There were probably a few hundred people watching, but attendance is a ballpark figure at Dominico Field.
There are no turnstiles, no tickets and no bleachers. Spectators sit on blankets on a steep hill behind home plate and along the foul lines — a grassy jewelbox, carved into an old quarry. The park has hosted baseball for more than a century, with fans perched on a slope beneath the family homes rising above on Christie Street and Barton Avenue.
It is an amateur ballpark by every measure. On the adjacent field, a 12-year-old AA team swarms home 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 ago patrolled right field for the Los Angeles Dodgers on a $42 million contract, was the marquee attraction at the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season opener in the semi-pro Canadian Baseball League on a cool spring Sunday afternoon.
He has two weeks to enjoy the community park. On May 26, he faces sentencing in Los Angeles after being found guilty of obstructing justice and making false statements in a gambling investigation.
Scattered cheers and applause rose behind him as the game announcer warbled his name: “Yas-iel Puuu-eeg.” A recording of a familiar organ refrain played over the park speakers.
Puig — “The Wild Horse,” as Vin Scully called him — leaned away from the first pitch tossed inside by visiting Kitchener Panthers pitcher Owen MacNeil, a local 25-year-old righty who played for Division II University of Charleston.
Two 40-something dads watched from the fence along third base.
“Well, enjoy it while it lasts,” said one, who wore a dark blue vintage Leafs baseball cap.
“A felony, for up to 15 years or something like that,” he said. “How many years? And sentencing in a couple weeks.”
The other man, in a backward black Nike hat, chuckled. “Wild card,” he said.
Blue cap’s 10-year-old son looked up from a folding chair and asked why the team would sign Puig if he wouldn’t be there all season.
“Maybe he’ll get …” the father began as MacNeil hung one down the middle.
Puig connected.
The ball shot to the sky, exploding then slowing, arcing over the left-field fence, next to the skateboard park. A bullhorn, a cowbell and cheers from the hill as Puig trotted the bases.
Yasiel Puig, currently playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Canadian Baseball League, just homered in his first first game in Canada pic.twitter.com/XHVlQlnL4L
— Baseball Quotes (@BaseballQuotes1) May 10, 2026
On the grass above the home dugout, Connor Osborne and Madeline Thesariteff sipped a Leafs-branded lager from Left Field, a local craft brewery. They were new to the sport, hooked by Blue Jays’ World Series run last October. It was their first Leafs game.
“We’re definitely doing this again,” said Thesariteff. “It’s like the best Sunday activity.”
While they’d heard the buzz around Puig’s arrival, the gravity of his signing was lost on them.
“I don’t think I know enough about him,” Osborne said. “Is he a Hall of Famer or something?”
There was a time when Cooperstown didn’t seem like such an impossibility for Puig.
Once one of baseball’s most dynamic players, Puig arrived with a powerful narrative after defecting from Cuba to reach the MLB. He launched into the league in 2013 with 44 hits in his first month — a Dodgers rookie record, and a big league debut second only to Joe DiMaggio. Puig was named an All-Star in his second season and participated in the Home Run Derby. In 2017, he was named defensive player of the year as the best right fielder in the major leagues.
But Puig’s undisciplined play and off-field behaviour — he was arrested twice for reckless driving — soured his relationship with the Dodgers and caused his management group to cut ties with him. He was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, and made his last appearance in the majors with the Cleveland Indians a season later.
He’s since journeyed between playing pro baseball in Mexico and Korea, with winter league stints in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. During that time Puig has faced multiple sexual assault allegations, stemming from incidents during his career. After Puig confirmed that he’d settled a lawsuit with an accuser in October 2021, it was revealed that he’d settled two other sexual assault lawsuits in 2017. Puig was never charged with a crime related to the allegations.
In November 2022, Puig pleaded guilty to lying to federal law enforcement officers about bets he’d placed with an illegal sports gambling operation, in which he’d allegedly incurred $282,900 in debts. He later rescinded his guilty plea.
Three months ago, Puig was found guilty of obstruction of justice and providing false statements related to a January 2022 interview with investigators looking into the gambling ring. He faces up to 15 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 26 in California.
If that context weighed on fans watching the Leafs from the hillside, it didn’t affect the ambience. There was word that a sign reading “16 Days To Sentencing” was unfurled early in the game, but beyond the third inning it didn’t reappear. There were no boos when Puig took his swings, or jogged to his place in right field — but the cheers seemed more amused than enthralled.
Shun Taneya, who wore Puig’s name on a blue Dodgers jersey, crouched beyond right field and aimed his Canon through a chainlink. He last watched Puig play a dozen years ago when he toured Japan with the 2014 MLB All-Star team alongside Robinson Cano, Jose Altuve and Evan Longoria.
In the top of the fourth, Puig tracked a deep ball, pedaling backward, where a warning track might have been. Puig slammed into the fence a couple feet from Taneya’s lens to record the out.
“It’s cool,” Taneya said, when asked what it was like to watch Puig play up close. “So cool.”
Among some Leafs fans, the sentiment was less welcoming.
“The decades of good vibes have been sullied,” one fan complained on the team’s Facebook page.
“This is your hero?” another asked, citing the sexual assault allegations and obstruction conviction. “That’s pretty sad. Make better choices.”
