Maple Leaf Stadium plaque, 2018. Photo by Herman Custodio.  

Plaque Text

The Toronto Maple Leafs, the city's first professional minor-league baseball team, played at a stadium on this site from 1926 to 1967. Designed by architecture firm Chapman & Oxley with Roy Bishop and financed by team owner Lawrence "Lol" Solman, Maple Leaf Stadium replaced a smaller ball park on Toronto Island. The new stadium held 23,500 in its large, single-tier stand.

The Toronto Maple Leafs won the International League in their first season at the stadium and would win five of their ten championships here. In 1951, new owner Jack Kent Cooke transformed the Maple Leafs. He signed the team's first Black players, pitcher Leon Day and catcher Charlie White, and drew record crowds with promotions, celebrity appearances, and other game day entertainment. The team won two titles during this time.

Cooke sold the Maple Leafs in 1964. Falling attendance and rising costs forced the team to stop playing in 1967. The Maple Leafs moved and became the Louisville Colonels in 1968, then the Pawtucket Red Sox in 1972. Maple Leaf Stadium was demolished in 1968, ending professional baseball in Toronto until the arrival of the major-league Toronto Blue Jays in 1977.