The headline of the Toronto Star’s sports section on September 9, 1975, declared: “Baseball wants Toronto for 1976.” Unnamed sources indicated that when the Major League Baseball’s interleague committee gathered later that month, it would recommend that Toronto be added to the National League for the following season. The hot rumour was that the San Francisco Giants, a team with a rich history but poor attendance in recent years, would move north and likely be sold to a group associated with Maple Leaf Gardens (MLG). While much of the report, which also speculated that the Minnesota Twins would move to Seattle, was denied by baseball officials, one fact did emerge: Giants owner Horace Stoneham was ready to sell and had been contacted by an unnamed “young man from Toronto.”
While the Giants’ move to Toronto was undone by legal injunctions and political brinkmanship, it did establish a viable ownership group that didn’t have to wait long to operate an MLB franchise in the city.
Toronto had a rich baseball history in the upper levels of the minor leagues through the Maple Leafs franchise. At its peak under Jack Kent Cooke’s ownership during the 1950s, the baseball Leafs outdrew at least two MLB franchises. But Cooke’s attempts to join MLB were unsuccessful and, within a few years of his sale of the team, the franchise departed for Louisville, Kentucky, following the 1967 season.
Enter an ambitious young North York city councillor named Paul Godfrey, who crusaded for an MLB team after the Leafs left. When he encountered baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn at MLB’s 1969 winter meetings in Florida, Godfrey was informed that a major-league-calibre stadium had to be built before any city would be considered for a team. When Godfrey became chairman of Metro Toronto in 1973, he promised to deliver a team and a domed stadium. He discussed the matter with Ontario premier William Davis, who agreed to a substantial provincial loan to help pay for a $15 million reconfiguration of Exhibition Stadium. After the plan to rebuild the stadium was announced in early 1974, Godfrey admitted that the park was in a bad location, would cause traffic chaos, and would have poor sightlines, but he still felt it would be a good temporary solution to draw MLB to the city.
Photo from the front page of the January 10, 1976, Toronto Star sports section.
While Toronto was a strong candidate for future expansion, moving a team to the city seemed more likely. There were plenty of possibilities — during the 1973 season, seven of the 16 MLB teams drew under a million fans. Two factors hindered Toronto’s chances: a lawsuit filed by the City of Seattle against the American League for breach of contract following the one-year existence of the Seattle Pilots in 1969 (which many observers felt could be resolving by placing a new team there) and Kuhn’s firm belief that Washington, D.C., deserved a new team, as the Senators had left following the 1971 season to become the Texas Rangers.
Several potential ownership groups emerged in Toronto. One, backed by Harold Ballard and MLG, was fronted by Lorne Duguid, a former NHL player and executive with Hiram Walker & Sons Distillery. Another was led by Sydney Cooper, the president of C.A. Pitts Engineering Construction Ltd. And then there was the consortium headed by Labatt Breweries, which believed baseball would improve its lagging market share and prevent the sport from falling into the hands of its rivals (Molson sponsored Hockey Night in Canada, while Carling O’Keefe worked with the CFL).
A study conducted by Labatt found that an association with baseball promised a number of advantages, including marketing boosts, the season’s overlap with summer beer drinking, an improved reach in the Toronto market, and boosts to employee morale and motivation. It could also provide a promotional vehicle in case beer advertising faced government crackdowns similar to those imposed on tobacco and hard-liquor products.
Photo of Paul Godfrey and Doug McDougall from the January 10, 1976, edition of the San Francisco Examiner.
Labatt president Don McDougall was young (only 35 when he assumed his position in 1973) and involved in Progressive Conservative politics. Although he’d previously had no interests in baseball, he saw its possibilities. He initially consulted with Cooper, who felt that associating with a brewery would not be a good idea, given the province’s puritanical attitude toward beer. McDougall then talked to Kuhn, who pointed out other owners with ties to the industry, such as St. Louis Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, who was also chairman of Anheuser-Busch. Labatt was approached by the Cleveland Indians but found their existing ownership structure was too complicated, then had unsuccessful negotiations with the Baltimore Orioles in late 1974 and early 1975.
While there were rumours throughout 1975 that a team would move to Toronto, nothing was newsworthy until the Toronto Star’s September scoop regarding the Giants. Founded in New York in 1883, the Giants nearly moved to Minneapolis in the late 1950s before Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley convinced Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move with his team to California for the 1958 season.
Things went well at first for the Giants in San Francisco, but problems began when, in 1960, they moved into Candlestick Park, a stadium notorious for being cold and windy. After the Athletics moved from Kansas City to Oakland in 1968 and won several World Series, attendance at Giants games collapsed. By 1974, they had the worst attendance in the MLB, drawing just under 520,000 fans.
