Buffalo to play home to Blue Jays considered a `Natural'

Big league ball in Buffalo, New York?

Naturally.

Not long after the nomadic Toronto Blue Jays announced the Triple-A city as their temporary home Friday, Michael Billoni began to wonder who could be the club's Roy Hobbs.

“Hopefully, it’s (Vladimir) Guerrero Jr. who will knock the ball on to Oak Street and win the World Series for the Jays in Buffalo,” said Billoni, the former general manager of the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons.

It took the Blue Jays nearly a week — and several coronavirus health-related rejections — to finally settle on their minor league affiliate’s park as a temporary home for this season on Friday. Although the city hasn't hosted a major league team since 1915, Buffalo's baseball roots run deep.

Hobbs, of course, is the fictional, hard-throwing ace-turned-aging-slugger made famous by Robert Redford in the 1984 movie “The Natural,” which was filmed in Buffalo at old, weathered War Memorial Stadium.

The movie is part of the city’s rich hardball history — no matter if Hobbs played for the New York Knights — that dates even beyond Buffalo’s fascination with the chicken wing.

The Bisons began as a National League team and had a 314-333 record from 1879-1885. In 1901, the then-booming Great Lakes and Erie Canal hub was a candidate to join the newly formed American League, before losing out to Boston.

The Buffalo Blues, also known as the Buffeds, had a brief run from 1914-15 as members of the Federal League.

And baseball made a resurgence in the 1980s with the construction of what’s now called Sahlen Field, the downtown stadium where the Blue Jays will roost for much of the next two months. Finished in 1988, it was built as part of Robert and Mindy Rich’s bid to land a major league franchise in a town that already featured the NFL...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Buffalo-to-play-home-to-Blue-Jays-considered-a-15433534.php