April 19, 1912: Toronto Maple Leafs play their first game in International League

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The Toronto Maple Leafs held their spring training in Macon, Georgia, before making their way north to begin the season in New Jersey. They were scheduled to play the Jersey City Skeeters, who had completed their training camp in Bermuda.1

Opening Day of the inaugural International League season for all of its teams was scheduled to be April 18, but rain delayed the Maple Leafs-Skeeters game until the next day. The teams were able to get their seasons going on April 19 at West Side Park in Jersey City, which was still feeling the effects of the poor mid-April weather. “Fans braved the chill air,” reported the New York Tribune.2 The game-time temperature of 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius) was noticeably cooler than that of a normal mid-April day in New Jersey (61 degrees Fahrenheit or 16 degrees Celsius).3

The headlines in newspapers were still fresh with accounts from the British passenger liner RMS Titanic, which had sunk six days earlier, and the arrival on the 19th of the RMS Carpathia seven miles (11 kilometers) away at Pier 59 in New York City with 705 survivors from the doomed ocean liner.4 Even with the poor conditions and significant distractions, 5,000 rooters came out to see the home-team Jersey City Skeeters (they were named after the mosquito infestation next to West Side Park)5 face the heavily favored Toronto Maple Leafs, led by manager Joe Kelley, former player-manager of the National League’s Boston Doves and Cincinnati Reds.

The game was of such importance that Toronto City Alderman (and future mayor) Charles Maguire, and the lieutenant governor of the Province of Ontario, John Gibson, came to attend the game. Also in attendance was International League President Ed Barrow, former manager of the Maple Leafs.6

The mayor of Jersey City, Henry Otto Wittpenn, threw out the ceremonial first ball with much fanfare. He also put out a fire when an overzealous Skeeters fan threw a lighted match onto the field, setting the decorations on fire. Mayor Wittpenn reacted quickly, jumping over the railing to extinguish the flames.7

Manager Kelley, a 1971 Cooperstown Hall of Fame Veterans Committee inductee, had put together an exciting Maple Leafs roster during the offseason, and the league’s westernmost team was expected to challenge for the inaugural title.

The poor conditions undoubtedly played a part, as the batters generally struggled against starting pitchers Art Mueller of Toronto and the Skeeters’ Marty McHale. Mueller, one of the Maple Leafs’ top four starters, had won 17 games for the team the previous year. Right-hander McHale, getting the Opening Day call for the Skeeters, had pitched six games over the previous two seasons for the American League’s Boston Red Sox. Each pitcher was effective, scattering six hits throughout the game.

Toronto was first to get on the board. The second batter to face McHale, former St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Al Shaw, hit his first International League home run to deep center field over the head of Cuke Barrows, a onetime Chicago White Sox prospect. Jersey City responded in the bottom of the first when the third batter, Barrows, drew the first of four bases on balls ceded by Mueller. The fourth hitter, veteran Pep Deininger, hit a ball to right field. The throw from right fielder Jack Dalton sailed over the head of third baseman Bill Bradley, a former longtime Cleveland Indian, allowing Barrows to score.

The Skeeters scored what proved to be the winning run on the bottom of the sixth when Barrows once again reached base on a walk from Mueller. Groundouts by Deininger and George Wheeler moved Barrows to third. The youngest player in the game, 19-year-old Hal Janvrin, who would go on to play nearly 800 games with the Red Sox, Cardinals, Senators, and Robins, then walked.8 That brought up shortstop Roxey Roach, who hit a line drive past Maple Leafs shortstop Ed Holly, and Barrows scored. This provided all the runs that McHale would need on this day.

The Maple Leafs had chances in the later innings, as both Shaw (eighth inning) and left fielder Benny Meyer (ninth) hit doubles, but both were left stranded. The 2-1 loss in their first game was disappointing for Kelley and the rest of the Maple Leafs players, who felt this was a game they should have won. A couple of key errors and a lack of timely hitting proved their undoing.

Not playing for Toronto that day was the regular left fielder, Toronto-born Bill O’Hara, who had previously accumulated 380 major league at-bats. The 30-year-old O’Hara was not in the Opening Day lineup as he had looked slow during the spring in Macon. He did find a regular spot with the team shortly thereafter, hitting .304 for the 1912 season. O’Hara died in Jersey City in 1931.

Joe Kelley’s Maple Leafs rebounded from this opening defeat to finish the season with a 91-62 record, winning the pennant by five games over the three-time defending Eastern League champion Rochester Hustlers.9 This was the first of eight International League championships for the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of the most successful teams in the league’s history. The franchise was sold and moved to Louisville after the 1967 season.

The Maple Leafs drop the 1912 International League season opener to the Jersey City Skeeters, 2-1. (New York Tribune)

Notes

1 Brooklyn Standard Union, April 19, 1912: 14. Jersey City’s having trained in Bermuda was unusual in that it was only the second team to hold spring training outside the United States. The Chicago White Sox had trained in Mexico five years earlier. See also “Crack of Bat Against Ball,” Boston Globe, January 29, 1912: 7.

2 “Jersey City Victorious,” New York Tribune, April 20, 1912:10.

3 National Centers for Environmental Information report, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Order #2837844.

4 “RMS Titanic: Arrival of the Carpathia to New York”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOFpwNPJkcs.

5 “News of Sport: Baseball,” Toronto Globe, April 20, 1912: 26.

6 “News of Sport: Baseball.”

7 “News of Sport: Baseball.”

8 Janvrin later became one of the few to pinch-hit for Babe Ruth, doing so twice in August of 1916. Mike Emeigh, email, January 15, 2022.

9 https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/1912_lnternational_League_season.