I wasn’t really aware of how important a date August
4 is in the history of Toronto and the planet.
Yes, I remember where I was when JFK was shot (Grade
9 English Class, Nelson High School). When Apollo 11 landed on moon I was
working at the #2 Rod Mill at Stelco in Hamilton. And I have a clear memory of September 9, 1956 when a six-year-old surreptitiously
crawled down the back hallway, apparently undetected by unsuspecting parents,
to watch Elvis gyrating on the Ed Sullivan show.
And, yes, I remember where I was that day. I was there at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium when
Dave Winfield “slew a gull.” My memory
is foggy though. I guess I should have
taken notes.
Along with about 36,000 others I was taking in the
game from the cheap, but covered, seats in left-centre field at what later became
known as the Mistake-by-the Lake. Burlington Post reporter Dennis Smith and I spent
four dollars each for our seats (Could they really have been $4.00 dollars then?) Between innings I had my 7x50 Dienstglas binoculars trained on this bird. It had pretty much sitting in the same place
in right-centre field for several innings.
As I looked at the gull through the binos it was smacked by a baseball.
Someone sitting near us called out: “Winfield killed that poor pigeon.”
The “pigeon” was indeed dead. A hapless ball boy was dispatched to cover
and remove the dead bird. While some
booing began I, clearly identifying with that ball boy, flashed back to a similar
incident in my past. As a student
steelworker I had been ordered by the foreman to “bury that poor effing cat” that
had been found dead in Stelco’s #2 Rod Mill.
Poor ball boy, I empathized with him.
As I’ve suggested some of the details of this
important day are lost to me.
The Star says the charge against Winfield, later
dismissed, was “cruelty to animals.” I can’t say I remembered that specific but
for some reason I do recall Winfield’s manager’s response to the charge:
Said
Billy Martin: “Cruelty to animals? That’s
the first time he’s hit the cut-off man all year.”
I remember too that the birding community was irked. Peter Whalen of the Globe and Mail wrote about
it. His column lamented the fact that the deceased bird was continuously referred
to by the media and public as a “seagull.” There is
no such species, as any birder worth his feathers would tell you. It was a ring billed gull or larus delawarensis, if you prefer.
I do have some memory of, then Metro Chairman, Paul
Godfrey grovelling to the Americans over the incident. But didn’t that have to
do with getting a NFL franchise for Toronto?
All these memories coming back to me……
Oh, and where were you on August 4, 1983?
Where they are now
Dennis Smith, who attended the game with this Blogger, is semi-retired and does some freelance work for the Burlington
Post. When reached today he declined
comment on the incident as he was busy doing a story
on a book written about another team that played in Toronto in the ‘Year of the
Dead Bird.’ That team, the Toronto
Argonauts, won the Grey Cup in 1983.
While the Toronto Blue Jays lost to the Yankees
that August day they did go on to record their first winning season in 1983
winning 89 times against 73 losses. This
year they are on pace for a record of 74 wins and 88 loses.
The #2 Rod Mill was opened by the Steel Company of
Canada (Stelco) in 1966. Once North America’s
largest manufacturer of hot rolled wire rods, it closed for good in 2004. Stelco was purchased by US Steel in 2007.
In 2008, an alleged
NFL team, the Buffalo Bills, began playing
four down football in Toronto once a year.
Ticket prices per seat averaged $183 that first year.
Bob
Wood
lives in Port Rowan Ontario and last attended a Blue Jays game when his son’s
school choir was singing the national anthem at the Sky Dome.
That would be about twenty years ago.
He preferred the Mistake-by–the-Lake as a sporting venue even if they were cruel to animals
there.
