Canadian trios are rare, but Blue Jays didn't get there first
By: David Matchett
Canadian Baseball Network
Almost 250 Canadian-born players have appeared in the major leagues but since their careers have been spread over the past 140 years only forty teams have employed three or more of them in a season. Teams having three Canadians in the same game are rarer still. During the 2014-15 offseason Toronto Blue Jays General Manager, and Montreal, QC native, Alex Anthopoulos set up his team to join these ranks.
Canadians playing for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2015
Brett Lawrie from Langley, BC had his 2014 season shortened by injury but he was slotted in to be the Blue Jays’ third baseman for 2015. Expected to join him was outfielder Dalton Pompey from Mississauga, ON. Pompey hit a combined .309 in four minor league stops in 2014 and held his own in a September call-up.
The Jays added a third Canadian to their roster with the November 18 signing of catcher Russell Martin from Montreal, QC (born in East York, ON) but ten days after that they shipped Lawrie and three minor leaguers to Oakland in a blockbuster deal to acquire Josh Donaldson. Less than a week later, however, the Jays traded for Michael Sanders from Victoria, BC and they headed into the winter with Canadians penciled in as their starters at catcher, left field and centre field.
Things didn’t go quite as planned. Saunders injured his knee in training camp and he began the campaign on the disabled list. After a rehab stint in Single-A Dunedin he rejoined the team in late April and with Jose Bautista day-to-day with a shoulder injury manager John Gibbons inserted Saunders into the lineup on Saturday, April 25 in Tampa. The Jays were set to make history.
The media were all over this. During a pre-game interview of Saunders on the SN590 radio broadcast Joe Siddall asked:
“… you’re in right field tonight, Dalton Pompey’s in left, Russell Martin is behind the plate, three Canadians in a Major League starting lineup; that has to be extra special.”
Saunders replied:
“Absolutely … we’re starting to become more prominent in the game today and it didn’t use to be like that. Canada used to be … a little bit overlooked on the baseball front but there’s more and more talent coming out of the national program … and to all be playing for the Toronto Blue Jays is pretty special, so I’m just happy. I don’t think it necessarily worked out to try to get Canadians, we’re here because we can help win ball games so it’s very exciting.”
Later in the same broadcast, while giving the starting lineups, Jerry Howarth noted:
“…and not only have the Blue Jays set a precedent here with three position players, Canadian-born, and we’re talking about Michael Saunders in right, Dalton Pompey in left and Russell Martin behind the plate, there’s going to come a time when they’re all three starters and Jeff Francis comes out of the bullpen, John Gibbons was laughing saying maybe we’ll even start him, that appears to be the precedent, four Canadians on one team in one game."
Siddall added:
“Wouldn’t that be something? I think it’s very important to remember that all these four are here because they’re very talented baseball players but what a dream for these Canadians to put on that Blue Jays uniform.”
On the Rogers Sportsnet TV broadcast Buck Martinez said:
“For the first time in Major League history a lineup features three position players that were all born in Canada. Pretty special night for Canadian baseball …”
Even Tampa’s broadcast crew got in on the action. During Michael Saunders’ first plate appearance they flashed a note on the screen stating:
“First time in MLB history that 3 Canadian position players are in a starting lineup.”
After the game, most articles repeated this message. For example, Gregor Chisolm of MLB.com wrote:
“Saunders' presence in the lineup also allowed the Blue Jays to make history on Saturday night. Toronto became the first team in the Major Leagues to have three Canadian position players in its starting lineup. In addition to Saunders, the club also had Dalton Pompey in left field and Russell Martin behind the plate.”
And ESPN.com commented:
“Martin and outfielders Michael Saunders and Dalton Pompey were in the Toronto lineup, marking the first time in major league history that three Canadian position players started in the same game.”
Too bad they were all wrong!
What are we looking for?
The key themes in these comments and articles were that Martin, Saunders and Pompey were all:
1. Born in Canada,
2. Position players (i.e. not pitchers),
3. In the starting lineup,
4. And that this had never happened before.
As recently as 2011 the Toronto Blue Jays had Canadians Lawrie, Adam Loewen from Surrey, BC and Mark Teahen in the same game on four occasions. Teahen also played with the Kansas City Royals in 2005 and in 26 games he was matched with Canadian-born teammates Aaron Gueil from Vancouver, BC and Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Matt Stairs from Saint John, NB.
