While the Maple Leafs had working agreements with numerous Major League Baseball clubs after the introduction of farm systems in the 1930s, they achieved great success as an unaffiliated club during the 1950s, when they were the strongest team on the field and in attendance in the Triple-AInternational League. The 1902, 1918, 1920, 1926, and 1960 teams were recognized as being among the 100 greatest minor league teams of all time.[1]
The first Toronto baseball organization, the Toronto Baseball Club, played in the Canadian League in 1885, playing its home games at William Cawthra's Jarvis Street Lacrosse Grounds (Old Lacrosse Grounds) at the northwest corner of Jarvis and Wellesley Street.[2] It finished the season in third place. The next year, renamed the Toronto Canucks, the team left the Canadian League along with Hamilton to join the original International League (also known as the International Association), where it played from 1886 to 1890. The baseball stadium that would come to be known as Sunlight Park was built for the team and opened on May 22, 1886, with Toronto defeating Rochester 10–3 in front of 3,000 fans. Toronto won the pennant in 1887, behind 33-game-winner Edward Nicholas Cannonball Crane, who also led the team in hitting with a .428 batting average (walks were counted as hits for that season). The league folded in July 1890.
The Maple Leafs return
In 1895, Toronto resurfaced in the original Eastern League (which in 1902 was designated Class A, at that time one level below Major League Baseball), where it played through 1911. The club relocated to Albany, New York for part of the 1896 season, but started and finished the year in Toronto. In 1897, the team began playing its home games on the Toronto Islands at Hanlan's Point Stadium. The stadium and the team were owned by the Toronto Ferry Company.
In 1900, a group of 52 Toronto businessmen, spearheaded by Ed Barrow and Ed Mack, a tailor and former ballplayer, bought the team for CA$6,000.[3] The club constructed a new stadium at Liberty Street and Fraser Avenue, called Diamond Park. Led by Barrow, the Leafs won the International League pennant in 1902 with a record of 85–42.
The 1902 Maple Leafs
The team faltered after its championship season, falling to eighth place by 1905. Debt holders called in their loans and the team was purchased by James J. McCaffery, who served as team president from 1908 until his death in 1922, and Lawrence "Lol" Solman, president from 1922 to 1931. Former major league star Joe Kelley took the reins as manager in 1907 and the team's fortunes immediately turned around. Kelley was drafted by the Boston Doves the next season, when the Leafs returned to Hanlan's Point Stadium, but Kelley rejoined the club in 1909 and guided the team to the championship in 1912.
Hanlan's Point Stadium burned down in August 1909, so the team had to finish its season back at Diamond Park. In time for the 1910 season, a new and larger stadium was ready at Hanlan's Point. It would serve as their home until 1926.
In 1912, minor league baseball was reorganized and a new top level classification, Double-A, was created. On Sept. 5, 1914, soon after Canada entered the First World War, a 19-year-old Babe Ruth was pitching for the Providence Grays in a game against the Maple Leafs. The Bambino threw a shutout game, beating the Maple Leafs 9-0, but most notably, he hit his first professional home run to cash in three of those runs.[4]
The Eastern League moved up to Double-A and changed its name to become the International League. The Maple Leafs continued as members of the International League for the next 55 years, with the league being reclassified as Triple-A in 1946.
42 year old Nap Lajoie and his .380 batting average helped lead the Maple Leafs to another championship in 1917. Manager Dan Howley first joined the team in 1918, leading the Leafs to the pennant that year. Canadian Mooney Gibson became manager in 1919, and was called to the major leagues after one season. The 1920 Leafs won 108 games, and had what would be the highest single season winning percentage in the history of the franchise at .701, but finished second to the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles. Through the 1920s, the team averaged 93 wins a season, but won only one pennant.
In 1926, the Maple Leafs moved to the new Maple Leaf Stadium, which would be their home for the next 42 seasons, and capped off the season with the championship, with Howley back as manager. The following year, the National Hockey League team, the Toronto St. Patricks, changed its own nickname to Maple Leafs.
The Maple Leafs struggled through the 1930s, both on and off the field. In 1931, ownership of Maple Leaf Stadium passed to the Toronto Harbour Commission after the club was unable to pay taxes and other debts. Shortly after, club president Solman died, with George Oakley succeeding him in May 1931. At the same time, J. P. Bickell joined the team's board of directors. The 1932 Maple Leafs lost 113 games and only attracted 50,000 fans through the entire year. James A. Dunn, vice-president and second-largest shareholder after Oakley, died in August 1933. The one bright spot was 1934, when the team won the league championship under manager Ike Boone before losing the Junior World Series in nine games. A few months later, in December 1934, Oakley died.
