Dave Winfield Got Arrested at Blue Jays' Original Home. The Stories Only Get Wilder.
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The Blue Jays' 'Ex' will be taking center stage next week for all the world to see.
BMO Field, built on the site of the Blue Jays' original home ballpark, Exhibition Stadium (nicknamed the Ex '), will host Canada's first-ever World Cup game on home soil against Bosnia and Herzegovina next Friday, June 12th. For World Cup purposes, it will be referred to as 'Toronto Stadium' due to the ban on stadium naming rights at World Cup venues.
Torontonians had other names for it as a baseball park: Excruciation Stadium, The Mistake By The Lake, and some other less family-friendly ones.
A 1988 fan survey ranked it dead last among MLB parks for fan experience. Former Blue Jays President Paul Beeston once dubbed it 'The Worst Stadium in Sports'.
Yet, Toronto fans did what Canadians do. They showed up. They braved the elements — cold, wind, and sometimes fog. In 968 regular-season games at 'The Ex,' the Blue Jays never once drew fewer than 10,000 fans, making Toronto the only Major League team able to make that claim during the period from 1977 to 1989, when 'The Ex' was open for baseball.
So the Blue Jays' relationship with their ' Ex' was, well, complicated. But the stories are gold, Jerry, gold - including the Snow Day, OG 'Tarps Off' debate, and the Seagull Incident.
'The Ex' Had A History
Exhibition Stadium sat on the grounds of Exhibition Place, still the site of the annual Canadian National Exhibition. The stadium was west of downtown Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario, with the cold and wind coming off the lake often impacting games.
The site, known as Canadian National Exhibitions (CNE) Stadium, was originally built as a combination grandstand for events like concerts and a racetrack. Everyone from the King (NASCAR's Richard Petty) to The Boss (Bruce Springsteen) to The Material Girl (Madonna) performed at the venue.
Locals also feted the Pope (John Paul II) and the Queen (Queen Elizabeth II) there.
It was even home to an 18,000-person bingo game. Talk about needing the free space.
The Grey Cup was held there 12 times in 24 years.
The CFL's Toronto Argonauts played their home games at the venue. In 1972, in the first game on newly installed artificial turf, Argos quarterback Joe Theismann's foot got caught in it as he was being tackled, and he cracked his fibula.
It would not be Theismann's most famous injury.
The Chevy That Helped Bring Baseball to Toronto
What the Ex was not built for was baseball.
Who's on First was not a comedy routine; it was a question fans sitting in the outfield asked because their seats were so far away from the action and at a 90 degree angle to home plate.
The relationship between the Blue Jays and the Ex was a marriage of convenience.
Before he owned the Washington Redskins, Jack Kent Cooke tried to bring Major League Baseball to Toronto. In 1958, the National League said it would move the Dodgers out of Los Angeles if funding for a new stadium was not approved, with Toronto considered one of the potential relocation options.
The funding, though, was approved for what would become Dodger Stadium, the site of Games 3-5 in last year's World Series between the Blue Jays and the Dodgers.
In 1973, Paul Godfrey, the chairman of a regional governing body that included the city of Toronto, made getting a Major League team a priority. Godfrey realized the costs would be too much for what he called a 'Rolls Royce type' stadium. In 1974, the city council approved what Godfrey dubbed 'a Chevrolet' of a stadium, which enlarged CNE Stadium to accommodate baseball.
After a failed bid to attract the San Francisco Giants in 1976, American League owners voted to add Toronto as an expansion team in 1977. The city having a stadium at the ready made it an easier choice for AL owners who wanted a second expansion team in addition to Seattle.
Let The Games Begin
The Blue Jays never drove 'The Chevy' to the levee, but it was rarely dry sitting next to Lake Ontario. In the team's first-ever game at the new stadium, groundskeepers raced against time to clear snow from the field as a crowd of 44,649 crammed into the new/old stadium. Toronto shortstop Bob Bailor was carrying around a hockey stick instead of a baseball bat.
With the outfield still covered in snow, the first pitch in Blue Jays history was thrown at 1:48 PM on April 7, 1977. The temperature was 0°C (32°F) with a wind chill of -7°C (19°F). A Zamboni was brought in to clear the frozen snow from the infield between innings.