But Teahen was born in the United States. His father is from St. Mary’s, ON and Teahen had become a naturalized citizen by the time he joined the Jays, but he wasn’t born in Canada.
The 2011 Minnesota Twins had one game and the 1993 Montreal Expos had two games with three Canadian-born players in their starting lineups, but in each case one of them was the pitcher:
August 26, 2011 – Minnesota Twins Sept 6 and Oct 3, 1993 – Montreal Expos
Scott Diamond, Guelph, ON – pitcher Denis Boucher, Montreal, QC – pitcher
Justin Morneau, New Westminster, BC – first base Joe Siddall, Windsor, ON – catcher
Rene Tosoni, Toronto, ON – left field Larry Walker, Maple Ridge, BC – right field
Other similar games with three Canadians including the pitcher took place in 1881 with the Cleveland Blues (2 games) and in 1889 with the Philadelphia Quakers (1 game), all in the National League.
Several other teams have had three Canadians in a game without all of them being in the starting lineup. For example, on June 30 1999 Canadians Rob Butler from East York, ON, Paul Quantrill from London, ON and Paul Spoljaric from Kelowna, BC all played in a game for the Blue Jays but none of them started; Butler was a defensive replacement and Quantrill and Spoljaric each pitched out of the bullpen.
These are all impressive events for Canadian baseball but none of them quite match the criteria that the three teammates all be born in Canada, not be pitchers and all be in the starting lineup. So what the Jays accomplished in 2015 was certainly special; they just weren’t the first to do it; in fact, they were the fourth.
The error is understandable however because it had been a while since it had last happened; all of the others took place in 1884.
The Major Leagues in 1884
1884 was a year of transition for Major League Baseball. The 8-team National League was in its ninth season and the rival American Association, considered to be a Major League at the time, was in its third. The AA added four teams for the 1884 season to bring its total to 12 franchises and the upstart Union Association joined the fray with 8 teams of its own. And due to franchise failures and shifts there were a total of 13 teams that saw action for the AA and 12 for the UA for a total of 33 major league teams in 1884, more than in any other major league season before or since.
A total of 258 players saw Major League action in 1883, including 11 Canadians, but that increased to 639 and 32 respectively for 1884. This is still the record for the most Canadians in a major league season, well ahead of the 25 who played in 2011. This influx of players in 1884 led to 5 teams engaging three or more Canadians and three of them had games started by three Canadian-born position players.
The Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the Washington Nationals, both of the American Association, each had three Canadians on their teams in 1884 but never all at the same time so they weren’t able to field more than two Canadians in any game.
Detroit Wolverines (NL)
The first team to have an all-Canadian trio was the Detroit Wolverines of the National League. This team played from 1881 to 1888 and is not an ancestor of the current Detroit Tigers franchise. Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer George Wood from Pownal, PEI was the team’s regular left fielder all season.
Eighteen-year-old Fred Wood from Dundas, ON and no relation to George Wood got into 12 games as a catcher and outfielder and Joe Weber from Hamilton, ON played both games of his big league career as an outfielder.
On June 5, 1884 George Wood made a rare start at shortstop, Weber took his place in left field and Fred Wood was in right field and they all played the full game in a 5-4 loss to Cleveland. This game, not the one from April 2015, was the first to feature three Canadian-born position players in a starting line.
Cleveland’s first baseman that day was Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Philips from Saint John, NB, marking this as not only the first game in major league history to feature three Canadian position players on one team but also the first to have four Canadians overall in the combined starting lineups. Unfortunately it was Weber’s last game with Detroit so the feat was never repeated.
Boston Reds (UA)
Next up was the Boston Reds of the new Union Association. John Irwin from Toronto, the younger brother of Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Arthur Irwin, was the team’s regular third baseman. Jim McKeever from Saint John, NB played all 12 games of his big league career that season and Pat Scanlon from Halifax played his six major league games.
