Medicine Hat, former home of Blue Jays’ farm team, produced big leaguers

A run at a World Series championship is bringing memories flooding back in Medicine Hat: the former home of the Blue Jays’ farm team, and the site of visits by the world championship teams in the early 1990s.

Those games are the stuff of local legend in the Hat, taking residents back to when the city had a minor league farm club — and the big leagues came to southeast Alberta.

That includes Greg Morrison, a high school kid and aspiring ball player when future hall of famers like Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar visited his hometown in 1994.

Morrison wasn’t in the stands, however.

He was on the field, playing with a team of highly-rated amateur prospects tasked with taking on the best team in baseball. 

“The Blue Jays really hit home with me, because you emulate who you watch as a kid,” Morrison said this week, noting that before the team’s success gripped the nation in the early 1990s, he was actually a Boston Red Sox fan.

“The Blue Jays were my second chance.”

Originally drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Morrison was eventually signed by the Jays. 

He went on to star with his hometown “Baby Jays,” a Single-A team in the Pioneer League, setting a home run record that still stands today. It was the first rung on the minor leagues, with stops across Alberta, Montana and Idaho. 

After an 11-year independent league career, Morrison returned home and now owns the Medicine Hat Mavericks of the Western Canadian Baseball League. It formed shortly after the Blue Jays left the city in 2003, and each summer hosts college-aged players looking to get drafted. 

Morrison sees it as a continuation of Medicine Hat’s elite baseball tradition, and little league camps and academy programs as a way to keep that going forward. 

“Medicine Hat is a fantastic baseball town,” said Morrison, who is in California this week on a scouting trip.

“We have great weather, great facilities. That history of Medicine Hat is still there.”

That history includes barnstorming visits and amateur championships dating back to the 1920s.

The minor leagues arrived in 1977 as an Oakland A’s affiliate (the “Baby A’s”) relocated north — bought by local businessman Bill Yuill. The team switched its affiliation to Toronto a year later.

There was a Single-A championship in 1982, but fans mostly recall the 1994 visit by the big club.

Played at Medicine Hat’s 2,000-seat Athletic Park, it drew 9,000 fans for the game festival atmosphere.

When the Blue Jays came to Medicine Hat

The tour was part of a promotional effort to connect with fans across the country, show off back-to-back championship form, as well as highlight the developmental program that included Morrison.

The same tour over a number of years took the Jays to Regina’s Taylor Field, where the football field was converted to a baseball diamond with a very short outfield fence.

Joe McFarland’s father surprised his family with tickets to the 1994 exhibition game in Medicine Hat. They all drove all the way from Lethbridge, Alta. It combined the excitement of the 1992 and 1993 World Series titles with getting so close to star players in rural Alberta.

“It really cemented that baseball was going to be a part of my life for a long time to come,” said McFarland, who now writes about baseball, prospects and the history of the game in western Canada.

“This was a gateway to the big leagues. Being from the farm, you didn’t have cable TV or the internet back in the day. My gateway to baseball was baseball cards and magazines, but to see it in person really drove it home.”

The Hat Blue Jays were part of an influx of minor league teams to the province starting in the late 1970s, including Pioneer league teams in Lethbridge and Calgary.

They won the Pioneer League title in 1982, with a roster that included future Jays legends such as Jimmy Key, Pat Borders and David Wells.

Later on, the Triple-A Calgary Cannons and Edmonton Trappers featured players just below the big leagues.

Both teams relocated to the U.S. shortly after the Blue Jays relocated to Helena, Mont., in 2003.

McFarland said pro baseball in Alberta has always been about the development of future stars. 

That’s still alive, he said, in the Western Canadian Baseball League, which includes the Mavericks, Lethbridge Bulls, Okotoks Dawgs, Brooks Bombers and eight other teams in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Morrison said southern Alberta baseball fans have seen big league talent over the years, and the region is still producing great talent.  

“[Over 25 years] you think about how many professional baseball players spent either a series or a summer playing in Medicine Hat,” he said.

“We’re well known, and Medicine Hat’s a small town, but I think we punch above our weight.”