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.