Henry Mullin, also from Saint John, finished the season with the Reds after his first team, the Washington Nationals of the American Association, folded. But McKeever and Scanlon were long gone by then and there was never an opportunity to get all four into the same game.
Irwin, McKeever and Scanlon all started together three times, on July 7, 9 and 11. The first of those games was noteworthy because Hugh “One Arm” Daily of Chicago struck out 19 Reds that day, a record that would stand for 102 years until broken by Roger Clemens in 1986, and the three Canadians accounted for 8 of the 19 Ks. They all started together in 2 of the next 3 games but the July 11 match was the last in the major league careers of McKeever and Scanlon and the brief era of the Reds having 3 Canadians in their lineup ended.
They all started together in 2 of the next 3 games but the July 11 match was the last in the major league careers of McKeever and Scanlon and the brief era of the Reds having 3 Canadians in their lineup ended.
The 1884 Indianapolis Hoosiers
The third team from 1884 to have three Canadian position players in the starting lineup was the Indianapolis Hoosiers in their first season of the American Association.
The Hoosiers had been an independent team in 1883 and had done very well. As noted in The Sporting Life on October 22, 1883:
“The Indianapolis Club have met with most wonderful success during the past season under the able management of Mr. Dan O’Leary. The Indianapolis team have done the best of any club in the West outside of the League and American Association clubs, and many of those have been obliged to give in to the superior playing of the team. The record of the Indianapolis Club since its organization up to October 6 is as follows: Games won, 92, lost, 42…”
In mid-December that year the American Association expanded from 8 to 12 teams and took in Indianapolis along with Brooklyn, Washington and Toledo. Most of the Hoosiers from the 1883 team remained with the franchise.
Despite their great record of 1883 the Hoosiers were up against stiffer competition in 1884 and they started the year 1-14. Things never turned around and by the end of July their record was 16-44 and they were ahead of only fellow expansion franchise Washington, who were limping along at 11-50. Things were so bad in Washington that the team folded on August 2 and Indianapolis finished the rest of the season at the bottom of the league.
In an effort to shore things up a drastic overhaul of the roster took place at the end of July. The Bay City team of the Northwestern League was one of that loop’s top franchises in 1884 and by late July they were tied for first place with a record of 41-14. The Indianapolis owner signed the team’s best players and remade his roster. Included in these acquisitions were Bill Watkins from Brantford, ON, Chub Collins from Dundas, ON and Jon Morrison from London, ON. Suddenly the Hoosiers had three Canadians.
There was a forth Canadian on the team in 1884 but he was long gone before the others showed up. Tug Thompson from London, ON had previously played 24 games for Indianapolis, half at catcher and half in the outfield, but the last game of his major league career was the opener of a July 4 double header, about a month before his countrymen showed up.
But the Hoosiers were the first major league team to have 4 Canadians on their roster over a season, achieving this distinction on August 1. Boston (UA) didn’t have their 4th Canadian until September 23.
On August 1 the Hoosiers fielded a team with Morrison playing centre field and batting first, Collins at second base and batting fifth and Watkins batting right behind him and playing at third base. They went a combined 6 for 13 with each of them getting at least 1 hit and scoring a run in Indianapolis’ 7-6 loss to Columbus.
Adding further Canadian content was Columbus’ second baseman Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Charles “Pop” Smith from Digby, NS, who went 1-4 with a run scored and a great defensive play in the 9th inning to save the game for Columbus. This was the only game in major league history with four Canadian-born position players in the combined starting lineups with each one of them getting a hit and scoring a run.
The new blood didn’t do much for Indianapolis’ fortunes however and from August 1 onward they finished the season with 13 wins and 34 losses, essentially the same winning percentage they had before the roster changes. Collins, Morrison and Watkins appeared in the same game 20 times, and the team compiled a record of 4 wins, 15 losses and 1 tie in those games, worse than the record of 9-19-1 when they didn’t all play.
On September 9, Watkins was named as the team’s player-manager and led them to a record of 4 wins, 18 losses and 1 tie in the last 23 games of the season. In 8 of those games he managed with 3 Canadians in the starting lineup, including himself. These are the only such games in major league history.
