On the Christie Bookshelf: Toronto Baseball Buffs Rejoice

This year brings two newly published books about pre-1977 baseball in Toronto.

The history of baseball in Toronto spans three centuries.

As early as the 1870s, organized ball was being played in old Muddy York.

In 1885, the very first Toronto Maple Leafs team played on a field at the corner of Wellesley and Jarvis Streets.

As baseball got more organized and professionalized, the Leafs would change hands and homes many times.  From Toronto Island to Liberty Village, back to Hanlan's Point and finally to a stately stadium at the foot of Bathurst Street.  The Leafs were a Toronto institution long before the rise of other major sports.

Many famous names played here, many championships were won.  The Leafs franchise became a AAA cornerstone.  Over the decades, an elevation to the major leagues was often floated but never realized.

In 1967, Canada exploded in patriotic revelry.  Montreal's Expo showcased our young country to the world.  It was a time of pride and optimism for the future.  Major League Baseball was coming soon.

Sadly, at Maple Leaf Stadium things moved in the opposite direction.  After years of neglect, the now-40-year-old ballpark was badly deteriorated, as was the product on the field.  That year, in front of fewer than a thousand people, the Leafs played their final game.  The franchise relocated to Louisville and in 1968 the ballpark was torn down.

Toronto went from being on the doorstep of MLB, to having no baseball at all.  

Baseball in the city then diverged along two paths.  In 1969, the Maple Leafs were reborn as a franchise in the Intercounty Baseball League (now the CBL), and in 1977 the Blue Jays arrived.

For the longest time, all of that prior history was largely undocumented. 

A single book, Baseball's Back in Town, published almost 50 years ago, chronicled those earlier decades.  The book is a great resource and packed with photos.  However, fans wanting to learn more had to rely on historical essays found online.  There wasn't much else out there.

This year brings a double blessing.  Two brand new books on Toronto baseball history have just been published.

First, there's Before the Blue Jays: Professional Baseball in Toronto Prior to 1977 by Harvey Sahker.

This is an exhaustively researched book that covers a broad sweep of history, from those faraway days in the 1870s to the demise of the Leafs AAA franchise.

The book follows the Leafs across the decades, as well as other local clubs that didn't last very long (the Dauntless! the Beavers!).  

The chapters are organized thematically, not chronologically.

Sahker provides a run-through of all the different ballparks the Leafs called home and the notable men who played there.  Championship seasons are highlighted, and there are plenty of memories shared by ex-team staff and fans.

One thing that jumped out in this book was how often Toronto was a popular destination for Major Leaguers to play.  Most readers will be familiar with the story of Babe Ruth's first professional home run, which he hit at Hanlan's Point in 1914 as a member of the Providence Grays.  Ruth returned to Toronto several times in the 1920s with his New York Yankees to play exhibition games against the Leafs.  Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Satchel Paige, Henry Aaron and Carl Yastrzemski were among many other MLBers who played exhibition games at Maple Leaf Stadium.

Another good story revolves around the very first night game ever played in Toronto, on June 28, 1934.  Six light towers were constructed at the stadium and they were thought to be as good as any on the continent.  Eager to showcase the new feature, the club delayed the start of the game until well after sundown.  They wanted to be sure there would be no natural light in the sky, only electric.  It didn't occur to them that it was the middle of summer, so the game did not start until 10:00 pm and ended well after midnight.

A large portion of the book is dedicated to short biographical sketches of people who left a mark on Toronto baseball history.  There is a wealth of information here about local players whose records, no hitters, championships and amusing exploits have been rescued from the mists of time by Sahker.  

It's a great book for flipping through at random or consuming all at once.

The second publication is The Howleyites: Toronto's Changing City, a Stadium Rising, and the Champions of 1926 by D.M. Fox.

This volume offers a deep dive into one particular season, and it's timed to mark the centennial of one of minor league ball's greatest teams, the 1926 Toronto Maple Leafs.

In the roaring twenties, Toronto was a city on the rise.  Industry, finance, entertainment and sports were all putting Hogtown on the map.

Lawrence "Lol" Solman was a businessman, restauranteur and owner of the Toronto Ferry Company.  He also managed several local theatres and became owner of the Maple Leafs baseball club.  This mover and shaker worked the municipal levers of power and was the driving force behind the construction of Maple Leaf Stadium.

Through the first half of the 1920s, the AAA International League was reigned over by a Baltimore Orioles dynasty.  To overthrow the champions, Solman hired "Howling" Dan Howley, a baseball lifer who counted both Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth among his associates.

Howley began a turnaround for the Leafs club.  He was both field manager and general manager, responsible for assembling the club's roster and being there to guide them through each game.  

At the time, teams sometimes took on nicknames based on their manager's name.  Miller Huggins' Yankees were called the "Hugmen", Connie Mack's Athletics were the "Mackmen" and so Howley's Leafs became the "Howleyites."  It would be like calling the present-day Leafs the "Butlerites".

As the 1926 season played out, the Leafs waged a summer-long battle with Baltimore, Newark and Buffalo for the International League pennant.  The minor league season was a long slog.  The Leafs played 174 games, featuring a lot of doubleheaders.  As soon as one game ended, they'd often have to dash for a train to get to the next one.

This book is a nice period piece.  Fox weaves municipal and even national events into his narrative, but Howley's dogged pursuit of the pennant is always the focus.

It's too bad Toronto's current Major League club acts like baseball was invented in 1977.  There is so much history they could celebrate.  Imagine what a 1926 centennial tribute might have been like.  Imagine Ernie and Vladdy taking the field in throwback Leafs unies, or Handlebar Hank joining the other retro mascots at the dome.  Maybe someday.