Ladies of the Night Game: Toronto’s Lighted Diamonds and the Women Who Pioneered Playing Under the Stars

Hanlan’s Point illuminated in 1928, not for baseball, but for opera. (City of Toronto Archives)

 

As soon as it became possible to play ballgames at night, baseball purists scoffed at the idea. In 1915, the Toronto Daily Star declared that night baseball had always been, and would always be, a dismal failure. “When it has been tried in the United States,” the sports editor wrote, “the light was wretched and it was impossible to follow the flight of a baseball.”1 In 1923, Hall of Famer Honus Wagner, syndicated in newspapers across North America, recalled an experimental night game he played in Wilmington, Delaware, which sent disappointed patrons rushing to the box office to demand refunds. Playing under lights “made it impossible to make a good catch in the outfield,” recalled the Flying Dutchman. He noted that “hitting a baseball at night was simply out of the question.” Night games were “a joke,” and he assured his readers he’d seen “the end of night baseball.”2 Writing in the Toronto Globe in 1927, columnist Michael Rodden lamented that athletes of the future would likely be forced to practice at unsatisfactory hours and under the indecorous glare of arc lights.3 Lou Gehrig, speaking on the radio in 1939, said that night games were “not really baseball” and “were strictly advantageous to the owners’ pocketbook.” Baseball, according to the Iron Horse, “should be played in the sunshine.”4 Decades later, when Canadian author W.P. Kinsella wrote Shoeless Joe, his protagonist, Ray, first bonded with the specter of Joe Jackson by discussing the unfortunate illumination of ballparks:

“What happened to the sun?” Shoeless Joe says to me, waving his hand towards the banks of floodlights that surround the park. “Only stadium in the big leagues that doesn’t have them is Wrigley Field,” I say. “The owners found that more people could attend night games. They even play the World Series at night now.” Joe purses his lips, considering. “It’s harder to see the ball, especially at the plate.” “When there are breaks,” I add, “they usually go against the ballplayers, right?” Joe grins. “I’d play for the Devil’s own team just for the touch of a baseball. Hell, I’d play in the dark if I had to.”5

By the early twentieth century, no one needed to play in the dark. Yet, for nearly three decades after it became practical, not a single ballgame was played under lights in the city of Toronto. Then, a group of adventurous young women, willing to play ball whenever they could during the Great Depression, played under the stars and sold tickets to the spectacle. Their success on the field and at the box office ensured the new-fangled idea had come to stay. Floodlight baseball took Toronto by storm.6

EARLY ELECTRICITY IN TORONTO

Electric lighting arrived in Toronto one evening in 1879 when two arc lights were turned on at McConkey’s restaurant at 145 Yonge Street. Power was supplied by a generator that was driven by a small steam engine. McConkey’s celebrated the occasion by serving free ice cream.7 Such steam-powered “dynamos” were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for personal or professional use. Beginning in 1881, dynamos were used to illuminate the Canadian National Exhibition, allowing it to continue each evening until 10:00PM rather than closing at sundown.8 Later that year, dynamo-powered electric lights were used to illuminate a sports venue for the first time in Toronto, at the Adelaide Street skating rink.9 In June 1883, a 1,300-pound dynamo powered lights for the outdoor curling rink at the uptown Granite Club. The Queen’s Own Rifles regimental band played an evening concert at the venue. “A great many persons spent their entire time [at the Granite] examining the dynamo-electric machine which produced the electric light,” wrote the Globe. “The light was quite mellow and would bring out colours the same as the sunlight.”10 By 1884, dynamo generators energized a small electric railway at the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, known today as the Canadian National Exhibition, and illuminated displays about the wonders of electricity both indoors and out.11 Though ground-breaking and significant, the era of the dynamo would be short. By 1882, electrical pioneer, inventor, and entrepreneur J.J. Wright had already built the first Canadian-made electric generator in the back room of the Firstbrook Box Factory in downtown Toronto.12

By the end of 1897, Toronto had 1,079 electric arc lights on its streets, but just 17 in its parks. These were supplemented by 23 remaining “ordinary gas lamps” that the city continued to service.16 By 1903, Alderman Daniel Chisholm was demanding action in the form of 125 new lamps for parks.17 But electrification of recreational spaces continued to advance at a snail’s pace. Earlier that spring, 17 Ontario municipalities had joined together to create a large enough market to justify the transmission of power from Niagara Falls to Toronto with diversions to towns and villages along the way.18 Hydroelectricity and its seemingly limitless potential was headed to Hogtown.

