Sunlight Park

Map showing the approximate location of the stadium. Sunlight Park Ave still exists near the bottom of the map.

Sunlight Park was Toronto's first professional baseball stadium built in 1886, as the Toronto Baseball Grounds.

The stadium was located in an area of the city now known as Riverside, south of Queen Street East, west of Broadview Avenue, and north of Eastern Avenue on the east side of the Don River. It was a 2500-seat wooden structure, with stands four storeys high and surrounded by a 4 metre wooden fence. Admission was 25 cents.

The site became known as Sunlight Park after William Hesketh Lever (of the Lever Brothers Company) opened Sunlight Soap Works south of the park in 1893; Sunlight being a well-known brand of soap in Canada. Toronto's first first professional baseball title was won in the Park on September 17, 1897. Cannonball Crane pitched the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Eastern League (the ancestor of today's International League) to a 15-5 win over Newark in the morning game of a doubleheader as well as pitching all of the second game (he continued to play with a sprained ankle sustained in the 4th inning). In the second game, Canonball hit a base-clearing drive in the 8th, sending the game to extra innings; he belted out a home run in the 11th to seal a 5-4 Toronto victory. He also returned to the park on Sunday with both a sore ankle and sore shoulder, pitching Toronto to another big win (22-8).

Legacy

An historical plaque has been affixed to a building now on the site by the City of Toronto to commemorate the Baseball Grounds. For a period of time, there was an alleyway named Baseball Place in the location, so named after the Grounds (although the name is no longer in use as of 2014). There is a Sunlight Park Road in the area that is still in use, which marked the boundary of the Grounds. As of 2014, the site is home to a Toyota dealership and a parking lot, among other brick buildings.

In May 2014, a local microbrewery created Sunlight Park Saison, a summer seasonal beer named in honor of the Grounds.

External Sites

• Description of the site and plaque
• Left Field Brewery that makes the Saison beer
• Toronto Public Library images showing the Baseball Place street sign