Ides 91: King of Kensington
Like a lot of kids, Sammy Salsberg wanted to grow up and play baseball. In 1934 he pitched senior ball for the Danforth Aces and later trained with the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club. In 1935, he was invited to train with the New York Giants. But a sporting career cut short by the war and a rotator cuff injury led to involvement in sports of a different kind - Sam became Toronto's first ticket broker.
Opening a cigar store at 275 College St, Sam and his wife Molly became the hub for life in Kensington - ultimately inspiring the CBC show ‘King of Kensington’ which ran for 5 years in the 70s. One day, a customer asked Sam if he could help him get rid of a pair of tickets he couldn’t use since he knew so many people in the neighborhood. From that simple transaction, a whole new business was born.
Sam started with Leaf’s and Argo’s tickets but saw an opportunity and ran with it creating junkets to Bill’s and Expo’s games and moving into music and theatre tickets. He was the first in Toronto to offer Broadway tickets and eventually people would come to him for whatever they needed tickets for.
Sam and Molly sold the business and without their charm and passion, it closed a few years later. But Sam’s love of sport never dwindled and to complete the circle, Sam threw out an opening pitch at the Rogers Centre on his 90th birthday.
