Canadian Minor League Baseball - A History Since World War II

During the 75 seasons of professional baseball played between 1946 and 2020, 71 teams represented 35 Canadian cities and played in 21 minor leagues operating either under the aegis of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (called Minor League Baseball since 1999) or independently without any relationship to the National Association. During this period 16 teams operated for less than a year (most notably the eight teams of the Canadian Baseball League of 2003), while another 14 lasted three seasons or less. Only seven have operated continuously for 20 or more years, the longest-tenured being the Winnipeg Goldeyes of the independent Northern League and American Association who, since 1994, have played 27 consecutive seasons.

The teams were manned by future major leaguers (including 14 who would be elected to the Hall of Famefour as managers), veterans of the Negro Leagues who had been prohibited from playing for National Association teams until late in their careers (three were named to the Hall of Fame), aging players seeking to extend their careers, younger players hoping to advance their way up the minor league ladder, and rookies, some of them only weeks out of high school. Although most of the players were from the United States, there were many Canadians (including future Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Doug Harvey), as well as players from Mexico and the Caribbean and around the world, most notably from Japan. Beginning in 2014 Cuba allowed players to become members of les Capitales de Quebec of the independent Canadian-American League.

The Montreal Royals and the Toronto Maple Leafs played in classic ball parks, stadia that had been built for the purpose of housing professional teams and could seat well over 10,000 spectators. Many teams shared fields with local amateur or semi-pro teams and the outfield dimensions were often much shorter than those of professional parks. In Winnipeg and Ottawa, teams performed on diamonds that had been laid out on the playing fields of Canadian Football League teams. And in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, a team played on the infield of a horse racetrack. It wasnt until the early 1990s, when the Professional Baseball Agreement, which governed the relationship between the minor leagues and the major leagues and established rigid playing field and facility standards, that many stadiums were extensively renovated or new ones constructed.

Canadian Minor League Baseball: A History Since World War II is a chronicle history of the minor and independent league teams that have played in Canada since 1946, when leagues that had suspended operations during World War II were reactivated and new ones formed through 2020, when, because of restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, only one Canadian team, the independent Winnipeg Goldeyes, took the field (but played their home games in Fargo, North Dakota). The history is organized in three main parts. Part I, The Minors Expand and Contract in Canada, examines the six seasons following the war, a time when hundreds of ball players were returning from duty in the armed services anxiously hoping to resume their interrupted careers and when war-weary citizens searched for types of entertainment that had been restricted during the war years. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, attendance began to drop off as other outdoor summer activities, along with the indoor watching of television, engaged fans time and entertainment budgets. In Canada, the number of minor and independent league teams reached a high of 17 in 1947 and dropped only by one at the start of the 1951 season. However, in July 1951, the Border League, which included teams in Kingston and Cornwall, Ontario, ceased operations.