The Guelph Royals are a baseball team based in the downtown area of Guelph, Ontario, and are a member of the Southern Ontario-based Intercounty Baseball League. The club was founded in 1861 as the Guelph Maple Leafs, and after winning the "Canadian Silver Ball Championship" three times between 1869 and 1872, went on to become world semi-professional champions in 1874, and hold brief membership in the International Association for Professional Base Ball Players during the 1877 season, rivalling National League teams. In 1919, they joined the Intercounty Baseball League, and underwent a series of name changes (the Guelph-Waterloo Royals in 1954; the Guelph Plymouths in 1957; the Guelph Merchants in 1958; the Guelph Royals in 1962; the Guelph CJOYs in 1964) before being officially renamed the "Royals". From 1861 to 1925, the team divided its home games between various ballparks in the city, before the construction of a stadium in Exhibition Park led them to permanently play there. In 1986, they moved into a new stadium, David E. Hastings Stadium, also in Exhibition Park. In spite of only winning one Intercounty championship between 1932 and 1993, the team has done well in some subsequent years. However, a May 2018 news item stated that "the Royals haven’t been above .500 since 2012 and haven't won a league title since 2004". The team folded in 2017 but was re-started under new owners in 2018. History A. S. Feast, George Sleeman, and the Guelph Maple Leafs (1861–1873) In 1861, baseball enthusiast A. S. Feast moved from Hamilton, Ontario to Guelph, and – being a professed fan of the Hamilton Maple Leafs, whose name was derived from the nascent national symbol – founded a new, semi-professional club, the "Guelph Maple Leafs", in order to take advantage of the high popularity of the sport in 19th-century Southwestern Ontario. The Maple Leafs began play the summer of that year, and their first game wound up a 27-27 tie against a club from Flamborough, Ontario, as the umpires were unsure whether it would be permissible to continue the game beyond nine innings. Under the guidance of Feast, and helped by the substantial amount of talent in the region, the Maple Leafs soon became one of the most promising baseball clubs in Canada, and, in 1865, nearly defeated the Woodstock Young Canadians to win the "Canadian Silver Ball Championship" – a loosely-knit tournament in which Canadian teams of