Former Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Barry Cort, who was born in Toronto, stands in front of some of his memorabilia in his home in Dade City, Fla. Photo supplied.

October 22, 2026

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

He’s the first Canadian to play for the Milwaukee Brewers.

And though he only spent about a year in Toronto at the beginning of his life, Barry Cort happily refers to himself as Canadian in Dade City, Fla., where he now lives with his wife, Susan.

“We have the Canadians against the Americans in a golf tournament here. And all my buddies say, ‘Barry, are you going to play for the Canadians?’ And I say, ‘Yeah. I’m Canadian,'” he shared with a chuckle in a recent phone interview. “But I split it up, I’ll play one year with the Canadians and one year with the Americans. That way I’ll keep everyone happy, I guess.”

It’s been more than 49 years since Cort threw a pitch for the Brewers but he still feels a kinship with the club.

“I’m glad to see the Brewers get to the World Series,” said Cort. “They were having a good year and I was saying if everyone stays healthy they might get there. And I loved it when they swept the Dodgers.”

Cort posted a tidy 3.33 ERA in seven appearances for the Brewers in 1977 before shoulder woes and bone spurs ended his career prematurely.

Fittingly, his only big league win and complete game came against the Blue Jays in Toronto on May 3, 1977 with his father, George, present, recording parts of the contest on a Kodak Instamatic video camera.

Cort’s father emigrated to Toronto from England in 1953, following his brother, Ernie, to Canada in search of prosperity. Uncle Ernie was also on hand to see Cort’s first major league win.

Cort’s father got work as a house painter, but didn’t like the cold weather in Toronto, so he gathered up his family – his wife, Sally, and two sons George and Barry – and moved to Tampa Bay, Fla.

In the Sunshine State, Cort began playing baseball at age five.

“I used to love to hit more than I liked to pitch,” said Cort.

While at C. Leon King High School in Tampa, he grew to 6-foot-5 and by his senior year his fastball was being clocked at over 90 mph and he was dominating the competition.

Cort volunteers that discipline was sometimes an issue for him in high school, but fortunately his coach, Billy Howell, steered him in the right direction.

“Billy worked and worked and worked with me,” recalled Cort. “And I almost blew it. I was messing around . . . I missed 13 days of school. And my coach came up to me one day and he said, “Barry, listen, if you miss any more days of school they’re going to set you back a year and you might not get drafted.”

That set Cort straight and the Brewers ended up selecting him in the fourth round of the 1974 MLB draft.

The Brewers dispatched scout Sandy Johnson to sign Cort, who received a $21,000 signing bonus, which he used to buy a Trans Am.

The then 18-year-old righty reported to the Brewers’ Class-A Short Season Newark Co-Pilots where he went 8-3 with a 2.27 ERA and tossed seven complete games in 14 starts.

“Back then, we might have had two people in the bullpen, so when you started, you had to go out there and do the best you could,” said Cort.

The hard-throwing hurler was promoted to the Class A Burlington Bees in 1975 where he continued to excel, finishing 14-9 with a 3.21 ERA in 24 starts. He threw 12 more complete games.

He was elevated to double-A Berkshire the ensuing year and completed the campaign with a 14-5 record and a 2.80 ERA in 25 games (24 starts).

With three excellent minor league seasons under his belt, Cort headed to Brewers’ camp in 1977 determined to crack the big league roster.

“I had a good spring training and [Brewers manager] Alex Grammas called me into his office and he said, ‘Hey, listen, I’ve got some good news and bad news for you,” recalled Cort. “I said, ‘Well, give me the bad news first.’ He said, ‘Well, the bad news is you’re not going to go back to double-A ball.’ And I said, ‘Well, what’s the good news?’ And he said, ‘Call your family because you’re going to Milwaukee.’ Man, the hairs on my arms stood up, just like they did now when I mentioned it to you. It was really something.”

Cort made his MLB debut on April 22, 1977 against the California Angels and allowed two earned runs in 1 2/3 innings in relief in a Brewers’ 7-4 loss. He made two additional relief appearances that month before getting his first MLB start against the Blue Jays on May 3.

But even during his start against the Blue Jays, Cort could feel something was wrong with his shoulder.

“I remember after about the seventh inning, my arm was killing me. I remember putting a hot water bottle on my shoulder and I told Alex Grammas, ‘I don’t want to come out of this game. I want to finish it,’” recalled Cort. “And I did.”