Gardiner and Ross keep the Leafs in Toronto
After George Oakley's death, his son Cliff Oakley succeeded him as team president. Following the 1936 season, Oakley publicly commented that baseball was in trouble in Toronto and that something would have to change. A few months later, he and general manager Leman were approached by Joe Cambria, former owner of the Albany Senators, who wanted to buy the team and move it to Albany, New York.
A group of local investors, headed by stockbroker Percy Gardiner and former lieutenant-governor of OntarioWilliam Donald Ross, bought the Leafs in January 1937 to keep them in Toronto. Oakley immediately stepped down as president and was succeeded by Donald G. Ross, lawyer and son of William Donald Ross. Howley was brought back as manager, returning to the position he had held three times previously: in 1918, 1923–1926, and 1933.
The team lost a lot of money, and wasn't very successful on the field, drawing about 60,000 paying fans a year during a three-year stretch from 1939 to 1941 when the Leafs finished in eighth place each season. Control of the team passed to Peter Campbell, who would be president until his death in 1949. The Leafs' .305 winning percentage in 1941 was the lowest in franchise history. Campbell negotiated a working agreement with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1942, and a year later the team won the International League pennant—its first in 16 years. By 1947, the team was back to eighth place. Joe Ziegler then became general manager and is credited with turning the team's fortunes around, with such promotional innovations as 20-cent hot dogs and Sunday games. Under Ziegler, the Leafs set a new franchise attendance record with 353,247 customers in 1949—double what it had been two years earlier, despite a fifth-place finish. Ziegler resigned at the end of the 1951 season, soon after the team came under new ownership.
Jack Kent Cooke era
Jack Kent Cooke (right) swaps hats with Joe Becker, who managed the Leafs in 1951–52.
In July 1951, Jack Kent Cooke became the new owner of the Maple Leafs, and succeeded Ross as president. Under Cooke's ownership, the Leafs were one of the flagship franchises of the IL, leading the league in attendance every year from 1952 to 1956. In his first home game as owner, Cooke offered free hot dogs and drinks to everyone in the park. Within a week, he had brought in Victor Borge and Gloria DeHaven for guest appearances. At another game that week, he provided free orchids from Hawaii to the first 3,000 women in the park. An opera company and free comic books for children under 14 were scheduled for another game that week which was rained out. Cooke had suggestion boxes installed throughout the stadium and introduced music over the public address system between innings. He also announced he would hire female ushers for the next season and hired a flagpole sitter who was supposed to remain at the top of the pole until the Leafs made the first division. Over the 10-year span from 1951 to 1960, the Maple Leafs drew 3.2 million spectators, peaking in 1952 with 446,040 fans in attendance (which went to more than 500,000 with the playoffs included) to see a team which finished in fourth place.
Nine days after Cooke became owner, the team announced it had signed its first African American players, pitcher Leon Day and catcher Charlie White.
Cooke negotiated an affiliation with the St. Louis Browns for the 1952 season. With his focus on entertainment, Cooke had often been compared to Browns' owner Bill Veeck. The arrangement with the Browns lasted only one season.
However, despite their strong start, attendance never again came close to matching the 1952 numbers, even with pennant-winning seasons under managers Luke Sewell in 1954, Bruno Betzel in 1956, and Dixie Walker in 1957. The pennant-winning 1960 Leafs, a Cleveland affiliate, won 100 games with a league-record 32 shutouts under manager Mel McGaha, but attendance figures were flat from the previous season, when the Leafs had finished in eighth place. It was also in 1960 that Sparky Anderson first joined the team as a middle infielder. He went on to play with the Leafs until 1964 when he became manager.
Final years
1961 Home opener.
In 1961, Cooke left Canada to become a U.S. citizen, naming Harry Kimber club president. Cooke sold the team in January 1964 to a syndicate led by Robert L. Hunter and Sam Starr for a reported $50,000. Former co-owner Gardiner returned to the Leafs as a director. Hunter and Starr launched a drive for community ownership, selling shares in Toronto (Community) Baseball Ltd., although there was little interest.
In 1965 the Boston Red Sox became the parent club and another future Baseball Hall of Fame manager, Dick Williams, replaced Anderson at the Leafs' helm. Williams then led them to consecutive Governors' Cup titles in 1965 and 1966. Despite the championship season, the Leafs lost $168,000 in 1965. Gardiner wrote a personal cheque for $100,000 to cover the shortfall, with the balance being paid by other members of the board. Meanwhile, the deterioration of Maple Leaf Stadium, regular broadcasts of major league games on television, and other factors drove attendance down to only 67,216 in 1967. According to Hunter, the team lost about $500,000 over its last four seasons in Toronto.[5] The final home game, on Labour Day Monday, September 4, 1967, drew a paid attendance of 802.
