When Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run ... on Toronto Island
On Sept. 5, 1914, Toronto played a big part in a sporting legend’s origin story.
I can’t remember when I acquired it, but on the wall in my living room is a list of George Herman Ruth’s many nicknames:
- Sultan of Swat
- Rajah of Rap
- Wali of Wallop
- King of Swing
- Colossus of Clout
- Behemoth of Bust
- Kid of Crash
- Great Bambino
- Wazir of Wham
That’s a lot of nicknames. Especially considering none of them is necessary. His real name alone — or, at least, the name people knew him by — is synonymous not just with baseball, but with home run hitting.
Babe Ruth smashed 714 dingers over the course of his career, an unheard-of amount for the time in which he played. That longtime-record mark has since been passed by “Hammerin’” Hank Aaron (755 home runs) and Barry Bonds (762), but at the time of Ruth’s retirement in 1935 he was leading the pack by 336.
Ruth’s life story has been told dozens of times, and — strangely enough — Toronto has a part in it. No, he never lived here — his hometown is Baltimore, Md. And he never played for a team here.
But the Toronto connection is more than a footnote. That’s because the city — and more specifically Toronto Island — is where the Babe hit his first professional home run on Sept. 5, 1914.
Uh, what?
A lot of that last sentence may strike you as odd.
Professional baseball in Toronto decades prior to the Blue Jays? On Toronto Island, no less? It’s true.
Let’s break it down.
What was Babe Ruth doing in Toronto?
Though it’s not discussed much these days, Toronto’s first pro baseball team was the Toronto Maple Leafs (named as such long before the hockey team). Founded in 1885, the club played one year against exclusively Canadian competition before joining the International League — a minor league that still exists to this day.
They didn’t have a Major League Baseball affiliate in those early years, but they played against minor-league teams that did.
On Sept. 5, 1914, manager Joe Kelley and the Maple Leafs hosted a double header with the Providence Grays, the double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. As it happened, Boston had recently purchased the contract of 19-year-old rookie George Herman Ruth, already known as “Babe.”
Where did the game take place?
It’s a bit hard to imagine now, but the game was played on Hanlan’s Point at a place called Maple Leaf Park.
Sitting adjacent to the amusement park on the site at the time, the stadium was made of concrete and seated more than 17,000 fans. It wasn’t even the first baseball field to exist on the same spot — an earlier wooden building called Hanlan’s Point Stadium was in use until 1908.
Eventually the Maple Leafs moved to a new home at the corner of Bathurst and Fleet (now Lake Shore Boulevard). Maple Leaf Park itself was torn down, and the site used for the Toronto Island Airport.
So, about this home run…
The two teams split the double header. In the sixth inning of the first game — which the Grays won 9–0 — Ruth hit one out of the yard, driving in three runs. Here’s how the Globe wrote it up on Sept. 7:
Ruth whaled the bulb over the right field fence with two runners on the bases. He had (pitcher Ellis) Johnson in a three-and-two hole, and the Kelley twirler grooved the next ball: Crash!
It would end up being the Babe’s first and only minor league homer — he played just 46 minor league games in total before getting called up to the Red Sox by the end of the 1914 season.
Today there’s a plaque at Hanlan’s Point related to Ruth’s homer. But funnily enough, his pitching performance was the bigger story at the time, as he gave up just one hit in the first game of the day.
More from the Globe article, which is glorious:
”Babe” Ruth, the tall left-handed pitching sensation of the Providence team, held the Kelleys to one hit — a single — in the first set-to. This youngster is not yet old enough to vote, but he can heave that old pill….
What happened to the home run ball?
This is actually a big mystery.
There are several theories about what happened to the ball, from it landing in Lake Ontario and lying there to this day, to it being thrown back into play and lost forever amongst like-looking spheres.
But what’s not in question is whether it happened. Everyone can acknowledge that there’s a single number one in the Babe’s minor league home run column, and that that number was notched in Toronto in 1914.
This is an updated version of a story initially published in 2022.
Code and markup by Kyle Duncan. ©Torontoverse, 2023