Another first happened on October 4 in the first game of a double header against Baltimore. Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Emslie from Guelph, ON pitched against the Hoosiers and beat them 7-3 with a complete game. Indianapolis only managed 5 hits and the three Canadians in their lineup went a combined 0-12.
This is the only time in major league history when a Canadian starting pitcher faced off against a team fielding three Canadians in the opposing starting lineup. In addition to Emslie, other Canadians who played against the Indianapolis trio include:
· Pop Smith, who played second base for Columbus against the three Canadians six times, on August 1, 2, 3, 10, 19 and 21,
· Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Tip O’Neill from Springfield, ON who played left field for St. Louis against them twice, on August 23 and 24,
· Billy Reid from London, ON who played left field for Pittsburgh against them on September 27.
· Jimmy Knowles from Toronto who played third base for Brooklyn against them on October 9 and 11.
These 12 games plus the one for Detroit noted earlier are the only matches in major league history that involved three Canadian-born non-pitchers as starters on one team and one Canadian on the other team.
The end of the Hoosiers
After the season ended the American Association decided to contract back to 8 teams and Indianapolis was out. Indianapolis then joined 5 other teams in the new Western League for 1885. Jon Morrison was released after the 1884 season to end his big league career then he had three more professional seasons, including spending 1886 with Toronto in the International League.
Chub Collins began the 1885 season with Indianapolis then had his contract sold to Detroit of the National League in June of that year. That was his last major league action but he didn’t hang up his spikes until 1899, playing in various professional leagues until he was 41.
Watkins playing career was over but he continued on as the manager of the Hoosiers in the Western League then moved to Detroit with Collins and took over as that team’s manager. He lead the Wolverines to a championship in 1887 and his 914 major league games managed is still the standard for Canadian-born skippers, although he has not yet been inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
One More Game for Bill Watkins
There is some question about the number of games played by Bill Watkins in 1884 and therefore the number of games in which he and his teammates aligned in having three Canadians in the lineup. According to most sources, Watkins played in 34 games for Indianapolis of the American Association in 1884 and these were the only games he played in the major leagues.
The daily box scores in The Sporting Life show that Watkins played in the following 34 games:
August 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24,
September 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 27, 29,
October 1, 2, 4 (game 1), 4 (game 2), 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13
Watkins also appeared in an exhibition game versus Philadelphia on October 7 but that game has not been included in this review. The 34 games noted above were compared to Indianapolis’ “Team Game-by-Game Schedule and Results” from Baseball-Reference.com to confirm that none of them were exhibition games.
The box scores in the New York Clipper were then reviewed to verify this. No box score was provided for Indianapolis’ game of August 10 in that publication; they only showed a line score and the lineups were not included.
But the full box score from The Sporting Life shows that Watkins batted fifth and played third base that day. The box scores found in the Clipper for the other 33 games in which Watkins played corroborate those found in The Sporting Life.
This leads to the potential additional game. On August 26 in Cincinnati Watkins was Indianapolis’ starting third baseman with Morrison and Collins also in the lineup. In the top of the first inning, he was beaned by Red Stockings’ pitcher Gus Shallix and replaced by Jim Donnelly. This is noted in the game summaries in both The Sporting Life and The New York Clipper:
The New York Clipper:
“Watkins was hit in the head by a pitched ball in the first inning, and had to leave the field, Donnelly taking his place.”
The Sporting Life:
“…Donnelly, who played third in Watkins’ place, the latter being hit in the temple and knocked senseless while at-bat in the first inning,”
But Watkins doesn’t show up in either publication’s box score; only Donnelly appears at third base for Indianapolis.
If the New York Clipper is used as the only source of information the 34-game total may appear to be correct because there are 33 box scores that include Watkins plus the game for August 26. Perhaps this is the source of the currently listed total in the official records. But there is a box score for the August 10 game in The Sporting Life listing Watkins in the Hoosiers’ lineup so it appears that he made it into 35 games that year.
David Nemec and Pete Palmer, long-time members of the Society for American Baseball Research, were consulted about this. Nemec is an expert on the American Association and Palmer’s research helped compile most of the statistics of that era. Palmer wrote:
“The 1884 Ind AA does omit the 8/26 game. They went by box scores, which did not include him. I don't believe they took time to read game articles. It was common in those days to leave out guys who might have been injured at the start or came in the late innings…So I would agree that he had one more game and will update my files.”
