Leafs new owners see diamond in rough
Intercounty league team wants to draw inspiration from social media sensation
Keith Stein has a vision for the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club. It comes from a team more than a thousand kilometres away, located in a Georgia city that sits just off the Atlantic Coast: the Savannah Bananas.
The Bananas are independent baseball’s greatest success story, a sports and social media sensation that has transformed into a travelling circus touring the United States. Stein, who leads the new ownership group of the Leafs, envisions similar heights for Toronto’s Intercounty Baseball League franchise.
“We want to make this team really big,” Stein, a lawyer and entrepreneur, told the Toronto Star. “I feel a duty to do everything I can and our ownership group can to build this team, invest in the team (and) invest in Christie Pits.”
The new ownership group also includes Rob Godfrey, son of former Blue Jays president and CEO Paul Godfrey, as well as some “wellknown people,” including former athletes, Stein said.
The deal, valued at north of $1 million, received league approval Sunday. Around 40 groups expressed interest in the team, according to Ty Crawford, the Leafs’ chief operating officer who managed the sale.
The Leafs are a semi-professional team in the IBL, which fields nine clubs across Southern Ontario. The Leafs have called Koreatown’s Christie Pits park home since 1969, when they were founded by Jack and Lynne Dominico. The team’s namesake dates back to 1886.
The club hit the market after the death of Jack Dominico at the age of 82 in 2022.
Crawford had demands for prospective buyers. They had to promise to keep admission free and make the team competitive. They also had to keep the team at Christie Pits, where the team has become a “cultural phenomenon.”
“It’s a place that’s so unique in North America,” Crawford explained. “Real oxygen, real grass, real trees. You’re not shoulder-toshoulder with anybody. You can lay on a hill on a blanket … We have the best, fun place in the city of Toronto on a Sunday afternoon that anyone could ever think of.”
The potential owners also had to swallow another pill: the Maple Leafs are losing money.
The league urged Crawford to take offers worth around $50,000, Crawford said. Some groups wanted to relocate the team, according to Cary Kaplan of Cosmos Sports & Entertainment, who represented the Leafs in the sale. Instead, the Leafs held out for Stein’s group.
Stein lives in midtown. He has worked as senior vice-president of Magna International, an automotive parts manufacturer and one of Canada’s largest companies, and was a part owner of Krispy Kreme Canada before recently selling his stake.
His grandparents and father lived in the Annex. He said the Maple Leafs are “quite sacred to me.”
“It’s one of the best baseball products in the country,” Stein said. “There’s something very charming, quaint and wonderful that we can do for Torontonians. We want baseball to be the backbone of everything we do.”
He envisions a “festive environment” at every game, with Crawford staying on as director of baseball operations and former Blue Jay Rob Butler continuing as manager. Stein hopes to market the team with high-profile people, like those he promises are part of the ownership group.
“We think there’s an opportunity to really shine a significant spotlight on this team and make it a super fun, cool experience for kids, adults and members of the community,” Stein said, referencing the Bananas’ model of selling independent baseball.
He is also promising to do “everything we can” to improve facilities at Christie Pits, where players have complained of the pitcher’s mound being too high, a chain-link outfield fence, no batter’s eye in centre field and a beat-up infield.
Change is on the way, Stein promises. But some things, like free admission on the sloping hills of Christie Pits, won’t change. At least not for now.