 

Sunnyside Park in 1924, before the installation of lights. The diamond was oriented so that fly balls landed on Lakeshore Boulevard. (City of Toronto Archives)

 

TEMPORARY LIGHTING FOR OUTDOOR SPORTS

The Track and Field Oval at Hanlan’s Point was the first athletic venue in Toronto to regularly advertise organized sporting events at night. The Oval, part of the collection of amusements, athletic facilities, and attractions on Toronto Island, would place portable arc lights, similar to those being used in theaters, alongside the track. The Oval was within home run distance of Hanlan’s Point Stadium, home of Toronto’s professional baseball club, the Maple Leafs. On September 8, 1907, with the lamps mounted on poles, a footrace was billed as “a scintillating Saturday night under arc lights.” Famed English distance runner Alfred Shrubb and star Maple Leafs outfielder Jack Thoney were featured in separate one-on-one challenge races. Thoney, wearing his baseball uniform, raced a lacrosse player for 100 yards and then battled another runner in a 220-yard race. Thoney was said to be “not even trying” by the end of each of his races, which he won easily. The Daily Star reported that “Thoney left last night for Cincinnati where he is fully expected to beat the world around-the-bases record.”19 During the mile-long main event, as Shrubb was beating American champion Thomas J. Kanaly by “a lap and a half,” the lights went out. “Something unfortunately went wrong with the electric power,” reported the correspondent on the scene. “The fifty odd arc lights, which illuminated the track, died away without warning, leaving the grounds in a state of almost total darkness.”20 Shrubb and Kanaly kept running under the light of the moon. Two years later, a 15-mile race was scheduled, this time with 100 mounted arc lights. The light flickered and nearly faltered, but thousands of paying customers were able to watch three runners round the track for nearly 90 minutes.21

More reliable lighting was on the way. In anticipation of publicly controlled power from Niagara reaching Toronto in early 1911, the city installed 18,000 single incandescent light bulbs and an additional 12,000 light-ready poles along its streets and in its parks. Those poles got their lights over the next 18 months.22 On December 22, 1911, the municipal government financed the lighting of a temporary skating rink inside Varsity Stadium for the winter. The skating pond was 100 by 200 feet, and the new hydroelectric power ensured its surface was well lit and its dressing rooms well heated.23 In the ensuing years, big-top circuses, red carpet arrivals, lakeshore swims, royal visits, lawn bowling lanes, cycling tracks, livestock competitions, soccer matches, and rugby games were all staged under temporarily constructed lighting rigs in the city of Toronto.24

In time, arc lights gave way to more powerful and reliable floodlights. The baseball park on Hanlan’s Point was outfitted with at least three floodlights that could be mounted along the top of the grandstand whenever a rugby match, football game, or starlit opera required light.25 Despite Hanlan’s Point Stadium being home to the Toronto Maple Leafs for 22 seasons, not a single ballgame was ever played at night there.26

It is worth noting that during the First World War, Canada’s Forestry Corps and the all-Black No. 2 Construction Battalion formed an integrated baseball team that played games against other soldiers behind the lines. By June 1917, the Forestry Corps, which included soldiers from Toronto, had generator-powered lighting rigs erected on tall poles at their camp in Jura, France. These makeshift work lights allowed the Foresters to complete their milling and construction duties throughout the night. The war diary of the No. 2 reveals regularly scheduled night baseball games at Jura, presumably under those same lights. Illuminated baseball games were exceedingly rare in 1917. Both the permanence of the light fixtures and the frequency of these games may have been global singularities.27

As the 1920s began to roar, the high-voltage wires began to hum. Reliable, permanent illumination for sports came to Toronto’s recreational parks before fields dedicated to soccer or baseball, though various sports teams used the general grass areas. Both Moss Park and Jesse Ketchum Park were noted spots for rugby, hockey, and soccer players to practice and play after dark.28 Lighting towers were erected at a tennis court along the Humber river and by 1923, the field used by the Parkdale Senior football team had permanent hydro-powered lights.29