Nemec added:
“Your discovery that Watkins is owed another game looks incontrovertible to me…Congratulations on your find…”
On August 26, 1884 Bill Watkins was in the Indianapolis starting lineup, was injured while batting in the top of the first inning and was removed from the game before he took his position in the field.
This game hasn’t been included in his career totals so if we go by the official record Watkins, Morrison and Collins played together 19 times. But it appears that Watkins is owed one more game in his career stats and the Canadians total is therefore 20 games together.
Back to 2015, and 2016
The Indianapolis Hoosiers’ last game with three Canadian starters was on Monday, October 13, 1884; a 3-1 road loss to the New York Metropolitans. 130 years, 6 months and 12 days later, on April 25, 2015 the Toronto Blue Jays became the next team to field three Canadian-born position players in their starting lineup. Russell Martin hit a 7th inning home run to give the Jays and rookie starter Daniel Norris a 2-1 lead but the bullpen blew it and the Jays lost 4-2.
They started together again the next day, April 26, in a 5-1 loss in Tampa and they did it again a day later on Monday, April 27 in a 6-5 loss in Boston. Pompey didn’t play on the 28 and on the 29th Martin only saw action as a pinch-hitter.
But more history was made that day when Jeff Francis from Vancouver, BC came in to pitch the 8th inning in relief of starter R. A. Dickey. That made for the first game in major league history to have one team with four Canadians in the same box score, albeit only two of them in the starting lineup.
Saunders didn’t play on April 30 then the three Canadians were all back in the starting lineup again on Friday, May 1 in Cleveland. This time Andrew Albers from North Battleford, SK came into the game in relief of starter Mark Buehrle with one out in the fifth inning and pitched 2 2/3 innings.
This was the second and last time a team had four Canadians in the same game, and from the 5th through 7th innings the Blue Jays had four Canadians on the field at the same time, the only time that this has happened in major league history. It could have been five Canadians in the game since Francis was available in the bullpen, but he wasn’t called in.
That was also the last time that the Jays would feature three Canadians in the starting lineup. Pompey was hitting only .193 with a .601 OPS and he split the next 4 months between Triple-A Buffalo and Double-A New Hampshire before returning for a handful of games in September.
Saunders never really recovered from his injury and he only played 3 more times before being shut down for the season. So the Jays had only four games when they started the three Canadians: April 25, 26, 27 and May 1 and they lost all four.
2016 was a little different and Martin and Saunders avoided injury and played together in 117 games, breaking the old record for Canadian-born teammates of 100 set by George Wood and Arthur Irwin with the National League’s Philadelphia Quakers in 1888.
The emergence of Kevin Pillar as a starter forced Pompey to spend the 2016 season in Triple-A. He did get into seven games with the Blue Jays in September, including five with his two Canadian teammates, but only as a pinch runner and defensive replacement so they didn’t all start together in any games in 2016.
Conclusion
There have been a total of 87 major league games in which a team fielded three Canadian-born players. The first was on June 2, 1881 when Cleveland of the National League had pitcher Ed Nolan (born in Canada but with a city of birth not noted), first baseman Bill Phillips and third baseman Pop Smith all in the starting lineup.
The most recent was on October 1, 2016 when the Blue Jays had Russell Martin catch, Michael Saunders pinch hit and Dalton Pompey pinch ran. But of these 87 games only 28 involved three Canadian-born position players in the starting lineup:
· 1884 Detroit Wolverines NL – 1 game – 1 loss
· 1884 Boston Reds UA – 3 games – 1 win, 2 losses
· 1884 Indianapolis Hoosiers AA – 20 games – 4 wins, 15 losses, 1 tie
· 2015 Toronto Blue Jays AL – 4 games – 4 losses
Overall that’s 28 games with 5 wins, 22 losses and 1 tie.
In the long history of major league baseball, there have only been 15 unassisted triple plays, 16 games when a player hit four home runs and 23 perfect games so what the Jays accomplished on April 25, 2015 isn’t the rarest of occurrences. Although it was certainly noteworthy; it just wasn’t the first time it happened.