The Blue Jays spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida is a less likely landing site due to the increase in coronavirus cases in Florida. MLB already has two teams in Florida, the Miami Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays, but they’ve been training there all month, and it seems ill-advised to ask an entirely new group of players to move to a virus point.
Sahlen Field in Buffalo, named for a local meatpacking company, opened in 1988 in hopes of either recruiting an expansion team or attracting an existing team to the city. The ballpark added a $ 1 million lighting system in 2011, according to The Buffalo News, but that was before the advancements in LED lighting that a major league team might require.
There are two other AAA-class parks in upstate New York, in Rochester and Syracuse, and the Blue Jays’ AA-class team plays in Manchester, NH, in a state that has never hosted a major league game. . Toronto’s closest major league facility is Comerica Park in Detroit, although the Tigers will, of course, play there.
Asking the Blue Jays to play all 60 games on the road doesn’t seem practical, especially considering the health risks of so many additional trips. If Buffalo becomes its temporary home, it would give New York State three home teams, for a mini season, anyway, for the first time since 1957, when the Giants and Dodgers fled to California and left the Yankees alone. In New York
Teams have been forced to abandon their ball stadiums before. Miller Park in Milwaukee was a temporary home for the Cleveland Indians in 2007 and the Houston Astros in 2008 due to weather conditions in those cities.
In 1991, the Montreal Expos moved their last 13 games home to opponents’ parks after a 55-ton piece of concrete fell at the Olympic Stadium. Three years later, the Seattle Mariners ended their season with a 20-game road trip after the roof tiles fell from the Kingdome roof. In 1998, the Yankees transferred a home game to Shea Stadium after a concrete and steel beam fell into the loge-level seats at Yankee Stadium before a game with the Angels.
Buffalo had a National League franchise, the Bisons, from 1879 to 1885, with Hall of Fame pitcher Pud Galvin as the team’s biggest star. To indicate how much baseball has changed since then, consider that Galvin won 46 games while pitching more than 600 innings in 1883, and then did it again the following year.
