Yasiel Puig’s last big swing? Snapshots from a surreal arrival
There had been in all probability a few hundred individuals watching, however attendance is a ballpark determine at Dominico Field.
There are not any turnstiles, no tickets and no bleachers. Spectators sit on blankets on a steep hill behind dwelling plate and alongside the foul strains — a grassy jewelbox, carved into an outdated quarry. The park has hosted baseball for greater than a century, with followers perched on a slope beneath the household properties rising above on Christie Street and Barton Avenue.
It is an beginner ballpark by each measure. On the adjoining area, a 12-year-old AA workforce swarms dwelling plate after a walk-off, its cheers bleeding into the introduction for former MLB All-Star Yasiel Puig.
Puig, the 35-year-old who a decade in the past patrolled proper area for the Los Angeles Dodgers on a $42 million contract, was the marquee attraction on the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season opener within the semi-pro Canadian Baseball League on a cool spring Sunday afternoon.
He has two weeks to benefit from the neighborhood park. On May 26, he faces sentencing in Los Angeles after being discovered responsible of obstructing justice and making false statements in a playing investigation.
Scattered cheers and applause rose behind him as the sport announcer warbled his identify: “Yas-iel Puuu-eeg.” A recording of a acquainted organ chorus performed over the park audio system.
Puig — “The Wild Horse,” as Vin Scully referred to as him — leaned away from the primary pitch tossed inside by visiting Kitchener Panthers pitcher Owen MacNeil, a native 25-year-old righty who performed for Division II University of Charleston.
Two 40-something dads watched from the fence alongside third base.
“Well, enjoy it while it lasts,” stated one, who wore a darkish blue classic Leafs baseball cap.
“A felony, for up to 15 years or something like that,” he stated. “How many years? And sentencing in a couple weeks.”
The different man, in a backward black Nike hat, chuckled. “Wild card,” he stated.
Blue cap’s 10-year-old son seemed up from a folding chair and requested why the workforce would signal Puig if he wouldn’t be there all season.
“Maybe he’ll get …” the daddy started as MacNeil hung one down the center.
Puig linked.
The ball shot to the sky, exploding then slowing, arcing over the left-field fence, subsequent to the skateboard park. A bullhorn, a cowbell and cheers from the hill as Puig trotted the bases.
Yasiel Puig, at the moment taking part in for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Canadian Baseball League, simply homered in his first first recreation in Canada pic.twitter.com/XHVlQlnL4L
— Baseball Quotes (@BaseballQuotes1) May 10, 2026
On the grass above the house dugout, Connor Osborne and Madeline Thesariteff sipped a Leafs-branded lager from Left Field, a native craft brewery. They had been new to the game, hooked by Blue Jays’ World Series run last October. It was their first Leafs recreation.
“We’re definitely doing this again,” stated Thesariteff. “It’s like the best Sunday activity.”
While they’d heard the excitement round Puig’s arrival, the gravity of his signing was misplaced on them.
“I don’t think I know enough about him,” Osborne stated. “Is he a Hall of Famer or something?”
There was a time when Cooperstown didn’t appear to be such an impossibility for Puig.
Once one in all baseball’s most dynamic gamers, Puig arrived with a highly effective narrative after defecting from Cuba to succeed in the MLB. He launched into the league in 2013 with 44 hits in his first month — a Dodgers rookie file, and a big league debut second solely to Joe DiMaggio. Puig was named an All-Star in his second season and took part within the Home Run Derby. In 2017, he was named defensive participant of the yr as the very best proper fielder within the main leagues.
But Puig’s undisciplined play and off-field behaviour — he was arrested twice for reckless driving — soured his relationship with the Dodgers and brought about his administration group to chop ties with him. He was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, and made his last look within the majors with the Cleveland Indians a season later.
He’s since journeyed between taking part in professional baseball in Mexico and Korea, with winter league stints within the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. During that point Puig has confronted a number of sexual assault allegations, stemming from incidents throughout his profession. After Puig confirmed that he’d settled a lawsuit with an accuser in October 2021, it was revealed that he’d settled two different sexual assault lawsuits in 2017. Puig was by no means charged with a crime associated to the allegations.
