Foreword: Ottawa Baseball From 1865 to 2025

It was a time of hopes and dreams. When the Ottawa Lynx played their first home game on April 17, 1993, baseball was on the ascendancy in Canada. The Toronto Blue Jays had just won the first of two consecutive World Series. The Montreal Expos, the parent team of the fledgling Lynx, were climbing the standings, a year away from having the best team and the best record in baseball.

For the players arriving in Ottawa that spring, it was less about the launch of a franchise and more the hopeful start of a new season and the penultimate step to stardom. A Triple-A prospect is always only an injury, a trade, or a prolonged slump by a major leaguer away from a phone call and a ticket to The Show. Future major leaguers including Matt Stairs and Tim Laker arrived in Ottawa with a sense that their moment had almost arrived. A few solid months in Ottawa and they would soon be with the Expos.

For the fans, it was a new chapter in a love affair with baseball and the Expos. For a generation, busloads of residents had made regular trips to Jarry Park and Olympic Stadium to watch Rusty Staub, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and Tim Raines. For Ottawa to not only have a Triple-A team but to affiliate with the Expos was perceived as nothing short of a match made in baseball heaven. Ottawa fans eagerly embraced the chance to follow the Expos of tomorrow and cast eyes on visiting prospects, including future Hall-of-Famers from Derek Jeter to Jim Thome, to join the fraternity of professional baseball towns, to relish spring and summer evenings in a brand-new ballpark.

And for a 24-year-old aspiring broadcaster, it was a dream come true. Raised on the voices of Dave Van Horne and Duke Snider carried over the airwaves and onto the portable radio I kept under my pillow and brought to my grandparents’ house for Sunday afternoon games, I was desperate to take a spot at the microphone and spin my own lyrical tales of green grass and fresh young faces, of stolen summer nights and stolen bases. I auditioned for and earned a spot on the part-time broadcast team, announcing games on both radio and television.

The arrival of the Triple-A Lynx was a new beginning, but also the continuation of a story of professional baseball in Ottawa dating back to the nineteenth century. In 1898, Ottawa played in the Eastern League. The Ottawa Senators existed in a variety of forms in the first half of the twentieth century. Ottawa had a stint in the International League in the 1950s, as affiliates of the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics playing at Lansdowne Park.

But nothing matched the excitement of the arrival of the Lynx. Though it ended in a semifinal loss and not a championship, the inaugural season was close to perfect. Dozens of games were sold out as Ottawa broke a decades-old International League attendance record. Large groups of fans gathered in the picnic area down the left-field line or watched from the restaurant next to the press box. A local country musician, Gail Gavan, recorded the team’s theme song, “The Lynx Are on the Prowl.” The field was immaculate, considered one of the best-maintained in the minors. The crowds welcomed a new mascot, Lenny the Lynx, a cat with an attitude. In between innings, the umpires had water delivered in a tiny replica of an Ottawa Citizen newspaper truck.

The team was a delight to follow. Within a few weeks of opening day there was a combined no-hitter. Flashy outfielders Cliff Floyd and Rondell White were called up from Double A. A fast-working 22-year-old left-hander from Illinois named Kirk Rueter arrived en route to a 13-year career in the majors. Curtis Pride won the hearts of fans with his compelling story of perseverance; when the minor-league season ended, he became the first deaf player in almost half a century to play in the big leagues.

And of course, there was the ultimate fan favorite, F.P. Santangelo. Santangelo was scrappy and energetic, played multiple positions, gave a great interview, and appeared in all but a handful of games for the Lynx. And when Lenny the Lynx was officially introduced, he stole the mascot’s ATV and drove it around the warning track.

Such was the magic of Triple-A baseball in Ottawa in 1993. It was light, it was fun, it was entertaining. It was everything that minor-league baseball promised to be. It filled the long spring and summer nights while Ottawa’s main professional sports franchise, the NHL’s Senators, were still losing like an expansion team and a few years away from extending their season beyond the first week of April. Ottawa became the darling of the International League.

Little did we know that the magical summer of 1993 was the crescendo rather than the opening act. The following August, the players’ strike ended not only the finest season in Expos history, it precipitated the decline and eventual demise of the franchise and with it a downward spiral in interest in the sport in Eastern Canada. The Expos went from World Series favorites to an abandoned, ownerless franchise that would eventually play some of its games in Puerto Rico. The Lynx went from hosting superstars such as Larry Walker and Moises Alou at their annual exhibition game to being joined at the hip with the worst franchise in professional sports.

After the record-setting inaugural season, the attendance for the Lynx declined steadily. At first, it seemed like a normal rationalization after the honeymoon of the first season. But the free fall never stopped. An anemic Canadian dollar didn’t help the business model, with Ottawa and other minor-league clubs north of the border having to pay most of their expenses in US funds.

Before the team’s fateful destiny became apparent, there were a few more shining moments. For the final few weeks of the 1994 season, with no major-league games to broadcast, the baseball world’s attention shifted to the minors and Van Horne covered the Lynx nightly along with his latest broadcast partner Ken Singleton. It was a small silver lining to what would become the longest work stoppage in baseball history. And in 1995, when the strike mercifully ended, a club made up of prospects and would-be replacement players captured the team’s only championship, winning the Governors Cup in front of the home crowd.

For the diehard fans who continued to follow the team during the decline of the Expos and when Ottawa eventually aligned with Baltimore and then Philadelphia, there were future stars including José Vidro, Orlando Cabrera, Michael Barrett, and J.A. Happ. But the magic of sold-out crowds and feeding the Expos’ future ambitions was over. Once lost, the magic of minor-league baseball is almost impossible to reclaim. The Lynx dwindled, other Canadian cities lost their Triple-A teams, and the inevitable finally occurred in 2007 when the team moved to Pennsylvania, never to be heard from in these parts again.

In the years that have followed, a series of semi-professional and independent baseball teams have called Ottawa home, including the Rapidz, the Fat Cats, the Champions, and now in 2024 the Ottawa Titans. There was a brief effort to bring a Double-A team to Ottawa, but that opportunity fizzled.

Like many stories that begin with hopes and dreams, the saga of the Ottawa Lynx has a melancholy ending. Nothing lasts forever. But it’s better to have witnessed the minor miracle than missed it altogether. We will always have F.P., Lenny, the summer of 1993, and a lifetime of baseball memories. And hope remains for big crowds and hot prospects in Ottawa’s future.

MARK SUTCLIFFE was elected as the Mayor of Ottawa in 2022.