By David Matchett
There was a lot of Canadian home run action at Rogers Centre on the weekend and several records were broken or equalled.
Brett Lawrie’s home run off Ryan Dempster on May 2, 2013 was the second instance of a Canadian-born batter going deep off a Canadian-born pitcher in a game played in Canada, as noted in another article.
It was missed at the time that this was also the first leadoff home run by a Canadian in Canada. There had been six previous first-inning home runs hit in Canada by Canadians but never one by the first batter of the game.
After the Red Sox left town the Seattle Mariners showed up and two thirds of their outfield was Canadian. On Friday, Michael Saunders batted first and played centre field for Seattle and Jason Bay hit fifth and played left.
Lawrie batted leadoff for the Jays and together the three Canucks had 12 plate appearances. Lawrie went 0-4 and Saunders was 0-3 with a walk but Jason Bay went deep off Aaron Loup in the sixth inning.
Combined with Lawrie’s big fly the day before, Bay’s homer gave us the 11th instance of back-to-back games in Canada with homers by Canadians. Six of those were Larry Walker doing it by himself and Lawrie (April 15 and 17, 2012) and Bay (Aug. 18-19, 2009) matched Walker’s feat.
This was just the fourth time that two different Canadians had homered in back-to-back games in Canada, joining Russell Martin and Matt Stairs (June 18 and 20, 2007), Lawrie and Adam Loewen (Sept. 10-11, 2011) and Lawrie & Martin (Sept. 27 and 29, 2012).
Several more milestones were passed on Saturday. Saunders led off the game with a home run off R.A. Dickey for the second Canadian leadoff homer in Canada two days after Lawrie hit the first.
This was also the first time that three consecutive games played in Canada had Canadian-born players hit home runs, and Saunders and Bay became the first visiting Canadian-born teammates to homers in back-to-back games.
Saunders’ first-inning home run was the 63rd hit at the Rogers Centre by a Canadian-born player, breaking the old record of 62 hit in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.
Terry Puhl hit the first five in the Big O between 1980 and 1988 then Walker hit 56 more before his last one there in 2002. Rob Ducey was the only other Canadian to hit one in Montreal.
The wealth has been spread around a bit better in Toronto with 11 Canadians going deep in the Rogers Centre. There were also seven home runs hit in Exhibition Stadium by Canadians (Dave McKay 6 and Ducey 1) and none were hit in Parc Jarry.
Saunders hit a fly ball out in his second plate appearance on Saturday then slammed his second homer of the day in fifth inning, again off Dickey. That gave Saunders the ninth multi-homer game in Canada by a Canadian and the first since Saunders did it himself last year.
Walker had four multi-homer games in Canada including a three-home run game in Montreal in 1997, Justin Morneau has done it twice and Stairs did it once. Bay once hit two home runs in an Expos’ home game but it was played in San Juan, Puerto Rico and not in Montreal.
Bay didn’t play on May 4 and Lawrie went 0-for-3 with a walk so there were no additional fireworks. Lawrie sat out the last game of the series on May 5 but Saunders and Bay were both in the Mariners’ starting lineup and between them had eight chances to extend the streak. All they could do however was a Saunders walk to go along with two fly outs, two ground outs and three strikeouts.
With their home runs this weekend Bay and Saunders brought their totals in Canada to five apiece. Walker is the all-time leader with 58 Canadian home runs (56 in Montreal and 2 in Toronto) followed by Stairs with 22 and Lawrie with 13.
McKay, Corey Koskie and Morneau had six each and Bay and Saunders have joined Puhl in a three-way tie for seventh place with five. Ducey and Russell Martin hit two each and Aaron Guiel, Joey Votto and Loewen each did it once.
Through May 1, 2013 a total of 5,653 major league games had been played in Canada and in those games there had been 129 home runs hit by Canadian-born players, an average of one every 43.8 games.
The subsequent three games saw four more Canadian home runs by three different players and a lot of records were broken.
With Lawrie in the Jays’ regular lineup we can expect more from him in 2013 but the only other Canadian position players currently on major league rosters and scheduled to play in Toronto this year are Morneau, who will be visiting with the Twins on July 5-7, and Kansas City’s George Kottaras, who will be in Toronto from Aug. 30-to-Sept. 1.
Unless there are call-ups or trades we won’t see three different Canadian-born players hitting home runs in three consecutive games in Toronto again this season.
