Top Of The Third

Sunday, 3 July 2016

What's On Deck for Top Of The Third's Second Half

With the All-Star Game just over one week away and with most teams just past the half-way point of the season, I thought I’d just post a little update on what we have to look forward to in the second half of the season. First of all, this week we will finish off our Top 40 Blue Jays’ players of all-time as we look at the top three. Immediately after that, we will switch to our All-Star Game week. We will focus on memories from six different All-Star Games (two from the 70s, two from the 80s and two from the 90s).

Less than two weeks after the Mid-Summer Classic will be Baseball’s Hall of Fame Induction ceremonies with Ken Griffey Junior and Mike Piazza set to become the Class of 2016. We will have profiles on both players and we will also have a top five list of players who should be in the Hall, but for some reason or another, have yet to be included.

In August, we will celebrate 100 years of Wrigley Field with a multiple-part series (not sure how many yet) that will focus on Wrigley Field itself, the great players who graced the field inside the ivy walls, the great moments (and heartaches) as well as looking at the 1948 World Series—Wrigley’s only Fall Classic to date—and the infamous “Curse of the Billygoat.”

September will see a five-part series that will focus on the 1981 Montreal Expos, the only season the team made the postseason. Along the way, we will continue our “This Day In Baseball History”.

And to continue to honour the 40^th year of Blue Jays’ baseball, we will look at the top 25 important games in franchise history, a series that will begin on the final week of July.

Finally, October will see us focus on past post-season games. Each day in October will feature a great game from the past that was played on the calendar day corresponding with the day we will look at it. The primary focus will be the 1986 post season that saw an exciting NLCS and ALCS and a thrilling World Series.

As always, we welcome comments, criticisms and questions to the email provided below.

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Saturday, 2 July 2016

This Day in Baseball History: July 2, 1941

This Day In Baseball History: July 2, 1941

It was on this date in 1941 that New York Yankees centre-fielder, Joe DiMaggio, broke the record for the longest hitting streak in MLB history. In front of a crowd of 52,832 fans at Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio hit a two-run home run off of Boston Red Sox pitcher Dick Newsome in the fifth inning, to extend his hitting streak to 45 games. The previous record of 44 straight games was set by Wee Willie Keeler, who accomplished the feat back in 1897.

The Yankees would go on to beat the Red Sox by a score of 8-4, while DiMaggio would go on to get a hit in the Yankees next eleven games to set the new record for consecutive games with a hit to 56. After failing to extend the streak to 57 on July 17 at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, the Yankee Clipper would start a new hitting streak that would last 16 games, meaning that he would get a hit in 72 of 73 games, a remarkable achievement.

During the 56-game streak, DiMaggio batted .408, hit 15 home runs and 55 RBIs. Remarkably, while playing with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League in 1933, he would get a hit in 61 consecutive games, setting the Minor League record.

DiMaggio would finish 1941 with a .357 batting average, 193 base hits including 30 home runs, 43 doubles and 11 triples, and have an American League-leading 125 RBIs in capturing the AL’s Most Valuable Player Award, one of the three times he won the Award (1939 and 1947 were the other years he won it).

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Friday, 1 July 2016

Remembering the Pearson Cup On Canada Day

First, let me say Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians. It was 149 years ago today that we officially became a nation, and what better way to celebrate than remembering the Pearson Cup.

The Pearson Cup

I’m just wondering how many Toronto Blue Jays’ fans or Montreal Expos’ even know what the Pearson Cup was, never mind remembering it. I barely remember it myself, save for reading about one of the games in an old Scorebook from the seventies that I found in a box in the mid to late 1980s.

But it was an exhibition game that was played annually between the Jays and the Expos, created to raise money for minor league baseball in Canada. The games didn’t count in the standings and were merely for bragging rights. In 2003, after interleague play had started and the Jays and Expos would play each other for real in 1997, the Pearson Cup was re-introduced but would cease after 2004 when the Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals.

There is not much information out there about the Pearson Cup games that were played from 1978 until 1986. I doubt any video exists and there are very few pictures on google. While the scores from the games are available online, an extensive search that I undertook brought me no newspaper stories that would describe in detail what transpired during the games.

From what I gathered, the first game was played at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal on June 29, 1978, before a crowd of 20,221 fans. The Expos won the game 5-4 in ten innings. The first game in Toronto was held on April 19, 1979 at Exhibition Stadium with the game called after 11 innings with the score tied at four. The game was called because the Expos had a flight to catch to their next scheduled National League game.

Program from the 1982 Pearson Cup Game

Montreal won the 1980 edition of the game, 3-1, back in the Olympic Stadium and the 1981 game was cancelled due to the players’ strike. On September 2, 1982, the series resumed in Toronto, with the Expos winning again 7-3. The Blue Jays finally won a game in the Pearson Cup series in 1983 in Montreal, winning by a 7-5 score. On May 24, 1984, Toronto made it two straight when they won 6-5 in 13 innings at Exhibition Stadium.

In 1985, the game was played on May 9 and it was stopped after 11 innings in a 2-2 tie as this time it was the Jays who had to catch a flight out of town. The final game of the original series was played in Toronto on April 28, 1986, with the Jays winning 5-2. The eight games of the Pearson Cup were split right down the middle with three wins a piece and two ties.

Game action during the 1982 Pearson Cup

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