In November 2022, Puig pleaded responsible to mendacity to federal legislation enforcement officers about bets he’d positioned with an unlawful sports activities playing operation, by which he’d allegedly incurred $282,900 in money owed. He later rescinded his responsible plea.
Three months in the past, Puig was discovered responsible of obstruction of justice and offering false statements associated to a January 2022 interview with investigators wanting into the playing ring. He faces as much as 15 years in jail. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 26 in California.
If that context weighed on followers watching the Leafs from the hillside, it didn’t have an effect on the atmosphere. There was phrase that a signal studying “16 Days To Sentencing” was unfurled early within the recreation, however past the third inning it didn’t reappear. There had been no boos when Puig took his swings, or jogged to his place in proper area — however the cheers appeared extra amused than enthralled.
Shun Taneya, who wore Puig’s identify on a blue Dodgers jersey, crouched past proper area and aimed his Canon by means of a chainlink. He last watched Puig play a dozen years in the past when he toured Japan with the 2014 MLB All-Star workforce alongside Robinson Cano, Jose Altuve and Evan Longoria.
In the highest of the fourth, Puig tracked a deep ball, pedaling backward, the place a warning monitor may need been. Puig slammed into the fence a couple ft from Taneya’s lens to file the out.
“It’s cool,” Taneya stated, when requested what it was like to look at Puig play up shut. “So cool.”
Among some Leafs followers, the sentiment was much less welcoming.
“The decades of good vibes have been sullied,” one fan complained on the workforce’s Facebook web page.
“This is your hero?” one other requested, citing the sexual assault allegations and obstruction conviction. “That’s pretty sad. Make better choices.”
While followers on social media argued over the ethics of the signing, the temper on the ballpark was dictated by the Bushmen. Half a dozen well-buzzed males stood on the prime of the Christie Pits, simply past third, hurling family-friendly insults on the visiting Panthers. Ray Natale, the founding father of the group, wore a black-and-blue checkered jacket over a blue Leafs jersey. He seemed like Christian Bale taking part in a hipster father obsessive about beginner baseball.
“These guys all have nine-to-five jobs,” Natale stated of the Maple Leafs’ typical roster. “They come in to these teams for the season and they play their goddamn asses off.”
A number of seasons in the past, Natale stated, one of many Leafs gamers labored a common evening shift for CN Rail — “Jonathan Solazzo,” three Bushmen recalled in unison — so he’d often seize his gear within the seventh inning and dash throughout the park to get to work on time: “We immediately started calling him ‘The Conductor.’”
The Bushmen emerged 10 seasons in the past, when Natale and a couple of associates occurred upon a baseball recreation on the park, found their love for consuming tallboys on a hill and heckling visiting gamers, and began coming to Leafs video games each Sunday afternoon.
The baseball is genuinely entertaining, they are saying, but it surely’s a unusual brew of allure and absurdity that has made Leafs baseball a weekly custom — and fired their ardour sufficient to host a common podcast concerning the workforce.
The Leafs historical past predates the extra well-known NHL workforce by a number of many years. The authentic Leafs operated as a Triple-A workforce within the International League from 1896 to 1967, earlier than the franchise relocated to Louisville.
Two years later, the baseball Leafs had been reborn as a workforce within the semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League, taking part in at Christie Pits — and have become the identical admission-free hillside Norman Rockwell portray it stays at the moment.
Jack Dominico, the workforce’s longtime proprietor, offered game-worn jerseys out of the trunk of a automobile parked on the road above the diamond. When he died in 2022, the workforce was offered, reportedly for greater than $1 million, to a group of native traders.
The Leafs’ new possession has introduced in additional sponsors, began promoting well-liked hats and jerseys, and constructed a paid VIP choice subsequent to the Leafs bench.
The outdated IBL rebranded because the Canadian Baseball League this season, an try and professionalize and construct a extra outstanding nationwide id. It’s not clear how a lot, if any pay, most gamers obtain.
