Glew - Book Review: Before the Blue Jays: Professional Baseball in Toronto Prior to 1977
Harvey Sahker’s new book, “Before the Blue Jays: Professional Baseball in Toronto Prior to 1977.”
March 26, 2026
By Kevin Glew
Canadian Baseball Network
The Toronto Blue Jays are celebrating their 50th season, but professional baseball was being played in Toronto long before Bill Singer delivered the first pitch in Blue Jays’ history on April 7, 1977.
Harvey Sahker makes this abundantly clear in his superb and meticulously crafted new book, Before the Blue Jays: Professional Baseball in Toronto Prior to 1977.
His 312-page volume is chock full of fascinating details about the old ball parks, storied teams and colourful players that put baseball on the map in Toronto.
A longtime baseball writer, Sahker attended the first Blue Jays game in 1977, but by that time he had already been regaled with stories about Rocky Nelson and Mike Goliat, of the International League’s Toronto Maple Leafs, by his mother.
With Sahker’s lively prose and the years of research he devoted to this book, you can feel the passion the author has for this project – one that covers more than a century of pro baseball in Toronto.
Pro baseball comes to Toronto
Early in the book, Sahker shares that the first professional baseball game was played in Toronto on August 12, 1871 when Cap Anson and his Rockford Forest Citys came to town to play against the Guelph Maple Leafs. Anson’s club routed the Leafs 38-3, but that contest helped whet the city’s appetite for pro baseball.
Sahker notes that the city would not have its own professional team until 1885 when the “Torontos” played in the Canadian League at the Jarvis Street Lacrosse Grounds.
Toronto ballparks
The author also documents the different parks where pro baseball has been played in Toronto, beginning with Sunlight Park, which was built in 1886 on land south of Queen Street East, west of Broadview Avenue and north of Eastern Avenue.
Sahker also highlights Toronto’s most fabled field, Island Park (later Hanlan’s Point Stadium) that was originally opened on Toronto Island in 1897. This park burned down in 1903 and 1909 but was resurrected. It’s best known as the stadium that Babe Ruth, then a young pitching prospect with the Providence Grays, clubbed his only minor league home run in on September 5, 1914.
But architecturally, Toronto would make its first big splash in professional baseball circles with the construction of Maple Leaf Stadium at the foot of Bathurst Street on the south side of Lakeshore Boulevard. With capacity for 23,500 fans, it opened in 1926 and was considered a state-of-the-art facility.
In that first season at Maple Leaf Stadium, the International League’s Maple Leafs club featured a promising young left-hander named Carl Hubbell, points out Sahker. Though Hubbell went just 7-7 in 31 appearances that season, he would go on to win 253 games for the New York Giants and earn induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Cooperstowners in Toronto
Hubbell is just one of the many Hall of Famers to spend time with the Leafs. Sahker shares that Detroit Tigers legendary second baseman Charlie Gehringer starred for the Leafs in 1925, while New York Yankees distinguished second baseman Tony Lazzeri managed the Leafs in 1939, where one of his outfielders was fellow future Cooperstowner Heinie Manush.
Three years later, the Leafs were managed by Hall of Fame spitballer Burleigh Grimes.
And two decades after that, two future Hall of Fame skippers, Sparky Anderson (1964) and Dick Williams (1965), began their pro managerial careers with the Leafs.
Legends that came to Toronto in exhibition games
Through his outstanding research, Sahker uncovered details about more than three dozen exhibition games played by major league teams in Toronto between 1885 and 1966.
Among the legends that participated in these contests over the years were Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Satchel Paige, Warren Spahn and Hank Aaron.
Sahker points out that when a 41-year-old Cobb had two hits for the Philadelphia A’s in their 3-1 win over the Leafs at Maple Leaf Stadium on September 14, 1928, it was likely Cobb’s final game in an MLB uniform.
The author also shares that on July 7, 1927, the Maple Leafs defeated the Murderers’ Row Yankees, ranked by some as the best MLB team ever, 11-7, in an exhibition game at Maple Leaf Stadium. In that contest, Gehrig had three hits and Ruth had a double and a single.
Robinson excels in Toronto
Sahker also devotes a chapter to the games Jackie Robinson played against the Leafs in Toronto while he was a member of the Montreal Royals in 1946.
In 12 contests against the Leafs at Maple Leaf Stadium that year, Robinson led the Royals to nine wins and a tie. He had 15 hits – including five doubles – scored 10 runs and batted .369.
First major league game in Toronto
One of the biggest revelations in the book is that the first major league regular season game in Toronto was not played on April 7, 1977. In December 2020, MLB ruled that Negro League games would be counted as big league games.
With this change, Sahker points out that the Cuban Stars defeated the Homestead Grays 5-2 in a Negro League game at Maple Leaf Stadium on June 18, 1932, and that this now represents the first major league contest played in Toronto.
Local legends
Another strength of the book is the stories Sahker has dug up about local legends. He devotes a chapter to the Maple Leafs’ trainers, including Bill Smith, whose tenure spanned 42 seasons with the club.
One of the kids Smith mentored was Ron Stead, who grew up in Little Norway, located just beyond the outfield fence of Maple Leaf Stadium. As a young boy, Stead would help Smith and eventually became the team’s bat boy. Stead then started throwing batting practice and the Leafs were so impressed by his arm that they signed him. Stead, of course, later became a superstar in the Intercounty Baseball League and was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. Sahker interviewed Stead before he passed away in 2011.
Players from Toronto
Sahker also shines the spotlight on a number of Toronto-born or Toronto-raised players – some of whom lived sordid lives. For example, the author shares that Arthur Irwin, a longtime big league player and manager, had two wives and is believed to have jumped off a ship to his death in 1921.
Sahker also highlights the life of former Chicago Cubs slugger Vince Barton, who was born in Edmonton, but raised in Toronto. He belted 13 home runs in 66 games for the Cubs in 1931. But he ended up starring in outlaw leagues, largely due to his “rambunctious behavior.” This behavior got him shot in the side during a poker game prior to the 1937 season.
Trivia
And for a Canadian baseball history nerd like me, this book is overflowing with fascinating tidbits.
For instance, did you know that it was Toronto-born right-hander Alex Hardy who was pitching for the Chicago Cubs on September 14, 1902 when the first Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance double play was completed?
Or that Toronto-born, New York Giants outfielder Bill O’Hara became the first major league rookie to steal second, third and home in the same inning on August 8, 1909?
I certainly didn’t.
And Sahker deftly ties everything together in his Epilogue when he reveals that the only two players to have played for both the Maple Leafs and the Blue Jays are Rico Carty and Phil Roof. He then goes a step further to add that two Blue Jays coaches – Jackie Moore and Galen Cisco – also played for the Leafs.
This is great trivia, and it’s part of what makes this book a must-read for Canadian baseball history buffs.
So before you get too wrapped up in the Blue Jays’ 50th anniversary season, I suggest you read, “Before the Blue Jays.”
You won’t regret it.
You can buy it from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame here.