The gathering at the old park was a clear statement - 23 years was far too long for Winnipeg to be without professional baseball.
On a bright June evening in 1994, a crowd of 14,764 crashed the gates at Winnipeg Stadium to welcome the return of pro ball to the city. The game featured the hometown Goldeyes against the Duluth-Superior Dukes in the recently resurrected Northern League.
Strength in numbers? Indeed!
It was a striking illustration of support Winnipeg has become reputed for as a sports community.
In 1971, the city watched helplessly as the Montreal Expos relocated their AAA affiliate, the Winnipeg Whips, to Virginia. Surprisingly attendance was strong at Whips’ games over the season-and-a-half they were here, but an obscure arrangement between the Expos and other International League teams regarding travel subsidies, forced the Expos to again move the team. Under the agreement, Montreal paid 75 per cent of the opposition’s travel costs to Winnipeg for the ‘71 season.
It was an agreement which eventually cost the Expos’ organization over $300,000 in losses, and ultimately a deal which saw Winnipeg without professional baseball for the next 23 years.
But vision and perseverance by a handful of Winnipeg business people over the next two decades would eventually return a team to the city. On Nov. 1, 1993, after years of diligent work and tireless meetings, entertainment entrepreneur Sam Katz, now the team’s president and owner, announced baseball would return the following summer.
Shortly after the November announcement, the Winnipeg franchise started a newspaper campaign asking baseball fans in the province to submit their suggestion for a nickname for the new team. The name "Goldeyes" was the overwhelming winner.
The Goldeyes, in effect, evolved from the Rochester Aces (Minnesota), who lasted just the ‘93 season in the Northern League, the same year the league resurfaced. The Aces drew just over 50,000 people, the lowest in the league’s three-year history. A new home was sought for the NL’s sixth franchise and Winnipeg became that centre.
The nickname Goldeyes was not a new one for the city’s baseball franchise. In fact, the Goldeyes had a storied history in the Northern League long before the Whips decided to call Winnipeg home. Between 1954 and 1964, the Goldeyes were the class-A affiliate of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals.
The old Goldeyes were an instant success. Both on the field and in the stands, the club would prosper winning three championships in its 11-year tenure and led the league in attendance for 10 of those seasons. They played out of the southwest corner grandstand at the Stadium, which would last until 1984 when it was demolished to make room for the CFL’s Blue Bombers to build the Blue and Gold Room.
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