Yet, despite a growing number of spaces where games could be played at night, no baseball leagues or teams took up the torch. Afternoon baseball games remained the overwhelming norm. Teams playing in the Toronto Playgrounds League down in Christie Pits or the Beaches League in the east, and even the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League in their brand new (unlighted) Maple Leaf Stadium, played most games at 3:00 or 4:00PM on weekends and “twilight games” beginning around 6:00PM on weeknights.30

In 1930, Sunnyside Stadium on the Lake Ontario shore, Ulster Stadium in the city’s east end, and Oakwood Stadium on St. Clair Avenue West became, in that order, the first stadiums in Toronto to feature purpose-built, permanent floodlights.31

Ulster Stadium, a 10,000-seater nestled in Toronto’s residential Leslieville neighborhood, primarily hosted soccer. Its grandstand and standing area were often full when visiting European teams, such as those from the English Football Association, paid a visit to Toronto. Within two weeks of lights being installed in mid-October 1930, the stadium hosted nighttime soccer, football, and rugby games.32 But not baseball.

Oakwood Stadium, located at Oakwood Avenue and St. Clair West, was originally a track and field facility with a grandstand. Oakwood’s inner field was used for soccer, rugby, and football. The permanent lights for the stadium were designed by noted Toronto athlete and architect Jim Crang. They were erected in late October 1930. A rugby league scheduled Wednesday night games for every week until the snow fell.33 By the 1950s, Oakwood Stadium had been converted into a successful stock-car racetrack. But no baseball games were being played under the lights there.

Sunnyside Stadium was different from the others. It was built in 1925 as one structure among many others at Sunnyside Amusement Park, “the playground by the lake.” The 3,000-seat stadium was specifically designed for use by female athletes, who were still a curiosity during the 1920s. In August 1930, Sunnyside became the first stadium in Toronto to be affixed with permanent lights. The 24,000-watt floodlight system was financed and installed by the Toronto Harbour Commission.34 Somewhat fittingly, the stadium stood on the shore of Lake Ontario in between two of the massive steel towers carrying the 110,000-volt power lines filled with hydroelectricity from Niagara Falls.35 In appearance, purpose, and now features, Sunnyside Stadium stood out. Something else was different about Sunnyside Stadium: She was a ballpark.

 

Stars of Sunnyside: Phil White, Pat Turnbull, and Dot Annis as featured in the Toronto Daily Star in 1933. (Toronto Daily Star)

 

SOFTBALL AND BASEBALL GAMES UNDER LIGHTS

Night baseball was still considered somewhat uncouth in 1930. At the conclusion of its season, the Central League in the United States went so far as to “give nocturnal baseball the ban.” In 1931, the CL brass decreed that “teams in our circuit will play only in the daytime.”36 In the International League, the Buffalo Bisons hosted the Montreal Royals in what was billed as the “first night baseball game in the East” on July 3, 1930.37 One skeptic outside the ballpark told the travelling Globe reporter that he’d wasted a trip. “The players will not be able to see the ball because the sphere will be out of sight most of the time.”38 In Toronto, the Daily Star spoke to baseball fans outside Sunnyside Stadium and asked their opinions on night games. Frederick Lyonde told the paper he was convinced baseball under lights was impossible. Isobel Hanes, an athlete herself, said she didn’t think she’d like to play under lights very often. An anonymous fan was quoted as saying it wouldn’t make a difference for the umpires, since blind men can’t see anyway.39

So, with baseball either experimenting, reluctant, or openly hostile, it fell to softball to christen Toronto’s nighttime diamonds. By 1930, amateur, semipro, and professional softball had become popular with female athletes. The game exploded in popularity after the end of the First World War and had replaced baseball for women by 1920.40 Sunnyside Stadium had been the main women’s softball facility in Toronto since 1925. From the day it opened, competitors in three different leagues played in front of huge paying crowds.41 The National League, the Major League, and the Sunnyside League hosted both daytime and twilight games at the stadium nearly every day during the summer. Canadian track and field legend Bobbie Rosenfeld, already internationally famous for winning gold and silver medals at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, agreed to manage and play for the Sunnyside version of the Maple Leafs. Her presence gave games at Sunnyside Stadium a boost in both popularity and press. In a decade dominated by “crazes” and “fads,” the women playing softball on the lakeshore, and regularly smashing home runs into the water or onto Lake Shore Boulevard, had no trouble selling tickets.42

