Utica Blue Jays

History

Baseball first came to Utica in 1878. The city had a team in the New York State League from 1899 through 1917, then went without professional baseball until 1939, aside from a brief stint in 1924 when the Utica Utes—part of an earlier version of the New York–Pennsylvania League—moved to Oneonta, New York, midseason. The origins of the Blue Sox name trace back to the Utica Braves, a Class C Canadian–American League team created when Amby McConnell and Father Harold Martin relocated the Auburn Bouleys to Utica.

The Braves began as a Boston Braves farm club in 1939 and kept that nickname through 1942, also affiliating with the Detroit Tigers in 1941 and the Springfield Rifles in 1942. In 1943, Utica jumped to the Class A Eastern League as a Philadelphia Phillies affiliate. The Blue Sox nickname appeared in 1944, inspired by the Phillies’ unofficial moniker, the “Philadelphia Blue Jays.” That decade’s Blue Sox played at McConnell Field in the northern part of the city, named for the team owner and former Utica pro player.

Many of those Blue Sox later became the Whiz Kids, the 1950 National League champion Phillies. Future Philadelphia stars included Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn, who arrived in Utica as a catcher but was shifted to center field within a month by manager Eddie Sawyer to take advantage of his speed. Others like Stan Lopata and Granny Hamner also played for both Utica and Philadelphia in the late 1940s. Sawyer, who managed the Blue Sox in 1945 and 1947 and later spent seven years with the Phillies, once said, “We had great ballclubs in a bad ballpark.”

Ashburn recalled the unusual field layout, with center field facing west: “The sun would set over it. I never got a hit up there in the first five innings in 150 games, and I still hit .300.” Murnane Field was considered one of the worst layouts in the NY-P league, with right field sloping downhill sharply by the fence. The Blue Sox name returned in the Short-Season A New York–Penn League. A new NY-P franchise started in 1977 as the Utica Blue Jays, playing at Murnane Field and becoming the first affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays organization, lasting from 1977 to 1980.

That team featured Toronto’s first-ever draft pick, Tom Goffena, as well as future major leaguers Jesse Barfield, David Wells, and Paul Hodgson.