The first Toronto baseball organization, the Toronto Baseball Club, played in the Canadian League in 1885, playing its home games at William Cawthra's Jarvis Street Lacrosse Grounds (Old Lacrosse Grounds) at the northwest corner of Jarvis and Wellesley Street.

The baseball stadium that would come to be known as Sunlight Park was built for the team and opened on May 22, 1886, with Toronto defeating Rochester 10–3 in front of 3,000 fans.

Former major league star Joe Kelley took the reins as manager in 1907 and the team's fortunes immediately turned around.

On Sept. 5, 1914, soon after Canada entered the First World War, a 19-year-old Babe Ruth was pitching for the Providence Grays in a game against the Maple Leafs.

The 1920 Leafs won 108 games, and had what would be the highest single season winning percentage in the history of the franchise at .701, but finished second to the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles.

The following year, the National Hockey League team, the Toronto St. Patricks, changed its own nickname to Maple Leafs.

In 1931, ownership of Maple Leaf Stadium passed to the Toronto Harbour Commission after the club was unable to pay taxes and other debts.

The one bright spot was 1934, when the team won the league championship under manager Ike Boone before losing the Junior World Series in nine games.

A group of local investors, headed by stockbroker Percy Gardiner and former lieutenant-governor of Ontario William Donald Ross, bought the Leafs in January 1937 to keep them in Toronto.

The team lost a lot of money, and wasn't very successful on the field, drawing about 60,000 paying fans a year during a three-year stretch from 1939 to 1941 when the Leafs finished in eighth place each season.

Joe Ziegler then became general manager and is credited with turning the team's fortunes around, with such promotional innovations as 20-cent hot dogs and Sunday games.

Under Ziegler, the Leafs set a new franchise attendance record with 353,247 customers in 1949—double what it had been two years earlier, despite a fifth-place finish.

Cooke had suggestion boxes installed throughout the stadium and introduced music over the public address system between innings.

Over the 10-year span from 1951 to 1960, the Maple Leafs drew 3.2 million spectators, peaking in 1952 with 446,040 fans in attendance (which went to more than 500,000 with the playoffs included) to see a team which finished in fourth place.

However, despite their strong start, attendance never again came close to matching the 1952 numbers, even with pennant-winning seasons under managers Luke Sewell in 1954, Bruno Betzel in 1956, and Dixie Walker in 1957.

In 1965 the Boston Red Sox became the parent club and another future Baseball Hall of Fame manager, Dick Williams, replaced Anderson at the Leafs' helm.

Meanwhile, the deterioration of Maple Leaf Stadium, regular broadcasts of major league games on television, and other factors drove attendance down to only 67,216 in 1967.

During their last season, Hunter was in discussions to sell the club, hoping to find an owner to keep the team in Toronto.

[5] Maple Leaf Gardens Limited, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League, held negotiations to purchase the club,[5][6][7][8] but the deal ultimately fell apart due to concerns about the team's stadium, which needed up to $250,000 in repairs and whose owner wanted $4 million to purchase it.

Members of the Maple Leafs won the league batting title 16 times: † Bases on balls counted as hits for the 1887 season Fifteen members of the Maple Leafs have been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Fourteen team members have been inducted into the International League Hall of Fame: John Berly, Bruno Betzel, Ike Boone, Jack Dunn, Luke Hamlin, Dan Howley, Rocky Nelson, Steve O'Neill, Eddie Onslow, Dick Porter, Dick Rudolph, George Selkirk, George Stallings, and Dixie Walker.