Newspaper coverage of the women who played softball at Sunnyside was considerable. Images of catcher Isobel Savage, infielder Pat Turnbull, and outfielder Dot Annis appeared in the Toronto Daily Star, all of whom were described as “pretty damsels of Sunnyside diamond fame.”43 Daily Star sports columnist Lou Marsh regularly wrote about softball in the city, including the women’s game. Pioneering sports columnist Alexandrine Gibb covered the “news and views of feminine activities” in her “No Man’s Land of Sport” column. Gibb not only gave extensive coverage to the three leagues operating at Sunnyside, but through her gifted writing, described the games in a fashion that undoubtedly sold tickets. During the 1929 season, Gibb kept tabs on the trash talk emanating from the dugouts at Sunnyside. Boosters could buy tickets just to hear a lady swear. Gibb described the gimmicks being employed by Sunnyside promoters to exploit the expletives:

The Toronto Women’s Softball Association has arranged for four burly bobbies to be on hand. At the first inappropriate remark from the sidelines, the offender will be dragged out into the middle of the diamond where all can take a look at the “hero” who calls names.44

In July 1930, Billy D’Alexandro, president of the TWSA, and John F. “Duke” McGarry, President of Sunnyside’s National Softball League, announced that Sunnyside Stadium, which continued to operate as normal while lights were installed, would host Toronto’s first ballgame under the stars. On August 18, the Supremes would take on the Lakesides in a seven-inning affair. The organizers elected not to honor season passes for the night game, nor would any seats be reserved. Any fan wishing to attend needed to buy tickets, with prices slightly elevated, of course, at the stadium box office during business hours between August 15 and first pitch at 9:30PM on the 18th.45 The game needed to start late owing to “absolute darkness being necessary for the floodlights to operate.46” Rower and Olympic silver medalist Jack Guest, sprinter and Olympic champion Percy Williams, and high jumper, Olympic champion, and former baseball standout Ethel Catherwood would all be on hand for ceremonies before the game. When the lighting system was tested on the eve of the event, “the floodlights at the girls softball stadium were pronounced perfect by players who caught fly balls and picked up grounders for thirty minutes under the lights.”47 The players present for the test were informed that tickets for their game were selling fast.

August 18, 1930, presented perfect weather for softball. Two lines of people stretched along the boardwalk, anxiously waiting for the gates to open. Close to 3,000 people happily shelled out 25 cents each.48 Former Toronto Mayor Tommy Church, who helped organize shipment of baseball equipment to Canadian soldiers during the Great War, helped kick off the opening ceremonies before the sun went down and was happy “to see Toronto’s first softball played at night.”49

The rooters and fans waited eagerly, then impatiently, in the growing darkness. Some began calling for the lights to be turned on. At 9:05, the switch was flipped and the audience literally saw the future of ballgames in Toronto. “A gasp of astonishment swept through the stands,” wrote the witness for the Daily Star. “In a few seconds the bewilderment had subsided and as every corner of the field was plainly seen, the fans quickly realized the possibilities of perfect ball.”50 Ethel Catherwood tossed the ceremonial first pitch, surrounded by other dignitaries, municipal politicians, and the assembled press. The players and coaches then formed two neat rows along the baselines for the official photograph. With the moment immortalized, the Supremes battery of Marge Ellerby and Dot Humpage took their positions. Then, Lakesides leadoff hitter Hilda Thomas became the first person in Toronto to ever dig in at the plate with electric lights, rather than sunlight, illuminating her batter’s eye. The game see-sawed and featured some brilliant hitting and fielding.51 The Lakesides won, 12–7.

