There is a strange alternate universe where the Toronto Maple Leafs make it to the playoff semifinals, and its exact centre is the baseball diamond in the northeast corner of Christie Pits park. The Maple Leafs that play there—and not at the Air Canada Centre—are Toronto’s home team in the Intercounty Baseball League (est. 1919), which comprises eight teams, all from Ontario.
On Sunday, the Leafs faced the fearsome Brantford Red Sox in game seven of a hard-fought series. The winner would earn the right to challenge the Ottawa Fat Cats in the finals; the loser wouldn’t play again until next spring. In the 2007 finals, the Leafs were able to beat the mighty Sox. But Brantford has won the league championship for the last three years running.
Hope for an upset on Sunday afternoon dissipated within 20 minutes of the game’s 2 p.m. start, when Brantford scored a stunning seven runs on five hits in the top of the first inning. When the Leafs came up to bat, a dark grey thunderhead blew in from the north, pelted the field with torrential rain and lightning, and scattered the crowd, except for a contingent of Brantford fans, who opened their umbrellas and waited it out.
The home team retreated to the Leafs’ locker rooms, located in the same small building that houses the Christie Pits washrooms.
The game resumed after a very wet, 90-minute delay. The Leafs’ most dedicated fans, a few older men who congregate by the benches at the lip of the Pits, returned to watch their team lose, spectacularly, 9 to 3.
“I come because they’re not paid a million dollars and they put forth a decent effort,” explained Wilf, the group’s most voluble member. He lifted his considerable bulk off the bench and waved to his friends. “Alright, see you guys in May,” he said.