The league is a place for former school and minor professional gamers to proceed taking part in aggressive ball as they transfer into post-career life, or for youthful Canadian gamers making an attempt to make it to an MLB affiliated minor league.
But more and more, the beloved league, constructed on native custom in small communities past Toronto, has been pulled the best way of flashy gimmicks and clear makes an attempt to seize headlines.
Last season, former MLB All-Star Fernando Rodney pitched for the Hamilton Cardinals at 48 years outdated, whereas the Leafs made a splash by signing Ayami Soto, a Japanese pitcher extensively thought of to be one of many world’s greatest feminine baseball gamers.
The high-profile signings have garnered consideration and drawn reward. But it’s troublesome to see what the headlines have added to the league’s character. A significant income stream is difficult to search out for video games spectators absorb without cost. Presumably, traders are in it for the love of the sport over earnings.
So why herald Puig and the inevitable controversy?
There has by no means been a participant like him within the league. And it appears unlikely he’ll stick round for lengthy.
“Hopefully he’ll be here longer than two weeks,” stated Natale. “But that’s really up for the courts to decide.”
“Don’t miss this,” Natale nudged his daughter, as Puig walked again as much as the plate within the backside of the sixth. “There’s no in-between with this guy,” he stated. “It’s either going to be a home run or a walk.”
Puig took a ball after which swung at a fastball down the center. The crack echoed throughout the grassy bowl.
“It’s going! It’s going!” The Bushmen embraced because the ball sailed over the center-field fence and landed close to a celebration, embellished with SpongeBob balloons, on the playground past the skate park.
“Let’s go Pu-eeeig!” a Bushman cried.
UPDATE: Yasiel Puig has his second homer of the day https://t.co/4CYbMsbOYY pic.twitter.com/UkMlzRczEx
— Baseball Quotes (@BaseballQuotes1) May 10, 2026
A Leafs staffer waved puffs of blue smoke as Puig rounded third and trotted dwelling.
“Pay that guy 400 bucks a game!” Ray shouted. “Let’s go!”
Elliot Hill, one other Bushman, concurred: “Hundred dollars a homer!”
How a lot Puig is being paid to play with the Leafs is unknown. The workforce didn’t return a number of requests to talk with the Leafs possession group concerning the signing. A message from the workforce’s Instagram account directed inquiries to a personal Yahoo e mail however would “not guarantee anything at this time.”
Maple Leafs CEO Keith Stein instructed the Toronto Sun on the time of the signing that the workforce researched Puig’s previous and he believed any points had been “dealt with.”
After the sport — an 8-6 win for the Leafs — followers folded up their blankets, drained canine stretched their legs and youngsters darted towards the playground. A bunch of boys wrestled to catch pop flies. The Bushmen cleaned up their empties.
On Dominico Field, Rob Butler, the Leafs supervisor and a former Blue Jay, praised the skilled caliber Puig delivered to his debut, with a 1.000 OBP on two homers and two walks.
Butler discovered that Puig could be on his roster a couple weeks in the past, when it was publicly introduced. He doesn’t understand how lengthy he’ll stay. If Puig’s within the clubhouse, he’s within the lineup. He doesn’t wish to “get into the weeds” on anything.
“You can see the excitement,” Butler stated. “People want to see what the hell is going on here. … Whatever makes the league more interesting is better.”
The Leafs play 4 extra video games earlier than Puig is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles.
As different Leafs gamers cleared their gear from the dugout, I caught as much as Puig within the infield. He wore an outsized blue-and-white novelty chain with a dangling “T.”
“How long do you think you’ll be here?” I requested. “What’s your plan for Toronto?”
“I don’t have plans, God made the plan for me, I don’t know,” Puig stated. “I need to go to Los Angeles and later come back, only God knows what will happen … May 26.”
Puig flashed a main league-forged grin as a Leafs workers member rushed to escort him towards the outfield. He disappeared into a crowd past the fence, close to the skate park and celebration balloons.
