Toronto Maple Leafs (International League)
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Toronto Maple Leafs 1896–1967 Toronto, Ontario |
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| League | International League (1896–1967) | ||||
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| League titles | 1897, 1902, 1912, 1917, 1918, 1926, 1934, 1960, 1965, 1966 | ||||
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The Toronto Maple Leafs were a high-level minor league baseball club located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that played from 1896 to 1967. 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-A International League.
Toronto was without professional baseball from 1968–1976, when the American League added the Toronto Blue Jays via the 1977 Major League Baseball expansion.
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. 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 1886–1890. 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.
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.
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