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The country's lone major-league franchise could have homegrown players making up one-third of its starting nine this season. But the team's GM, also a Canadian, says that despite the obvious marketing advantages, putting a winning team on the field is the only priority, Robert MacLeod writes

Fred Thornhill/Reuters

Gord Ash was working at an entry-level position in a bank and so desperate to break into baseball that he accepted a $2,000-a-year pay cut to toil in the ticket office of the Toronto Blue Jays.

The new lineup?

Alex Anthopoulos grew up in Montreal and was being groomed to work at his father’s heating and ventilation company when he fell in love with baseball. He latched on with the Montreal Expos as an intern in the media-relations department, learning the business from the ground up for little more than room-and-board money. He even took Spanish lessons at night to better communicate with Latin players.

The dogged persistence of both men would eventually pay off as they rose to become general manager of the Blue Jays, a level few Canadians have ever reached.

“Luck, pure luck,” Ash, now an assistant GM for the Milwaukee Brewers, responded when asked how he went from banking to baseball. “Right place, right time. Hopefully someone saw some abilities along the way.”

With the Blue Jays set to begin spring training on Feb. 23 in Dunedin, Fla., in preparation for their 39th MLB campaign, the team’s Canadian content, from the front office to the playing field, has never been as prominent. This season Anthopoulos’s Jays have 14 players within their organization from Canada. (The Philadelphia Phillies rank No. 2 with six Canadians in their system.) And Toronto’s list includes three men who project to play key roles with the big-league club once the regular season gets underway on April 6.

Russell Martin, who was born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, is the No. 1 catcher, while Michael Saunders, from Victoria, will start in left field. And should Dalton Pompey, from Mississauga, Ont., earn the starter’s job in centre, it will mark the first time in franchise history that the Blue Jays will employ three home-grown position players in the everyday lineup.

Looking back: The Canadian connection

That is a high ratio given that in 2014 only 10 Canadians in total were on the opening-day rosters of all 30 MLB teams. One of those was Brett Lawrie, from Langley, B.C., who began the year as Toronto’s starter at third base but was traded last off-season to the Oakland A’s.

Five big questions

Globe and Mail baseball writer Robert MacLeod looks at the pressing lineup issues facing Toronto manager John Gibbons as the team gathers in Dunedin, Fla.

Despite his team’s obvious geographical benefits, Anthopoulos – entering his sixth season as Toronto’s GM – insists the Blue Jays’ influx of Canadian-born players is not something he planned.

“It just happens to be a bonus,” he said. “We liked Brett Lawrie because he’s a good player. We liked Dalton Pompey because he’s a good player. They happen to be Canadian – great. I mean, it’s a nice bonus and I know it’s good from a marketing standpoint.”

Martin, who has also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates, said the high Canadian content on Canada’s only major league team can only help to continue the growth of the game in the country.

“Kids watch TV,” Martin said. “If they watch TV, they see you on TV, they’re going to recognize you. So if they see me wearing the Blue Jays uniform and they notice I’m Canadian, I think that it definitely can have a positive impact.”

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“I think it’s huge for baseball in Canada in general,” Pompey added. “To have those guys with me and pretty experienced, like Mike Saunders, Russell Martin. There’s always that bond between Canadian players because there’s not too many of us. So any time you get the chance to play with each other, against each other, it’s always pretty special.”

Larry Walker of Maple Ridge, B.C., was one of the first big stars to emerge with the Expos and he recalled it as a pretty big deal to be able to play at home in Canada.

“I’m in my home country, spending the money I’m used to seeing, the money you can tell apart,” he said. “So it was a joy. I had fun and I know that the Blue Jays have now got Saunders on the team and Russell on the team. Kind of a big thing to have two boys on the team, both starting. That’s a special case.”

Still, the nationality of a player, Anthopoulos said, is not what drives interest in a particular sports team, citing Vince Carter, the U.S.-born former Toronto Raptors basketball star, as a prime example.

“I don’t think anyone would care if he’s Canadian, he’s just a great player,” Anthopoulos said. “So the city and the fans and the country embrace great players because great players help you win. And I think winning is what promotes the sport and baseball in Canada.”

After all, no one complained that only two Canadians – one each year – were on the Jays’ World Series-winning teams of 1992 and ’93, neither in prime-time roles.

Dalton Pompey, from Mississauga, Ont., left, Russell Martin, who was born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, and Michael Saunders, from Victoria, could give the Blue Jays three home-grown position players in the everyday lineup.

“It’s nice that we have Russell Martin as our catcher,” said Paul Beeston, the Blue Jays president and chief executive officer who is from Welland, Ont. “It would still be nice if Russell Martin was our catcher and he was from Buffalo. That fact that he was born in Toronto, grew up in Montreal is fantastic, and the fact that he’s fluently bilingual in both official languages is fantastic. But the reality of the situation is we were looking for a catcher. And we’re just as happy with Josh Donaldson as our new third baseman, and you know what? He’s from Alabama.”