The Blue Jays won their inaugural home game 9-5 behind two home runs from Doug Ault.
Ault hit both home runs off losing pitcher Ken Brett.
Eight years later, Brett's younger brother George would avenge that defeat and then some.
Field-level seats for the opener were $6.50. Outfield seats were $2.00. Every night was dollar dog night.
But good luck getting a beer to stay warm. A provincial law banned alcohol from the stadium to try to curb the 'enthusiasm' of rowdy, drunken fans. It was not until 1982 that the law was changed, allowing beer to be sold in the stadium.
A few cold beers would also have helped Blue Jay fans cope with the product on the field. In its first three seasons as a franchise, the team lost 107, 102, and 109 games. During the five no-alcohol seasons, Toronto finished last in the seven-team American League East every year.
The tide began turning in 1982 with the arrival of the late Bobby Cox. By 1985, Exhibition Stadium hosted its only playoff series, with Toronto losing in heartbreaking fashion in seven games after blowing a 3-1 series lead. The MVP in that series was Ken Brett's younger brother George.
The decisive blow in Game 7 — a wind-aided triple to right by Royals catcher Jim Sundberg, one of many times the elements from the lake wreaked havoc on games.
The Original Tarps Off Debate
In September of 1977, Baltimore was in the midst of a pennant race, but trailed the expansion Blue Jays 4-0 with rain in the forecast. The ground crew placed tarpulins over both mounds in the Blue Jays bullpen located down the left field line.
The prior day, an Oriole player had stumbled on one of the mounds. When Orioles Hall of Fame manager Early Weaver saw the tarps on the mound, he lost it, arguing with the umpiring crew for nearly twenty minutes. Eventually, the umpires ordered the grounds crew to take the tarps off one of the mounds. Weaver pulled his team off the field, deeming the conditions unsafe.
The Orioles players retreated to the locker room where they voted unanimously to forfeit the game, the only deliberate forfeit since 1914 (Cleveland's 10-cent beer night and Chicago's Disco Demolition Night forfeits are considered non-deliberate).
Dave Winfield and The Seagull
Jesus Sanchez was recently injured when a misunderstanding with a young fan in Baltimore resulted in a ball tossed from the stands hitting him in the wrist.
Sanchez fared far better than the seagull who was also accidentally hit by a ball at the Ex in 1983.
With the stadium so close to the lake, seagulls were a constant nuisance for Jays fans and the players on the field. The running joke at the time was that the food at the Ex was so bad even the seagulls hesitated to eat it, but of course, some couldn't resist going after food scraps.
After completing some warm-up tosses before the fifth inning, Winfield went to toss his ball to a nearby ballboy. His one bounce throw hit a nearby seagull in the neck, killing it. Yankees manager Billy Martin joked it was the first time Winfield had hit the cutoff man all year.
After the game, Toronto police charged Winfield with 'causing unnecessary suffering of an animal' and took him down to the local police station.
Within the hour, Toronto GM Pat Gillick posted a $500 bond for Winfield and the charges were dropped the next day when it was decided Winfield did not act with criminal intent.
A Solution for The Seagull Problem
When BMO Field opened at the same lakeside location in 2007, the seagulls continued to be a major problem. The solution was to have another bird, a Harris Hawk, perched on the top of the stadium to scare the Seagulls away. In a name-the-hawk contest, local fans named the hawk 'Bitchy'.
Harris Hawks will be on hand during the World Cup to deter scavenger seagulls from being a nuisance to fans from across the world.
One bird that won't be on hand is the site's one-time tenant, the Blue Jays. But their 'Ex' will forever be a part of their history.
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Adam Steinmetz writes about the Toronto Blue Jays for SI.com. Adam is also the editor and publisher of the Boston Sunday Sports Section, a weekly digital publication covering the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. A two-time winner of the Best Collegiate Sports Writer award in Philadelphia, he began his career with freelance work for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Palm Beach Post before building a successful career outside of journalism. He returned to sports writing last year, contributing to Pitcher List—including coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays—before launching Authorenticity on Substack, where he explores the human stories within baseball. The Boston Sunday Sports Section is his most ambitious project — the thinking fan’s modern Sunday Sports Section focused on the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.