As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize just how precious time is, especially with those who have lived rich, storied lives. When given the opportunity, I always make sure to visit with these wise individuals because, once they are gone, their stories are gone too.
Recently, I had the privilege of visiting the great Jay-Dell Mah, the mastermind behind attheplate.com. This was my second visit with him to ask him questions, listen to stories and do some researching together! What this man knows about baseball is nothing short of a treasure trove. With over 25 years of baseball research under his belt, Jay-Dell originally planned to write a book covering just a few years of the Lloydminster Meridians of the Western Canada League—teams he had a personal connection with as a clubhouse and bat boy.
However, with the advent of the internet, he decided to share his research online instead. What started as a modest idea to create a 10-to-12-page site in the winter of 1999 has since grown into an enormous digital archive. In 2024, attheplate.com now boasts over 2,700 pages of content, covering amateur and semi-professional baseball—primarily in Western Canada—with mentions of softball and slo-pitch leagues. The site contains nearly 88,000 player names and more than 20,000 photographs. It spans teams from British Columbia to the Maritimes and even includes the United States’ top semi-pro circuits of the time, the Basin League and Southern Minnesota League, extending all the way up to Alaska’s Goldpanners.
He loves to solve mysteries and he had a great story to share:
“We had an interesting challenge involving a photo at the Maple Ridge Museum & Archives. They had a photo of the 1920 Port Haney team showing, it was claimed, Ty Cobb, the famous major leaguer. It seemed to be a long shot to me that Cobb would somehow take time during the season to travel across the country to visit Port Hany. I looked at the team’s schedule and games Cobb played and concluded he had no time to make the trip. As a confirmation, I asked a colleague, an expert in facial recognition, to take a look at the photo and he quickly agreed, this was not Ty Cobb.”
If his website were ever made into a book, it would fill around 25,000 pages. Without question, Jay-Dell Mah has created the most comprehensive history of Canadian, (branching into the States) amateur and semi-professional baseball in the world. I’m deeply grateful to have spent time learning from this incredible historian, and I encourage anyone who has an interest in small town and semi-pro ball to check his site out!
Thank you Jay-Dell for the wonderful visit!
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