Editorial cartoon from the January 13, 1976, edition of the San Francisco Examiner.
Stoneham, whose family had owned the team for half a century, faced mounting debts and wanted out. The cash crunch was so bad that, following the 1975 season, the Giants fired manager Wes Westrum and his coaching staff, cut front-office salaries by a third, and borrowed $500,000 from the National League. Despite the Athletics’ success on the field, they had mediocre attendance numbers, and their controversial owner, Charles O. Finley, relished the thought of having the Bay Area to himself.
There were rumours that some San Francisco-based groups — primarily centred around developer/Giants board member Bob Lurie — were interested in the team.
The Duguid/MLG group claimed it had negotiated with the Giants for several months but kept the details quiet due to the stadium-lease issue. It got a boost when the Japan-based Seibu Corporation dropped out of the running. Despite their intention to keep the team in San Francisco, Seibu officials suspected that baseball officials would not approve of Asian owners. They met with the Duguid/MLG group at the Seibu-owned Prince Hotel in North York, where they gave the Canadians their blessing to pursue the Giants.
In late September, Godfrey attended MLB meetings in Kansas City. While he didn’t receive any commitments, he said that “there is no doubt in my mind that Toronto is a prime contender.” At the same time, the Labatt consortium’s talks with the Giants fell apart. McDougall noted that the sticking point was that Stoneham wanted the group to assume any legal responsibilities around the 19 years remaining on the Giants’ lease at Candlestick Park, which cost $125,000 per year. The consortium, which now included CIBC, felt that any legal issues surrounding the lease were Stoneham’s problem.
The Labatt consortium grew in October when Montreal businessman R. Howard Webster joined. The owner of the Globe and Mail, Webster was allied with the Duguid/MLG group. However, as an associate told Webster’s paper, “Labatt’s is doing the upfront work and attempting to formulate the deal.” Duguid was stunned; MLG’s Harold Ballard continued to insist over the following weeks that a deal with them was imminent or depended on rumoured moves by the Athletics or the Chicago White Sox to Seattle. By early December, there were conflicting stories as to whether this group was still interested or would walk away due to the lease issue. One more local suitor briefly emerged: Buffalo developer Nick Catrelle, who intended to temporarily move the Giants to Toronto until a dome could be built in Buffalo.
Example of the "Smile Toronto" buttons distributed in anticipation of the Giants coming to Toronto. (San Francisco Examiner, January 13, 1976)
The rival groups made their cases at the 1975 MLB winter meetings. Godfrey, who was forced to be impartial even though he supported the Labatt consortium, attended, along with several other city officials. National League officials gave the Giants until the end of the year to find owners who would keep the team in San Francisco; the deadline was later extended into mid-January. More new suitors appeared, including comedian Danny Kaye, who fronted a group interested in moving the team to Seattle. Kuhn dropped hints that nobody in Toronto should get excited about getting the Giants or any other existing team until Washington, D.C., returned to MLB.
On January 7, KGMB-TV in Honolulu reported that, based on “extremely reliable sources in the highest level of organized baseball,” the Giants had been sold to the Labatt consortium, which had also agreed to pay to break the Giants’ lease. While both sides denied the report, the Giants’ board of directors met two days later to consider offers.
Photo of Robert Lurie and George Moscone from the February 25, 1976, edition of the San Francisco Examiner.
Back in Toronto, a press conference was scheduled for 4 p.m. on January 9. The event was delayed due to what McDougall later called “the longest 52 minutes” he had ever experienced. Around 4:52 p.m. Godfrey’s phone rang; consortium lawyer Herb Solway answered. He gave a thumbs up, and Godfrey announced that an offer had been accepted, with an additional $1 million set aside in case Stoneham was sued for terminating the Candlestick Park lease. The deal was in the $12.5 million to $13.25 million range.
With no group from San Francisco able to provide enough funding, it appeared that the primary remaining roadblock was gaining approval from at least nine of the other 11 National League owners.
Giants players had mixed reactions to the sale. Pitcher John Montefusco, who was the National League’s 1975 Rookie of the Year, declared he would demand a trade or play out his option. “If I go to Toronto,” he told the San Francisco Examiner, “people will never hear from me again. You don’t hear from the Expos.” On the other hand, shortstop Chris Speier (who eventually played for the Expos) wasn’t concerned about what type of field Exhibition Stadium might be, as he’d “already played in the worst place.” Chatham native Fergie Jenkins, who had just been traded from the Texas Rangers to the Boston Red Sox and had hoped for a trade to Montreal, wished a deal had been reached earlier, as pitching for Toronto would have been “so close to home.”
