Larry Millson

Larry Millson was born in Toronto in 1943 and grew up a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. As a boy he sold programs at Maple Leaf Stadium, the waterfront ballpark that predated Exhibition Stadium, and he watched Sparky Anderson in his early managing days with the Leafs. At 11 he played baseball with John Hiller, the Toronto native who later pitched for the Detroit Tigers. He recalled those years in 2016 as part of how lucky he had been in the game.

Millson was a graduate of Ryerson, the Toronto institution now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, which had a long-established journalism program. He entered the newspaper business in 1964.

Millson's first newspaper job was at the Hamilton Spectator in 1964. He went on to write for the St. Catharines Standard, the Toronto Star and the Toronto Telegram before joining The Globe and Mail in November 1971. At The Globe he covered hockey, football, basketball, soccer, the Olympics and horse racing, and in 1980 he was assigned to the Toronto Blue Jays beat, which he worked full time for 26 years. He was in the press box for five division titles and the club's World Series championships in 1992 and 1993. In 1984, while in Seattle on a baseball assignment, he covered the Green River murders, and in October 1989 he covered the Loma Prieta earthquake for The Globe's front page after it struck before Game 3 of the World Series in San Francisco. He also covered Toronto FC during its early MLS seasons from 2007. After 37 years at The Globe he retired from the paper in 2009, then kept working for MLB.com, The Canadian Press, Baseball America, The Sports Xchange, Field Level Media and others, with a career spanning seven decades.

Millson was married to his wife Diane for almost 60 years, and they had a daughter, Cara. He was survived by a grandson, Benjamin, and a great-granddaughter, Elly. Diane told The Globe and Mail that his long road trips took a toll: "It's like we had two separate lives then. He was driven. Single-minded in terms of his profession." He typed with two fingers, never had a driver's licence, timed the national anthem at baseball games, briefly co-owned a standardbred racehorse, followed the Cleveland Browns, and loved U2, AC/DC and bluegrass and country singer-songwriter Mickey Clark. He lived near Christie Pits in Toronto, where he often watched and photographed Toronto Maple Leafs baseball games.

The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame called Millson one of the country's most respected and authoritative sportswriters and said it was believed no one had written more articles about the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays said he "chronicled many of the most memorable moments in franchise history with insight, professionalism, and an enduring passion for the game." Tributes came from colleagues across North American baseball writing, including Bob Elliott, Bob Nightengale, Jeff Blair, Howard Berger, Mike Berardino, Roger Lajoie and Kevin Glew. His 1987 book Ballpark Figures was among the first to examine the economics of a major league club.

Millson won a Sovereign Award in 1981 for the best thoroughbred racing story of the year in Canada. In November 2016 the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame named him its 2016 Jack Graney Award winner, an honour given annually to a member of the media for significant contributions to baseball in Canada through their life's work. Hall board members John Starzynski and David Morneau presented the award to him between innings of a Blue Jays and Pittsburgh Pirates preseason game at Olympic Stadium in Montreal on 1 April 2017.

Millson wrote Ballpark Figures: The Blue Jays and the Business of Baseball (McClelland and Stewart, 1987), an early study of player salaries, marketing, travel and the finances of a big league team. He co-wrote From Hockey to Baseball: I Kept Them in Stitches (2016), the memoir of former Blue Jays trainer Ken Carson. He appeared on the Toronto Mike'd podcast in 2023, alone and with Dave Perkins and Bob Elliott, to tell stories from Maple Leaf Stadium and the Blue Jays beat.

Millson died on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, in Toronto at the age of 83, of complications from a fall on the stairs leading to his basement. The Blue Jays and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame announced his death on 7 October. He had two writing assignments due that Friday for Core Sports, a Toronto sports publisher, which The Globe and Mail described as the first deadline he ever missed.