March 11, 2024

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

Many longtime Canadian baseball fans can recall the Toronto Blue Jays defeating the Chicago White Sox 9-5 in snowy conditions at Exhibition Stadium on April 7, 1977 in their first regular season game, but how did the team fare in its first spring training contest?

Well, that contest took place 47 years ago today in Dunedin, Fla.

I did some more research on the game and here’s what I discovered:

– On March 11, 1977, the Blue Jays defeated the New York Mets 3-1 in front of a capacity crowd of 1,988 fans at Grant Field in Dunedin. The Blue Jays still play in the same location in Dunedin, but the seating capacity of the stadium – which is now called TD Ballpark – has been expanded to 8,500.

– While Canadian music legend Anne Murray was selected to sing the national anthem at the Blue Jays’ regular season opener in Toronto in 1977, their club’s choice for their spring training debut was considerably less famous. The Dunedin High School band serenaded the enthusiastic, largely Canadian crowd with the anthem. The Toronto Star’s Neil MacCarl reported that Canadians in attendance sang the anthem “so lustily they forced the Dunedin High School Band to pick up the pace.”

-Metropolitan Toronto chairman and 2024 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Paul Godfrey threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

– Veteran right-hander Bill Singer, who also started the regular season opener, was the first to throw a pitch for the Blue Jays in their spring debut. Future Blue Jay Lee Mazzilli greeted Singer by hitting his third pitch over the right-field wall. “The ball travelled so far that it disturbed the seagulls over the Gulf of Mexico,” wrote Southam sports columnist Jim Coleman. That homer, however, would be all of the offence the Mets could muster that day.

– According to the Toronto Star box score, Bob Bailor, the starting shortstop, was the first Blue Jay to bat in their first spring training game.

–Doug Ault recorded the first hit for the Blue Jays when he singled to left field in the bottom of the first inning off Mets left-hander Jerry Koosman.

– After being held scoreless by Koosman for three innings, the Blue Jays scored their first run off 6-foot-2, Tulsa, Okla., native Jackson Todd in the bottom of the fifth. The right-handed throwing Todd later pitched for Toronto from 1979 to 1981.

– With the game tied 1-1 in the bottom of the eighth, DH Sam Ewing, a 6-foot-3 Tennessee native, socked a two-run double to left-centre field off Mets rookie Dwight Bernard to score shortstop Jim Mason and Ron Fairly to put the Blue Jays ahead 3-1.

-As noted earlier, Singer started and pitched three innings for the Blue Jays. He permitted all three Mets’ hits. Jerry Johnson and Dennis DeBarr followed with three and two scoreless innings respectively. DeBarr was credited with the win.

– Thirty-four-year-old right-hander Chuck Hartenstein, who hadn’t pitched in a big league game since 1970, recorded the final three outs for the Blue Jays to register the save in the 3-1 win that was played in one hour and 57 minutes.

-Blue Jays pitchers didn’t issue a walk in the game and at one point retired 19 in a row. “To have that type of performance in our first game really gives us a lift,” Blue Jays manager Roy Hartsfield told reporters after the game.

-“As pitcher Sandy Koufax used to say, ‘One robin does not make a spring,'” Blue Jays general manager Peter Bavasi told the Toronto Star after the game. “But if we can play the kind of baseball we played today, the Blue Jays experience will be a fun thing and that’s what we are selling.”

– Vancouver native Dave McKay was the starting third baseman for the Blue Jays in their spring training opener and in their first regular season game, making him the first Canadian to suit up for the Blue Jays.

– But McKay was not the only Canadian on the field in Dunedin that day. London, Ont., native Tom Burgess, who played in the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels, was coaching third base for the Mets. Both McKay and Burgess have since been inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

-Another interesting note from the Toronto Star, March 12, 1977, report of the game: “The grounds crew burned gasoline on the infield prior to yesterday’s game in an effort to dry it out after Thursday’s heavy rain.”