Welcome back eh!! Time for us to take another look back at some more Canadian professional baseball history. Today we kick off a new city on our nationwide tour. Join me on a journey to the city of Montreal…
THE BEGINNINGS
Let’s make our way back to the early 1860s. At this time locals didn’t play baseball but a bat & ball game called Rounders. Baseball was being played in Ontario and the United States and was brought to the province by Franco-American university students attending colleges & universities in the area.
As we get to the early 1870s, the Montreal Base Ball Club (MBBC) was formed with games between colleges Sainte-Marie and Saint-Laurent being played. In 1973, the first Francophone club was created with their first players coming from the local typographers union. The popularity of the sport continued to rise through the end of the 1870s and into the 1880s. So much so that an amateur baseball league was formed in 1898. The Montreal Amateur Baseball League was formed with six teams from Saint-Jean, Sorel, Saint-Hyacinthe, and three Montreal teams.
PRO DEBUT
That takes us right to the start of professional baseball making its way to the city.
When you say “Montreal” and “baseball,” I think of the Royals and the Expos. Today, we’ll take a look at the Montreal Royals and then we’ll head to the Youppi Years of the Expos in Part II coming soon.
July 23, 1897, was the date the Montreal Royals first took the field (a loss to Wilkes-Barre) in the Eastern League. A simple sentence to describe the first game of the team that moved from Rochester after their stadium burned down. This fire led to the franchise being sold to a consortium from Montreal led by WH Rowe. The group from Montreal were majority holders with the previous owners from Rochester being minority stakeholders. We’ll give the squad a pass on a 7th-place finish with a 45-76 record.
We can say they rebounded well in the 1898 season with an Eastern League Championship after a 68-48 season. This first iteration of the Royals continued in Eastern League competition through the end of the 1902 season. The franchise was sold and moved to Baltimore after the season. Montreal was without the Royals for only about half a season. The franchise from Worcester was moved to the city and remained in the Eastern League until 1911 and then in the International League from 1912 to 1917.
The team played as the Montreal Canucks in the 1906 season
After the 1917 season in the depths of WWI, a judge ruled that Montreal was too far to travel during wartime with the travel restrictions that were in place at the time. This was the ending of this iteration of the Montreal Royals.
The franchise did return to the Eastern League in 1922 and won the tile in 1923 with a 66-52 record. The Eastern League became the Ontario-Quebec-Vermont League in 1924 where the Royals played to a 2nd place finish. There was an absence of Royals Baseball from the end of the 1924 season until their return to the International League in 1928.
In 1922, the team briefly featured one of the few African-American players to appear in Organized Baseball between 1890 and 1945, P/SS Charlie Culver1
George Stallings (Former MLB exec & Southern United States planter) teamed up with businessman Ernest Savard and Montreal lawyer and politico Athanase David wanted to and eventually brought the Royals back to Montreal. Other locals of influence and affluence were also part of the group helping bring the team back. These included: Lucien Beauregard, Romeo Gauvreau, Hector H. Racine, and Charles Trudeau (yes, this is former Canadian PM Pierre’s father and current Canadian PM Justin’s grandfather) who financed and built Delorimier Stadium, their home field.
Having success relatively quickly upon their return for the 1928 season with a pennant win in 1935 (Governors Cup Final loss to Syracuse 4-3 for the Championship), it’s after the Brooklyn Dodgers bought the franchise in 1939 becoming the top farm team for the Dodgers did real success come. After being acquired by the Dodgers, Montreal won titles in - 1941/1946/1948/1949/1951/1953/1958.
The Royals weren’t only an affiliate for the Dodgers. Before becoming the Dodgers top farm team in 1939 the Royals were affiliated with the Philadelphia Athletics (1933-34) and the Pittsburgh Pirates (1937-38)
October 23, 1945. A big day not only for the club and the game of baseball but for society as a whole. Brooklyn National League Baseball Club Inc. Board of Directors, Montreal Royals owner and team president, Hector Racine, along with Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, breaking the “baseball colour barrier”.
Not only did Jackie Robinson play for the Royals in 1946 but two other black players, John Wright and Roy Partlow, also played for the Royals. This 1946 Montreal Royals team is considered one of the 100 greatest minor league teams of all time. A 100-54 record, the league title, and a Junior World Series win will put you in consideration pretty quickly.
The Montreal Royals continued competing in the International League through the end of the 1960 season. The Dodgers ended their affiliation with the ball club on September 13, 1960. With that, the franchise moved to Syracuse for the 1961 season playing as the Syracuse Chiefs. This would officially end the Montreal Royals era of baseball in the city.
SOME NOTABLE ROYALS
Walter Alston, Ed Barrow, Roy Campanella, Roberto Clemente, Jocko Conlan, Don Drysdale, Burleigh Grimes, Waite Hoyt, Rabbit Maranville, Walter Alston, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Sparky Anderson, Al Campanis, George Gibson, Tommy Lasorda, Joe Altobelli
Thank you for checking in for Part 1 today. Keep an eye out for Part 2 coming up soon. Until the next time and as always…KEEP IT 80 GRADE!
https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Montr%C3%A9al,_QC
https://www.lejeuglorieux.com/
https://archivesdemontreal.com/2015/04/02/a-brief-history-of-baseball-in-montreal-from-1860-to-1960/
https://baseballhall.org/discover/montreals-baseball-story-dates-back-to-canadas-earliest-days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Royals
https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Montreal_Royals
There was some resistance in the city but as he did in the bigs, he won some folks over that were not happy about Mr. Robinson playing ball in MTL. I saw this quote from Ken Burns's "Baseball" doc that said the following: "The narrator quotes Sam Maltin, a sports journalist with the Montreal Herald: "It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of lynching on its mind." Some tough times no doubt but the city did love him.
The Montreal Royals alumni list is impressive without a doubt