[URBAN NOTE] "First Spring Training for the Blue Jays"

[rfmcdonald]

Over the weekend, Torontoist's David Wencer blogged about the first spring training season of the Toronto Blue Jays and how the southern Ontario press reacted to this, way back in February of 1977. The team that would later become Toronto's most credible major-league sports team had a hard start.

With April 7, 1977 growing closer, Toronto readied itself for its first taste of major league baseball. While efforts in Toronto concentrated on preparing Exhibition Stadium for opening day, it was the team’s first preseason training camp in Florida that afforded baseball fans their first glimpse of what they could expect from the Toronto Blue Jays.

On August 26, 1976, the team announced that Dunedin, Florida, would be the site of their spring training facility. At the time, Dunedin had a population of 29,000. A feature in the Star’s travel section noted that the town’s biggest annual event was the Highland Games, which highlighted the community’s Scottish heritage.

According to longtime Blue Jays broadcaster Tom Cheek, the town of Dunedin had specifically pursued the affiliation with the Blue Jays, hoping that the team’s spring training would build upon the town’s already growing popularity as a winter destination for Ontario tourists. By all accounts the arrangement was also heartily welcomed by the local residents. A Globe and Mail report from early January 1977 notes that “the Blue Jays are the big news and every acquisition and trade is splashed across the pages of the Dunedin Herald and the Dunedin Times.” The Sun noted that a local fan club had formed over the winter, and that “it hasn’t taken much to sell the Blue Jays in Dunedin… Everywhere one goes there is interest in the team, whether it be a bank, a drugstore, or a local hamburger joint.”

Dunedin’s stadium, Grant Field, had been used by a variety of baseball teams over the years, including the Detroit Tigers, whose logo was still widely visible on site in the early winter of 1977, both on the side of the building, and on the hats of the groundskeepers. Just as Exhibition Stadium required alterations back home in Toronto, Grant Field went through a series of upgrades that winter, including new seats, new fences, and a new clubhouse. Nevertheless, many of the facilities remained cramped and primitive by the time camp opened. Twenty-five years later, infielder Garth Iorg recalled that the field was also in rough shape in 1977, featuring many ant hills: “I remember [first baseman] Doug Ault diving for a ball and coming up covered in ants. If you stood too long in one spot in the outfield, you were going to get bit.”

The on-field talent in the Blue Jays’ first year was expected to be lacklustre. The Blue Jays roster had been primarily populated by an “expansion draft,” in which the 12 established teams in the American League had been permitted to protect the majority of their preferred players, leaving the less talented members of their rosters vulnerable to selection by either the Blue Jays, or their partners in the 1977 expansion, the Seattle Mariners. The two expansion draft teams had not been permitted to participate in 1976 entry draft for new players, nor were they able to compete for the few star veterans who were free agents in the off-season.