Despite the long and notable list of disbelievers, skeptics, and naysayers, both spectators and players were pleased with the innovation of ballgames at night. The game was said to flow “the same as in daylight” and was considered “a big success.”52 National League president McGarry said, “The game as played under floodlights is just what is needed.” D’Alexandro of the TWSA was even more enthusiastic: “Floodlight baseball is a wonderful thing for the playoffs. There will now be no need to hurry though supper, or to dash away and leave dishes in the sink. The players do not seem to be under any strain and their fielding is just as good as it ever was.”53 Mrs. Joe Wright, a fan in the stands, correctly predicted the future: “I think floodlight baseball will be much more popular than daytime baseball. Many more fans will be able to conveniently get down to watch a game.”54 The crowds at Sunnyside kept coming after dinner and the dishes. Crowds in excess of 2,000 paying customers remained common at night games for the remainder of the women’s softball season. For comparison, in 1934, the professional men playing in their new lakefront stadium, the soon-to-be International League champion Maple Leafs, averaged just 1,793 fans per game.55

For more than three years, Toronto’s women remained the only ballplayers hitting and fielding at night. The evidence regarding the integrity of gameplay was overwhelming and the lost revenue for reluctant leagues was becoming foolhardy. Amateur men’s baseball teams in Ontario cities like London and St. Thomas, as well as professional men’s teams across North America, were regularly playing games under lights by 1932. Yet Toronto the Good proved Toronto the Stubborn when it came to male ballplayers playing at night. There was such success for women playing night games that a second lighted location, Acorn Park, was opened to invite even more paying customers. The ladies of the Acorn Park Softball League played before a 3,000-seat grandstand in a residential neighborhood south of College Street.59

The Toronto Amateur Baseball Association finally brought men, and the traditional game of baseball, under the lights for the first time in Toronto on September 4, 1933. A playoff game between the Beaches and Valley Views was scheduled for Ulster Stadium with an 8:30PM start.60 The event was met with little fanfare or recognition, though the Globe wondered if night baseball would “further popularize” the men’s game.61 Nine days later, Toronto’s male softball championship was slated to be played under the Ulster Stadium lights.62 Throughout 1934, amateur and semipro men and women played night games at Sunnyside Stadium, Acorn Park, and Ulster Stadium. When Honus Wagner wrote in 1923 that he’d seen the end of night baseball, he’d failed to consider improving technologies, economic necessities, and the pioneering spirit of those damsels of Sunnyside diamond fame.

THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS FOLLOW SUIT

In March 1934, the Toronto Harbour Commission, builders of the Sunnyside light standards, revived what the Daily Star called the “dead idea” of floodlights at Maple Leaf Stadium.63 The board elected to start work on light towers for the municipally controlled Fleet Street ballpark as soon as weather permitted. Management of the International League Maple Leafs believed lights would allow the Leafs and their fans to participate “in nocturnal sport” at least two or three times per week.64 Lou Marsh, who’d been writing about the successes at Sunnyside for nearly four years, criticized the city for not building lights sooner at Toronto’s municipal stadium. The fact that the ballpark had not been optimized for nighttime use by other teams, events, and local organizations was “poppycock,” Marsh wrote. Lights would finally allow the “municipally owned stadium to be put to its fullest use by the local sports world.”65 Indeed, simply the promise of lights in March was enough for Toronto promoter Jack Corcoran to book the facility for gridiron football and professional wrestling events in July.66

On June 9, the Maple Leafs organization and the Harbour Commission followed the lead of the Sunnyside women and began construction on eight light towers on top of and around Maple Leaf Stadium. The work was completed by June 20 and, demonstrating the obvious business sense of the lights, the Maple Leafs scheduled their first night game for just eight days hence. The steel used to build the towers, light fixtures, bulbs, and reflecting mirrors all came from Canadian firms.67 The outfield light towers stood 93 feet tall and weighed over seven tons. The combined illumination power of the new lighting setup was over 19 million candle power.68

The Leafs placed ads in the various daily papers calling their inaugural night game vs. the Rochester Red Wings the “event of the baseball season” and “the thrill of a lifetime. This is an all-Toronto night to cheer the lads to victory under the best lighting system in organized baseball.”69 Former Chicago White Sox pitcher, vaudevillian, and on-field comedian Nick Altrock was hired to provide a pregame frolic before the baseball began at 9.70 The lighting system “was a great success” as Rochester beat the Maple Leafs, 8–2. The Daily Star recorded there were “plenty of bright lights” at Maple Leaf Stadium, “but the Leafs did not shine.”71 The Leafs played 15 additional night games in 1934, raising their average attendance by nearly a thousand fans.72 During a crucial pennant-race series, Montreal field manager Frank Shaughnessy demanded that the Royals play only under lights when in Toronto or he would remove his players from the field. He said Royals players didn’t like the afternoon or twilight conditions at Maple Leaf Stadium one bit.73 This protest may have been strategic on the part of Shaughnessy as the Leafs were deemed “jinxed” under lights in 1934.74 The Maple Leafs shook off the bad electrical mojo and won the International League championship later that year.