During their last season, Hunter was in discussions to sell the club, hoping to find an owner to keep the team in Toronto.[6][7] The asking price was $60,000.[5]Maple Leaf Gardens Limited, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League, held negotiations to purchase the club,[5][6][7][8] but the deal ultimately fell apart due to concerns about the team's stadium, which needed up to $250,000 in repairs and whose owner wanted $4 million to purchase it.[5][7]Harold Ballard, part owner of MLGL, said that the company's interest was due in part to help position themselves to go after a Major League Baseball franchise for Toronto.[5][7]
After the season, the team was sold to Walter Dilbeck, a real estate developer from Evansville, Indiana, for $65,000.[8] On October 17, 1967, the directors of the International League approved the transfer of the Maple Leafs franchise to Louisville, Kentucky, where the team competed as the Louisville Colonels starting in 1968. After just five seasons, the club moved again, to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1973, where it operated as the Pawtucket Red Sox through the 2020 season after which the club moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, to become the Worcester Red Sox for the 2021 season.
The team's baseball stadium was demolished in 1968.
In 1969, the year after the demise of the Triple-A Leafs, a new Toronto Maple Leafs began play as an amateur team belonging to the Ontario-only Intercounty Baseball League at another diamond located in Christie Pits Park.
Major League Baseball arrived in the city of Toronto during the next wave of expansion, in 1977, with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Championships
Toronto won the Eastern League/International League pennant 12 times: 1887, 1902, 1907, 1912, 1917, 1918, 1926, 1943, 1954, 1956, 1957, and 1960. The team won the Governors' Cup four times: 1934, 1960, 1965, and 1966 (finalists in 1943, 1955, 1956, 1958), and won the Junior World Series in 1907 and 1926 (finalists in 1917, 1934, and 1960).
Fourteen team members have been inducted into the International League Hall of Fame: John Berly, Bruno Betzel, Ike Boone, Jack Dunn, Luke Hamlin, Dan Howley, Rocky Nelson, Steve O'Neill, Eddie Onslow, Dick Porter, Dick Rudolph, George Selkirk, George Stallings, and Dixie Walker.
Team records
Maple Leafs Owner Jack Kent Cooke was named the Sporting News Minor League Executive of the Year, 1952[9]
Mike Mitchell Goliat was an American professional baseball second baseman, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Philadelphia Phillies (1949–51) and St. Louis Browns (1951–52). He batted and threw right-handed, and was listed at 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and 180 pounds (82 kg).
Napoléon"Nap"Lajoie, also known as Larry Lajoie, was an American professional baseball second baseman who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed "the Frenchman", he represented both Philadelphia franchises and the Cleveland Naps, the latter of which he became the namesake of, and from 1905 through 1909, the player-manager.
Joseph James Kelley was an American left fielder in Major League Baseball (MLB) who starred in the outfield of the Baltimore Orioles teams of the 1890s. Making up the nucleus of the Orioles along with John McGraw, Willie Keeler, and Hughie Jennings, Kelley received the nickname "Kingpin of the Orioles".
Lawrence Joseph Doyle, nicknamed "Laughing Larry", was an American second baseman in Major League Baseball from 1907 to 1920 who played almost his entire career for the New York Giants. The National League's outstanding second baseman during the 1910s, he was awarded the 1912 Chalmers Award as the league's best player, and won the 1915 batting title with a .320 average. The team captain and top everyday star on three consecutive pennant winners (1911–1913), his .408 career slugging average was the top mark by an NL second baseman when he retired, as were his career totals in hits (1887), doubles (299), triples (123), total bases (2654) and extra base hits (496). He ended his career among the major league leaders in career games, putouts, assists, total chances and double plays at second base, and set Giants franchise records for career games, at bats and doubles, each of which was broken by Bill Terry.
Jack Kent Cooke was a Canadian-American businessman in broadcasting and professional sports. Starting in sales, Cooke was very successful, eventually becoming a partner in a network of radio stations and newspapers in Canada. After failing at starting a major league baseball team in Toronto and being turned down to own a television station in Toronto, Cooke moved to the United States and built a business empire in broadcasting and professional sports franchises. Cooke was the owner of the Washington Redskins (NFL), the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA), the Los Angeles Kings (NHL), the Los Angeles Wolves, and the Toronto Maple Leafs (IL). He also developed The Forum in Inglewood, California, and Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, now Commanders Field, in Landover, Maryland.
