to recreate the team in the game. 

The All-Stars were the first all-Black team to win a championship title in the province, breaking colour barriers in the sport.

"People at one time disregarded them as good athletes, but then they proved themselves," Jenkins Jr., 79, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "They were really a team to be reckoned with."

Jenkins Jr. was a legendary professional baseball player in his own right. He was the first Canadian inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame in 1991, and recorded the most wins of any Black pitcher in MLB history.

But he says the legacy of Fergie Jenkins Sr. and the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, after having endured ridicule and attacks on the field, is now being honoured after almost 90 years.

"They barnstormed, they got boycotted by different groups of people, supposedly thrown at with rocks and spit at and they didn't want them to play. They kind of called curfew periods, things to that nature. They wanted to protest games because all the players were players of colour," the Jenkins Jr. recalled. "They were able to live through this situation and were strong enough to understand that they were going to stay together to win as an organization — as a team."

"I think it was proven that they would end up