text: Early 20th century By 1913, there were 24 minor league baseball teams in Canada, a number which has been unequalled since.
  Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run on Canadian soil on September 5, 1914, at the former Hanlan's Point Stadium on Centre Island in Toronto. Ruth was playing for the Providence Grays against the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team of the International League.
  In 1985, the City of Toronto erected a small plaque to denote the location, but it is difficult to locate, given the parklike setting and remote nature of the Toronto Islands.
  In 1946, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey assigned new-signing Jackie Robinson to the Montreal Royals of the International League, Brooklyn's Triple-A farm team. Robinson would famously go on to break Major League Baseball's colour barrier the following year in 1947, but during his season in Montreal Robinson led the Royals to the Governors' Cup, the IL championship, and became a beloved figure in the city. In Ken Burns' documentary film Baseball, the narrator quotes Sam Maltin, a stringer for the Pittsburgh Courier: "It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of lynching on its mind."