In San Francisco, new mayor George Moscone, who joked that “the first day in office is always the easiest,” promised a “battle royale” to save the team. On January 12, he received a temporary restraining order against the move. The Board of Supervisors devised a plan to keep the Giants in San Francisco: it included suing the National League, the Giants, and any owner who wanted to move the team; suing for rent owed over the past year; creating a permanent exemption from a 50-cent admission tax for bleacher seats and children; and better operating the non-profit corporation that ran Candlestick Park. In Washington, a congressional committee planned to recommend that the sale be prohibited and that Toronto receive an expansion franchise instead. None of these actions surprised Godfrey and the Labatt consortium, who’d expected some backlash.
Editorial cartoons by Andy Donato depicting Paul Godfrey when the Giants were sold to the Labatt consortium and when the team was bought by Lurie's group. (Toronto Sun, January 11, 1976, and February 23, 1976)
Both Moscoe and Godfrey made their cases at a meeting of National League owners in Phoenix on January 14. The league delayed voting, citing the injunction, but agreed to extend a temporary financial lifeline to the Giants. Meanwhile, Seattle mayor Wed Uhlman called the deal “the shoddiest possible treatment of Seattle taxpayers and sports fans that one can imagine.” In the midst of all of the confusion, spring training was due to start in six weeks, and the Giants still lacked a manager and coaching staff. During the meetings, American League owner voted to settle the issues with Seattle by awarding an expansion franchise to the Kaye-led group.
Newspaper reports in Toronto continued to insist that unnamed sources were certain the Giants would play in Toronto and that the team had a bright future thanks to potential fan support and the team’s promising talent. In California, the legal manoeuvres continued as Moscone searched for local owners. National League president Chub Feeney openly admitted he wanted Moscone to succeed, though some observers wondered whether family ties (Feeney was Stoneham’s nephew) played a role. Players worried about where they would live and transferring their children to new schools. Montefusco, who was now fine with a move, just wished the presiding judge would make a decision.
After more delays, the situation appeared to be resolved on February 11, when Moscone revealed a deal had been reached with a group headed by Lurie and Bob Short, a man who knew a few things about transferring franchises, having moved the Senators to Texas as the Rangers and the NBA’s Lakers from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. Each man pledged $4 million. Though Short soon backed out, another partner was quickly found, and the sale was approved in March.
“There have been lots of ups and downs,” Godfrey observed. “We’re going to have a ball team in Toronto, and it’s going to be sooner rather than later. It may be the Giants. It may not be. I am disappointed. But you have to give their mayor credit. He said he would do it, and he apparently did.” He pledged to keep fighting for a team.
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That battle didn’t last long. When the National League rejected expansion, the American League decided to add another team to avoid headaches associated with scheduling a 13-team circuit. The Labatt consortium indicated its willingness to take an expansion team, but another group led by Atlantic Packaging chairman Phil Granovsky also emerged. On March 26, 1976, the American League chose the Labatt consortium. The deal was nearly derailed when Kuhn insisted Washington. D.C., was a higher priority, but the owners overruled him. The team that became the Toronto Blue Jays was now a part of the MLB.
The consortium proved stable over the long run, retaining its structure until Webster sold his shares to Labatt in 1991. The Giants nearly moved again after Lurie put the team up for sale following the 1992 season, reaching an agreement with investors from the Tampa Bay area before National League owners rejected the sale and local interests were found. They left Candlestick Park after the 1999 season. (The team will have the Bay Area to itself again when the Athletics move to Las Vegas in the next few years.) Moscone served as mayor of San Francisco until he was assassinated alongside gay-rights leader Harvey Milk in 1978.
In an interview with Canadian Magazine, McDougall predicted that baseball would become popular in Toronto as a new decade drew near. “Baseball is going to be bigger than ever. It has to do with the social climate these days. People are looking for gentler, more relaxed diversions. All of the violence, it’s turning people off. I see the 1980s in Canada as being beer, baseball, and the Conservative Party.” As Stephen Brunt noted when using this quote in his book Diamond Dreams, “Nostradamus couldn’t have predicted better.”
Sources: Diamond Dreams by Stephen Brunt (Toronto: Penguin, 1997); the October 8, 1975, October 21, 1975, January 8, 1976, January 10, 1976, January 12, 1976, January 14, 1976, and February 5, 1976, editions of the Globe and Mail; the September 9, 1975, September 10, 1975, September 12, 1975, November 26, 1975, December 2, 1975, December 16, 1975, December 21, 1975, January 10, 1976, January 12, 1976, and February 12, 1976, editions of the San Francisco Examiner; the September 9, 1975, September 10, 1975, September 25, 1975, September 27, 1975, January 10, 1976, January 12, 1976, and January 22, 1976, editions of the Toronto Star; and the January 11, 1976, January 15, 1976, and February 12, 1976, editions of the Toronto Sun.
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