While a player’s skill will ultimately determine how far he progresses in the game, the road is not so clear for Canadians seeking a front-office job in baseball. Both Ash and Anthopoulos said they probably would not be in the game today had the Expos and the Jays never existed.

“People have said it’s kind of a fairy-tale-type story, and it is,” Ash said. “I don’t talk about it a lot but I’m proud of it. I think it gave me a very rounded education because I did everything. I knew how security worked, I knew how stadium ticket operations worked – all the behind-the-scenes things I had experienced.

“And when I got into the baseball side of things and people like Bobby Mattick and Al LaMacchia all gave me great advice and told me to shut up and listen, which I did for a couple of years. And make sure you knew the rule book inside and out, which I believe I did. So when asked, I had an opinion or had an answer for what you could and couldn’t do rules-wise. And you sit in on these meetings long enough you say to yourself, you know what, my opinion is consistent with some of these guys who have been around the game a while.”

Ash first joined the Blue Jays in 1978 in the ticket department and quickly became operations supervisor in 1979. In 1980 he was named assistant director of stadium operations and, in 1984, broke into GM Pat Gillick’s inner circle when he was named administrator of player personnel.

“Pat was obviously an excellent mentor and as time went on he gave me more and more and more to do,” Ash said. “I think I was on the job for about three weeks and he said, ‘Make a trade.’ And I had no idea how that worked but I certainly found out.”

A day or so later, Ash followed through, negotiating a minor-league deal: reliever Don Cooper to the New York Yankees for outfielder Derwin McNealy.

Gillick would resign from the Blue Jays after the 1994 season and Ash was promoted to GM the following year, becoming Toronto’s first Canadian-born GM. He was in the job until 2001. In 2002, he joined the Milwaukee Brewers as an assistant GM about five weeks after the Brewers had named another Canadian, Doug Melvin from Chatham, Ont., as their new ge3neral manager.

In the long history of MLB, only six Canadians have reached the ranks of GM, starting with George Selkirk, a native of Huntsville, Ont., who in 1962 was hired to head up the Washington Senators. Murray Cook of Sackville, N.B., would go on to be the GM of three teams during the 1980s – the Yankees, Expos and Cincinnati Reds.

Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos, left, and president and CEO of the Blue Jays Paul Beeston. Fred Thornhill/Reuters

Before he was hired by the Brewers, Melvin guided the fortunes of the Texas Rangers from 1994-2001, and he helped pave the way for Ash and Anthopoulos, who was just 32 when he became the GM of the Jays. Now Farhan Zaidi, born in Sudbury, Ont., is heading into his first season as the GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Anthopoulos was 23 when he sent out letters to all 30 MLB clubs seeking an internship. The Florida Marlins were the first team to respond, with a job in community relations.

“Three days later I think they realized I was a Canadian and it was going to be a problem getting me a work visa so they had to pull the offer back,” Anthopoulos said.

He eventually landed with the Expos, working weekends opening fan mail on a volunteer basis. After his work was done, Anthopoulos was able to pursue his real interest and sit inside Olympic Stadium and watch the Expos play.

“I loved the baseball side of it, the scouting and evaluating side, and I would just sit in the stands at the games and talk to the scouts and write scouting reports and basically just tried to learn the evaluation side of things,” Anthopoulos said.

That led to an internship at a Florida baseball academy, where he worked for basically nothing for 18 months, but the training was invaluable. He was on the field everyday with scouts and player development types, and his knowledge of the game continued to grow.

In March, 2002, Anthopoulos landed his first paying gig, earning roughly $25,000 a year to be a scouting co-ordinator with the Expos. He was Montreal’s scouting supervisor when he was contacted in 2003 about an opening in Toronto with the Blue Jays in their scouting department. Although the job was actually a demotion, Anthopoulos readily accepted.

“It was less money and it was a step backwards in title,” he said. “But everybody knew the Expos were going to relocate down to the States and I was worried I was going to be left behind.”

In Toronto, Anthopoulos quickly caught the eye of J.P. Ricciardi, who promoted the eager employee to assistant GM following the 2005 season. And when Ricciardi was fired close to the end of the 2009 season, Beeston handed Anthopoulos the reigns to the team.

“I never planned on working in baseball,” Anthopoulos said. “I didn’t know how realistic it would be. But at the same time I only really pursued it after my Dad passed away and I realized it was important to me to pursue something that I loved. Really for me, having a passion was the most important thing.”

Now, with potentially three homegrown players in his starting nine, Anthopoulos will watch the product of that passion take the field, hoping that, after a long stretch of disappointment, Canada’s team can return to the post-season promised land.