While fans on social media argued over the ethics of the signing, the mood at the ballpark was dictated by the Bushmen. Half a dozen well-buzzed men stood at the top of the Christie Pits, just beyond third, hurling family-friendly insults at the visiting Panthers. Ray Natale, the founding father of the group, wore a black-and-blue checkered jacket over a blue Leafs jersey. He looked like Christian Bale playing a hipster father obsessed with amateur baseball.
“These guys all have nine-to-five jobs,” Natale said of the Maple Leafs’ typical roster. “They come in to these teams for the season and they play their goddamn asses off.”
A few seasons ago, Natale said, one of the Leafs players worked a regular night shift for CN Rail — “Jonathan Solazzo,” three Bushmen recalled in unison — so he’d regularly grab his gear in the seventh inning and sprint across the park to get to work on time: “We immediately started calling him ‘The Conductor.’”
The Bushmen emerged 10 seasons ago, when Natale and a couple of friends happened upon a baseball game at the park, discovered their love for drinking tallboys on a hill and heckling visiting players, and started coming to Leafs games every Sunday afternoon.
The baseball is genuinely entertaining, they say, but it’s a strange brew of charm and absurdity that has made Leafs baseball a weekly tradition — and fired their passion enough to host a regular podcast about the team.
The Leafs history predates the more famous NHL team by several decades. The original Leafs operated as a Triple-A team in the International League from 1896 to 1967, before the franchise relocated to Louisville.
Two years later, the baseball Leafs were reborn as a team in the semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League, playing at Christie Pits — and became the same admission-free hillside Norman Rockwell painting it remains today.
Jack Dominico, the team’s longtime owner, sold game-worn jerseys out of the trunk of a car parked on the street above the diamond. When he died in 2022, the team was sold, reportedly for more than $1 million, to a group of local investors.
The Leafs’ new ownership has brought in more sponsors, started selling popular hats and jerseys, and built a paid VIP section next to the Leafs bench.
The old IBL rebranded as the Canadian Baseball League this season, an attempt to professionalize and build a more prominent national identity. It’s not clear how much, if any pay, most players receive.
The league is a place for former college and minor pro players to continue playing competitive ball as they move into post-career life, or for younger Canadian players trying to make it to an MLB affiliated minor league.
But increasingly, the beloved league, built on local tradition in small communities beyond Toronto, has been pulled the way of flashy gimmicks and clear attempts to grab headlines.
Last season, former MLB All-Star Fernando Rodney pitched for the Hamilton Cardinals at 48 years old, while the Leafs made a splash by signing Ayami Soto, a Japanese pitcher widely considered to be one of the world’s best female baseball players.
The high-profile signings have garnered attention and drawn praise. But it’s difficult to see what the headlines have added to the league’s character. A meaningful revenue stream is hard to find for games spectators take in for free. Presumably, investors are in it for the love of the game over profits.
So why bring in Puig and the inevitable controversy?
There has never been a player like him in the league. And it seems unlikely he’ll stick around for long.
“Hopefully he’ll be here longer than two weeks,” said Natale. “But that’s really up for the courts to decide.”
“Don’t miss this,” Natale nudged his daughter, as Puig walked back up to the plate in the bottom of the sixth. “There’s no in-between with this guy,” he said. “It’s either going to be a home run or a walk.”
Puig took a ball and then swung at a fastball down the middle. The crack echoed across the grassy bowl.
“It’s going! It’s going!” The Bushmen embraced as the ball sailed over the center-field fence and landed near a birthday party, decorated with SpongeBob balloons, at the playground beyond 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 home.
“Pay that guy 400 bucks a game!” Ray shouted. “Let’s go!”
Elliot Hill, another Bushman, concurred: “Hundred dollars a homer!”
How much Puig is being paid to play with the Leafs is unknown. The team did not return multiple requests to speak with the Leafs ownership group about the signing. A message from the team’s Instagram account directed questions to a private Yahoo email but would “not guarantee anything at this time.”
Maple Leafs CEO Keith Stein told the Toronto Sun at the time of the signing that the team researched Puig’s past and he believed any issues had been “dealt with.”
After the game — an 8-6 win for the Leafs — fans folded up their blankets, tired dogs stretched their legs and kids darted toward the playground. A group of boys wrestled to catch pop flies. The Bushmen cleaned up their empties.
On Dominico Field, Rob Butler, the Leafs manager and a former Blue Jay, praised the professional caliber Puig brought to his debut, with a 1.000 OBP on two homers and two walks.
Butler learned that Puig would be on his roster a couple weeks ago, when it was publicly announced. He doesn’t know how long he’ll remain. If Puig’s in the clubhouse, he’s in the lineup. He doesn’t want to “get into the weeds” on anything else.
“You can see the excitement,” Butler said. “People want to see what the hell is going on here. … Whatever makes the league more interesting is better.”
The Leafs play four more games before Puig is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles.
As other Leafs players cleared their gear from the dugout, I caught up to Puig in the infield. He wore an oversized blue-and-white novelty chain with a dangling “T.”
“How long do you think you’ll be here?” I asked. “What’s your plan for Toronto?”
“I don’t have plans, God made the plan for me, I don’t know,” Puig said. “I need to go to Los Angeles and later come back, only God knows what will happen … May 26.”
Puig flashed a major league-forged grin as a Leafs staff member rushed to escort him toward the outfield. He disappeared into a crowd beyond the fence, near the skate park and party balloons.