(Bowie at 17)
Much as it’s nice to imagine David Bowie as a Scott Radinsky of the early 1960’s, Baseball GB’s Joe Gray is a skeptic. When asked in 1999 by a Rolling Stone scribe if he liked baseball, David Bowie reportedly claimed to have played outfield with a team of Canadian ex-pats called the Dulwich Blue Jays. Gray’s findings are as follows :
The summer that the soon-to-be rock star spent as a 14-year-old was in 1961. Keen to cross-check the statement made in the interview, I contacted Jean Crook of the Old Timers Baseball Club, a team of veteran players from the British league. Having passed on my question about Bowie™s involvement to a Bluejays player of that era called Phil Laing, she replied to me with the following information.
Laing, who was born in the same year as Bowie, started out with the Bluejays in 1961. The two met through mutual friends at Bowie™s school, Bromley Technical College, and through this connection Bowie began to attend baseball games, gradually becoming an avid supporter. However, according to Laing™s recollections, he never played in an official game for the team.
While this is disappointing, the two stories are not necessarily contradictory: Bowie may well have manned the outfield during training and pre-game drills, but just not in games.