The Brewers won 6-2 with Cort scattering nine hits and striking out five batters in his complete-game effort. That performance made him the first Toronto-born pitcher to register a win against the Toronto Blue Jays.

His father, who was so nervous during the game that he smoked a full pack of cigarettes, filmed parts of it, but only brought one roll of film.

“After the game, I said to him, ‘Hey, pop, you only brought one roll. You must not have expected I was going to go very far in the game?’” said Cort with a laugh.

Eleven days later, Cort made his second big league start and permitted just two runs in 7 1/3 innings against the Detroit Tigers, but he was saddled with a tough-luck loss in the Tigers’ 3-2 victory.

Four days later, he started against the Blue Jays again, this time in Milwaukee, but left after two innings when the pain in his shoulder became unbearable.

He’d make just one more relief appearance for the Brewers prior to undergoing surgery on his shoulder.

Cort has fond memories of the fans in Milwaukee and the city itself. He can recall living in a small apartment about a mile from County Stadium, going to a bar called Bootleggers downtown and driving around in a big car with his teammates.

“The guy at Balistreri Oldsmobile gave us this big old sled to drive around,” said Cort. “You could put eight people in that car. It was unbelievable . . . It was like a four-door Lincoln, or a big Cadillac, but it was an Oldsmobile Delta 88.”

Unfortunately, Cort was never able to regain the same arm strength after his shoulder surgery.

“I thought my shoulder was coming back and, of course, it didn’t,” said Cort. “The whole sad thing was I never had any therapy. After my surgery, they sent me home with a stretching book. I didn’t have anybody to train with or give me the therapy that I needed to get me back to where I needed to be.”

Cort threw his final professional pitch for the double-A West Haven A’s in the Oakland A’s organization in 1981 before hanging up his playing spikes.

The following year, Cort, just 26, was at home watching many of his former Brewers teammates play in the 1982 World Series.

“I was cheering for them, but you wouldn’t believe how much I wished I was part of that,” said Cort.

After his pitching career, he returned to the Tampa area where, like his father, he became a commercial painter.

“My dad taught me well because I did it for almost 40 years and I still do it every now and then,” said Cort, who turned 70 in April. “I paint cabinets in people’s houses. It has kept me busy.”

He also played slo-pitch for several years but he gave that up about 10 years ago after having surgery on his spine. That was one of 14 surgeries Cort has endured over the years. That list includes four shoulder surgeries, as well as operations on both knees and his neck. He also has three stents in his heart and a pacemaker.

“I’ve been through the mill,” said Cort. “I’m lucky to even be here . . . I wake up every morning saying, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ I don’t know what’s keeping me going. Maybe it’s just because I’m a fighter and I love golf.”

Ten years ago, he received a surprise in the mail from Major League Baseball. It was a notice informing him that from that point forward, he’d be receiving an annual pension payment of $563 from them.

“Hey, it’s better than nothing,” said Cort. “I get that and take my wife down to the beach and we spend the weekend there and live it up.”

Cort and his wife, Susan, will have been married nine years in February. She is the “love of his life” and he says he’s not sure what he’d do without her.

Cort is uncertain if he still has relatives in Toronto, but he still has the paperwork to prove he’s a Canadian citizen.

“I’m a permanent resident here, but I’ve never given up my Canadian status,” said Cort.

In 2021, his high school in Tampa retired his No. 13. It was a proud moment for Cort, who will be cheering on the Brewers, his former big league team, in the World Series.

“I told my wife earlier this year that I have a funny feeling the Brewers are going to go pretty far this year. And sure enough, they’re about to play on the big stage. They can’t go any further than they have now,” said Cort. “Man, that’s got to be a good feeling to wake up and know you’re going to the World Series. I’d have given anything for that.”

But while he wishes his major league career was longer, Cort is grateful for what he has – a beautiful wife, a daughter, two grandchildren and the warm memories of winning a major league game almost 50 years ago in the Canadian city he was born in, with his father there to witness it.

“I still have dreams about pitching. I miss it terribly. I just wish the old arm had held out and who knows what would’ve happened? I love the game of baseball. I just wish I’d had more time to play it, but the Good Lord had other plans . . . I like to think God’s got a plan for me. I’m not sure what it is, but I hope it’s not any more surgeries,” said Cort with a laugh.

Glew: Catching up with Barry Cort, the first Canadian Milwaukee Brewer