The lights erected in the outfield at Maple Leaf Stadium could be seen clean across the waterfront from the Leslie Street Spit. They served as a beacon of the future. Within a few years, no professional baseball team in Toronto would ever play a majority of its games in the daytime. Night games, whose proof of concept in Toronto was pioneered and solidified by the women of Sunnyside and Acorn parks, became, like the lights themselves: a permanent fixture. 

STEPHEN DAME is a father, teacher, softball coach, and baseball researcher in Toronto. He presents research papers each year at the Canadian Baseball History Conference. He is a member of SABR’s Hanlan’s Point chapter and thinks the organization should change its name to the Society for North American Baseball Research.

 

Notes

1. “An Eye on the Sporting World,” Toronto Daily Star, September 13, 1915, 11.

2. Honus Wagner, “Hans Wagner’s Baseball Story,” Toronto Daily Star, December 17, 1923, 11.

3. Michael J. Rodden, “Canadian Gridiron Punts and Passes,” The Globe, October 6, 1927, 11.

4. Nathan Maciborski, “When Yankee Stadium Was Lit,” Yankees Magazine 41, no. 3 (May 2020), https://www.mlb.com/news/first-night-game-in-yankee-stadium-history, accessed January 13, 2025.

5. W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), 16.

6. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success at Sunnyside,” Toronto Daily Star, August 19, 1930, 8.

7. Robert M. Stamp, Bright Lights Big City: The History of Electricity in Toronto (Toronto: City of Toronto Archives, 1991), 11.

8. Stamp, 13.

9. Stamp, 15.

10. “Local News,” The Globe, June 9, 1883, 14.

11. “Canada’s Great Fair,” The Globe, August 29, 1885, 4.

12. Stamp, Bright Lights Big City, 12.

13. Stamp, 15.

14. Derek Hughes (author of the blog Life By Numbers, lifebynumbers.ca), email interview, June 6, 2024.

15. “Civic Lighting Plant,” The Globe, May 28, 1894, 5.

16. “Factory Water Rates,” The Globe, January 7, 1898, 7.

17. “For Better Inspection,” The Globe, August 19, 1903, 12.

18. Pierre Berton, Niagara: A History of the Falls (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 1992), 288.

19. “Extraordinary Scene at Finish of Shrubb Race,” Toronto Daily Star, September 9, 1907, 8.

20. “Extraordinary Scene.”

21. “An Attractive Offering,” Toronto Daily Star, May 19, 1909, 23.

22. Stamp, Bright Lights Big City, 31.

23. “College Notes,” The Globe, December 23, 1911, 15.

24. “Bears Ride Roller Skates,” The Globe, July 8, 1922, 15; “Will Introduce Olympic Victors,” Toronto Daily Star, March 3, 1924, 13; “Sporting Views and Reviews,” Toronto Daily Star, August 23, 1927, 10; “Princes Dance With Canadians on Board Ship,” Toronto Daily Star, July 28, 1927, 1; “Veiled Hint New Toronto May Jump Highway Pact,” Toronto Daily Star, April 4, 1928, 10; “The Racing Cycling Season Opens June 14,” Toronto Daily Star, June 3, 1913, 11; “Flood Lights Used to Judge Course,” Globe, July 20, 1928, 20; “Canada V. Great Britain in Big British Rugby Game,” Toronto Daily Star, September 7, 1928, 4.

25. “Starlit Grand Opera Is First in Toronto,” Toronto Daily Star, July 11, 1936, 16.

26. A photograph exists in the Toronto Archives that purports to show “baseball at night” at Hanlan’s Point Stadium in 1928. A close examination of the photo reveals a stage standing in the middle of the infield. The photo is likely of a dramatic performance held after the Leafs vacated the stadium in 1925. Over the span of time the Leafs called Hanlan’s Point home, due to fire they were only able to occupy the park for 22 of those seasons: 1897–1900 and 1908–25.

