The last time the Toronto Blue Jays were in the World Series, 32 years ago, they came out on top with the help of the city of St. Catharines, Ontario, and their team once known (and loved) as the Baby Jays.
Toronto’s MLB organization formed the St. Catharines Blue Jays in 1985 to attract fans outside of Toronto. St. Catharines entered the New York-Penn League (NYPL) a year later and was affiliated with Toronto for a decade. St. Catharines was a springboard for players to move on to the major leagues, and many of them did.
Known more as a hockey and rowing town, St. Catharines was an ideal location for baseball due to its proximity to Toronto and its field, then called Community Park. He met the requirements for St. Catharines to play in the NYPL, a short Class A season. minor league which ran between 1939 and 2020.
“This league is what was colloquially called an ‘up or out’ league,” said David Siegel, a retired professor of political science at Brock University who now writes for the Society for American Baseball Research.
“Either you’re good enough to get to the next level or you’re out of baseball.”
Siegel thumbed through microfilm of newspapers in the St. Catharines and Welland libraries, unearthing any records about minor league baseball teams in the Niagara region.
He also regularly attended St. Catharines games.
“For some players, this was the first stop after playing college baseball in the U.S.,” Siegel said. “It was also for the Latin players.”
One of those players was Carlos Delgado. He started with St. Catharines as a catcher and designated hitter, then moved on to play first base and other positions for Toronto, helping those Blue Jays win their second consecutive World Series, in 1993.
This is what made Toronto Blue Jays legend Carlos Delgado say “what the hell is going on here” when he came to play for the Toronto Blue Jays’ A affiliate in St. Catharines when he was 16 years old.
“Short season A is the lowest level of the minor leagues, but when he was at that level it was clear he was going to be a star,” Siegel said.
Delgado fondly remembers the days of Baby Jays
Delgado, now 53, remembers his minor league days with St. Catharines in 1989 and 1990 as if “it were yesterday.”
“A boy from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, suddenly finds himself in Canada,” Delgado told CBC this week. “All I know is that it was near Niagara Falls.
““We didn’t know where St. Catharines was, but it was the beginning of a dream.”
Delgado was one of many excited teenagers who came to the Niagara region city to start a career in baseball.
“We rented a bike to go from home to the stadium,” he said. “We thought it was the biggest stage in the world.
“It was a smaller stadium, obviously, and the fans came out,” Delgado said. “All of us major league players look back on our careers and cherish all those moments.”
Delgado and many others minor league The players lived in St. Catharines with host families.
“They took us to Niagara Falls and ordered French fries and vinegar. I was like, ‘What the hell is going on here?'”
Other former Baby Jays who won a World Series with Toronto include Pat Hentgen and Rob Butler.
For Delgado, who was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, those were fond memories of his early years in Canada.
St. Catharines aims to boost sports tourism
The City of St. Catharines improved what was then Community Park (now called George Taylor Field) behind the Royal Imperial Collegiate of Canada.
With the arrival of a Blue Jays affiliate team to the city, there were hopes of building a baseball stadium in downtown St. Catharines.
In a 1986 brochure featuring the Baby Jays, St. Catharines hoped the team would improve its image in “the eyes of millions of potential tourists” and attract thousands of fans and visiting baseball teams.
The Baby Jays later appeared in print advertisements for local businesses. There was also a Baby Jays fan club so people could organize sporting and social events, with membership costing between $10 and $15.
However, Siegel recalled that the nearby Dairy Queen was the only business that benefited from the team drawing crowds.
Jordan Clark, 37, grew up watching the Baby Jays even until they were renamed the St. Catharines Stompers in 1995. He created a Facebook fan page for the Stompers tribute softball team he is a part of.
“Coming back here and seeing the stadium, it seems a lot smaller than it did when I was a kid,” Clark said, looking over the rows of blue seats in the Blue Jays’ signature color. “It’s definitely a piece of heritage to be found here.”
“The late [1980s]”In the early ’90s, it was a big deal,” Clark said. “Even after the games, when you’re in the store the next day, people are talking about it, catching up on what the game was like.”
From Baby Jays to Stompers
After nine years, Toronto sold the Baby Jays for $1 million to local entrepreneurs and investors.
Terry O’Malley, an advertising genius in St. Catharines, was one of the buyers who came up with the idea of changing the name of the Baby Jays to the Stompers in 1995, a reference to the city located in Ontario’s wine belt.
Siegel believed the new owners were looking to hold on to the team until they could sell it to “emerging corporations that owned a number of minor leagues.”
Dreams of building a baseball stadium faded and the old community park “wasn’t in a very good location. It was a useful park, not a particularly nice park in St. Catharines.”
It was no surprise to Siegel that the minor league team left St. Catharines in 1999.
“I still have my Stompers cap that I take off from time to time. [the team] He came and then he left. And for those few of us who are true baseball fans, it was great.”
