By David Whalen
It didn’t receive a lot of national attention, but Ottawa lost another professional sports team this month.
On Labour Day, before nearly 7,500 fans, the Ottawa Lynx, the Triple-A affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies, lost their final game 8-5 to the Syracuse Chiefs.
The three-quarters full Lynx Stadium was a unique sight. For most games this season, the stadium’s empty blue seats created the illusion that baseball was being played on a diamond-shaped island.
Now it’s on to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where a stadium is currently being built to house the team, which will assume the unfortunate name the “Lehigh Valley IronPigs.”
As the Lynx were departing, the Canada’s only major league team, the Toronto Blue Jays, was winding down its season with a dull thud. After more promises from management that this would be the year the Jays would finally contend, the team is once again hovering around the .500 mark.
As Canada lost its last Triple-A baseball team and its only remaining top-flight team again conceded division supremacy to the richer Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, the nation yawned and girded for hockey.
It hasn’t always been this way. Cast your mind back 14 years.
John Olerud, Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar were 1-2-3 in American League batting average. Juan Guzman, Dave Stewart, and Pat Hentgen were confounding hitters. Duane Ward had 45 saves.
All played for the 1993 Blue Jays, a team that regularly filled its 52,000 seat home stadium, then called the SkyDome.
Fuelled in large part by the largest payroll in Major League Baseball, the team was well on its way to its second straight World Series championship. The team even had a Canadian, utility outfielder – and Toronto native – Rob Butler.
It was the objective apex of professional baseball in Canada.
Aside from the Jays, Canada had the low-budget Montreal Expos, chronic overachievers who finished just shy of a playoff spot and who, the next year, would post baseball’s best record before the season ended prematurely due to a player strike.
1993 also saw the introduction of the Ottawa Lynx. Perhaps because the Senators organization had yet to capture its own audience, the Expos Triple-A team was an immediate hit with fans in the sports-starved capital. The 693,000 Lynx tickets sold that season broke a 47-year-old league record.
The high-water mark for the team came in 1995 when the team captured the International League Championship.
At the time, there were three other Canadian Triple-A teams, in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. All, along with the Major League Expos, have since been relocated to cities across the United States.
Lynx management contend that a move to Allentown will reduce travelling costs for the Phillies organization. This might be true, but there’s also the undeniable fact that Canadian interest in professional baseball isn’t what it used to be.
This year, the Jays have averaged roughly 28,700 fans per home game, good enough for 18th in the 30-team league. While the prolonged strike of the mid-1990s hurt attendance nearly everywhere, most teams were able to recapture their audience within a few years. Toronto never has, due mostly to more than a decade of mediocrity.
Canada has some of the best baseball talent in the world – Major Leaguers Érik Bédard, Justin Morneau, Jason Bay, Jeff Francis, Russell Martin, etc. – yet an unmobilized fan base.
Minor League Baseball has broken its overall attendance record for four consecutive years. Yet there are no remaining Triple-A teams in Canada.
This year will mark the 13th consecutive year the Blue Jays miss the playoffs. If 1993 was any indication, as the Jays go, so too does interest in Canadian professional baseball.