Hanlan's Point Stadium was a baseball stadium and lacrosse grounds in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was erected in 1897 at Hanlan's Point on the Toronto Islands for the minor league Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club. It was destroyed by fire twice, in 1903, and again in 1909. Adjacent to the Hanlan's Point Amusement Park, the site was in use for various sports until the late 1930s.
Maple Leaf Stadium was a jewel box-style baseball stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located at the foot of Bathurst Street on the south side of Lake Shore Boulevard. It was built in 1926 by Lol Solman for his Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team of the International League. Previously, the Maple Leafs had played at Hanlan's Point Stadium. It continued to be the home of the Leafs for 42 seasons, until the team left town following the 1967 season. The stadium was demolished in 1968. Fans often referred to the stadium as the "Fleet Street Flats".
The Havana Sugar Kings were a Cuban-based minor league baseball team that played from 1946 to 1960. From 1954 until 1960, they belonged in the Class AAA International League, affiliated with Major League Baseball's Cincinnati Reds. Their home stadium was Gran Estadio del Cerro in Havana.
William Reginald Armour was an American professional baseball player and manager. He was the manager of the Cleveland Bronchos in 1902 when they signed Nap Lajoie to the most lucrative contract in baseball history and the manager of the Detroit Tigers when they acquired Ty Cobb in 1905.
Daniel Philip "Dapper Dan" Howley was an American Major League Baseball manager with the St. Louis Browns and the Cincinnati Reds. His first year as manager of the Browns saw his team lose 94 games and finish 50+1⁄2 games behind the legendary 1927 New York Yankees. He stayed two more years in St. Louis, with his best year coming in 1928, finishing in third place. In 1929, he was hired by the Reds, but he averaged 95 losses in three years, leading to his dismissal. He finished his career with a lifetime 397–524 record.
The Guelph Royals are a baseball team based in the downtown area of Guelph, Ontario, and are a member of the Southern Ontario-based Intercounty Baseball League. The club was founded in 1861 as the Guelph Maple Leafs, and after winning the "Canadian Silver Ball Championship" three times between 1869 and 1872, went on to become world semi-professional champions in 1874, and hold brief membership in the International Association for Professional Base Ball Players during the 1877 season, rivalling National League teams.
Glenn Richard"Rocky"Nelson was an American professional baseball first baseman who played in Major League Baseball for all or parts of nine seasons between 1949 and 1961 for the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago White Sox, Brooklyn Dodgers and Cleveland Indians. A native of Portsmouth, Ohio, Nelson batted and threw left-handed, stood 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and weighed 175 pounds (79 kg). He signed his first professional contract in 1942 with the Cardinals' organization. He then missed three seasons (1943–1945) while serving in the United States Army during World War II.
The city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, has a long history of sport. It is home to a number of clubs, including the Granite Club, the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, the Argonaut Rowing Club, Toronto Argonauts football club, the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club, and the Badminton and Racquet Club. A number of heritage venues have developed in Toronto such as: Christie Pits, Coca-Cola Coliseum, Varsity Arena, and Maple Leaf Gardens. Toronto is also the location of the Canadian Football League's headquarters.
James Albert Ripple was an American professional baseball player who played as an outfielder in Major League Baseball for seven seasons, from 1936 to 1943. Ripple appeared for the New York Giants (1936–1939), Brooklyn Dodgers (1939–1940), Cincinnati Reds (1940–1941) and Philadelphia Athletics (1943). He had a .282 career batting average, with 28 home runs and 251 RBIs in 554 games played. He played in three World Series, two with the Giants (1936–1937), and one with the Reds in 1940, the last of which won the championship.
John Irving Burns, nicknamed "Slug", was an American first baseman, coach and scout in Major League Baseball who played for the St. Louis Browns and Detroit Tigers from 1930 to 1936. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Burns stood 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and weighed 175 pounds (79 kg) in his playing days and batted and threw left-handed.
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The St. Louis Browns were a Major League Baseball team that originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers. A charter member of the American League (AL), the Brewers moved to St. Louis, Missouri, after the 1901 season, where they played for 52 years as the St. Louis Browns.
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Diamond Park was a baseball stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs professional baseball club from 1901 until 1907. It was located at the south-east corner of Liberty Street and Fraser Avenue. The stadium was also used for rugby football and lacrosse.
Boston Red Sox Triple-A affiliate 1947 (with Louisville Colonels)
Succeededby
Louisville Colonels
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