The Toronto Blue Jays are about to begin their 50th season, but they actually turn 50 on March 20, 2026.   It was on this day that Major League Baseball’s American League voted 11 to 1 to award an expansion franchise to Toronto.

When the Montreal Expos became the first Canadian team in Major League Baseball in 1969, Paul Godfrey, who was then a North York alderman, set out to secure a franchise for Toronto (special thanks to Toronto community member Maxwell Kates who with Bill Nowlin share the history of the birth of the Blue Jays in their 2018 book Time for Expansion Baseball).  Godfrey approached baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn who told Godfrey that Toronto first needed a baseball stadium before applying for a team.

In 1973, Godfrey was the Metro Toronto Chairman when he and Ontario Premier Bill Davis agreed to upgrade and expand Exhibition Stadium.  The renovation was completed in August 1975.  With the stadium ready, Toronto lawyer Herb Solway, on behalf of a group that included Labatt’s Breweries, negotiated an agreement to purchase the San Francisco Giants and move the team to Toronto for the 1976 season.  The city of San Francisco filed for an injunction to stop the move and ultimately another buyer, Bob Lurie, was found who agreed not to move the Giants to Toronto.

Around the same time, the American League awarded an expansion team to Seattle.  This was to settle a lawsuit launched by the city, county and state against the American League due to a prior expansion team, the Seattle Pilots, being acquired by Bud Selig and moving to Milwaukee (to become the Brewers) after only one season.  After 18 days of the trial, in January 1976 the American League offered a new expansion team to Seattle to resolve the matter.  This team started playing in 1977 as the Seattle Mariners.  Danny Kaye was one of the owners of the new franchise.

The American League needed a second expansion team to even out the league, which they awarded to Toronto.  It was at this point that Charles Bronfman, who owned the Montreal Expos, tried to have the Toronto franchise in the National League (where the Expos played) instead, correctly concluding that the two Canadian teams in the same League would be great rivals.  The National League required unanimity to expand which was not obtained, and that is why Toronto is in the American League.

Two groups competed for the Toronto franchise: one including Labatt’s and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC),  and the other headed by Philip and Irving Granofsky who were friendly with Jerry Hoffberger, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles who moved the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore in 1953.  The Labatt’s group prevailed.

The team’s owners had much to do before play began in one year (the first game was played in the snow on April 7, 1977).   In addition to hiring employees, selecting coaches, drafting players and building a farm system, the team needed a name. 

A “Name the Team” contest was held which received more than 30,000 entries.  Displays such as this one with contest entry forms were on the counters at CIBC branches until mid July 1976 (as a 15 year old, I asked the local branch bank manager for it when the contest was over, and I have kept this treasure ever since).

The winning name of course was the Blue Jays.  The press release at the time explained the reason for this choice: “The blue jay is a North American bird…[I]t is strong, aggressive, and inquisitive.  It dares to take on all comers yet is down-to-earth, gutsy, and good looking.”  That is a perfect description of the Blue Jays who came two centimetres away from winning the 2025 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Here’s hoping that the strong, aggressive, inquisitive, down-to earth, gutsy and good looking Blue Jays of 2026 make it at least two centimetres farther this year.  Let’s go Blue Jays!

To everyone in Israel, I know this is a difficult and stressful time.  If you have read this far in the article, I hope it has given you a few minutes of distraction and thoughts of something pleasant and, in the grand scheme of things, not that important.  Be safe.

For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove

Treasure Trove is a program of The Herzl Project.

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