27. Stephen Dame, “Coloured Diamonds: Integrated Baseball in the Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1918,” Journal of Canadian Baseball 1, no. 1 (November 2022), 14, https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/jcb/article/view/7696, accessed January 13, 2025.

28. “Free Kicks,” The Globe, September 26, 1911, 13; “Bickle, The Argo Half Is Out of the Game,” Toronto Daily Star, October 15, 1914, 14.

29. “Misses Wilson and Backus Feature Humber Singles,” The Globe, September 11, 1928, 6; “P.C.C. Seniors Face Strong Opposition,” The Globe, October 24, 1923, 10.

30. “Twilight Season Opens at the Pits,” Toronto Daily Star, May 3, 1933, 14.

31. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success”; “Gridiron Frolics Under the Flares,” Toronto Daily Star, October 29, 1930, 12; Lou Marsh, “With Pick and Shovel, Slams and Salve,” Toronto Daily Star, October 17, 1930, 12.

32. “Soccer Night League to Open at Ulster Tuesday,” Toronto Daily Star, October 23, 1930, 17; “Tiger Cubs and Balmy Beach Play Here Thanksgiving Day,” Toronto Daily Star, November 6, 1930, 18; “Gridiron Frolics Under the Flares.”

33. Marsh, “With Pick and Shovel.”

34. “Night Softball Carded for Sunnyside Monday,” The Globe, August 15, 1930, 7.

35. Mike Filey, I Remember Sunnyside: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Era (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 1996), 59.

36. “Where Night Baseball Is Unpopular,” The Globe, November 21, 1930, 11.

37. “Baseball at Night Is Voted Success,” The Globe, July 4, 1930, 8.

38. “Baseball at Night.”

39. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

40. Barbara Gregorich, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (San Diego: Harcourt and Brace, 1993), 49.

41. Filey, I Remember Sunnyside, 61.

42. “Sporting Views and Reviews,” Toronto Daily Star, June 12, 1928, 8.

43. “Pretty Damsels of Sunnyside Diamond Fame,” Toronto Daily Star, June 22, 1933, 11.

44. Alexandrine Gibb, “In the No Man’s Land of Sport,” Toronto Daily Star, September 21, 1929, 8.

45. “Night Softball Carded For Sunnyside Monday,” The Globe, August 15, 1930, 7.

46. “Night Softball Carded.”

47. “Flood Lights Given Trial,” The Globe, August 16, 1930, 11.

48. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

49. “Tonight at Sunnyside,” The Globe, August 18, 1930, 7.

50. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

51. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

52. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

53. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

54. “Softball By Floodlights Big Success.”

55. “1934 Toronto Maple Leafs Roster,” Stats Crew, https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/roster/t-tl15009/y-1934, accessed January 13, 2025.

56. “Inter-City Game Won By Maple Leafs,” Toronto Daily Star, August 21, 1930, 11.

57. Gibb, “In the No Man’s Land of Sport.”

58. Gibb.

59. Gibb.

60. “Baseball,” The Globe, September 4, 1933, 6.

61. “To Install Lights Again Down East,” The Globe, September 2, 1933, 6.

62. “Beach and Clubmen Open Series Monday,” Toronto Daily Star, September 9, 1933, 11.

63. “Sport Parade,” Toronto Daily Star, March 16, 1934, 14.

64. “Sport Parade.”

65. Marsh, “With Pick and Shovel.”

66. Marsh.

67. “Preparing for Night Baseball,” The Globe, June 22, 1934, 11.

68. “Preparing For Night Baseball.”

69. Maple Leaf Stadium, advertisement, Toronto Daily Star, June 27, 1934, 12; Maple Leaf Stadium, advertisement, The Globe, June 26, 1934, 12.

70. Maple Leaf Stadium, advertisement, The Globe.

71. Charlie Good, “Plenty of Bright Lights,” Toronto Daily Star, June 29, 1934, 10.

72. Bert Perry, “Leafs Drop Second Straight to Red Birds,” The Globe, October 1, 1934, 11.

73. Charlie Good, “No Twilight Tilts for Shag,” Toronto Daily Star, July 18, 1934, 10.

74. W.T. Munns, “Night Games Jinx to Leafs,” The Globe, June 22, 1934, 11.