Together this Maple Leafs franchise would put together a phenomenal 109 win season
... and after 8 years of being bullied by the perennially 101-119 win Orioles,
the Maple Leafs would take 1st place for the first time since 1918... finally
beating out Baltimore who had won 101 games, taking the International League Championship
back to their new Toronto stadium. The I.L. trophy was an excellent
housewarming gift for the Maple Leafs' new ballpark. The Maple Leafs would spend
quite a long time staring at their new Championship trophy as they wouldn't
see another one in this ballpark for quite some time. The luck of the usually,
highly successful Maple Leafs would indeed change with the move to the new ballpark
as Lou Solman had hoped... and despite the I.L. Championship... it was not
for the better. There would be some decent performances by the 1927 ballclub with
Jim Faulkner (21-10, 2.89) and hitters Dale Alexander (26 2B, 11 3B, 12 HR,
97 RBI, .338) and Pinky Hargrave (31 2B, 12 HR, .306) putting up good some good
stats. Their 89-78 record however was not even good enough for 2nd place in the
tremendously competitive International League. Dale Alexander would try to fix
all this by himself in 1928 when he put up one of the most impressive hitting
performances in this ballpark's history... 49 2B, 11 3B, 31 HR, 144 RBI, 15 SB
and a whopping .380 batting average... tying the all time Toronto modern era
record with Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie. Alexander was so good that he was taken as
soon as the season ended by the Detroit Tigers where he immediately led the American
League in hits with 215 along with 43 2B, 15 3B, 25 HR and 137 RBI to go
along with a very healthy .343 batting average in his rookie season in the bigs.
By 1932, he was leading the American League in hitting with a .367 batting
average. While Alexander was a one man wrecking machine, the Maple Leafs lacked
the pitching to make it really "stick". Toronto would muster 86 wins against 80
losses, which was just good enough for 3rd place. |