Winning at America’s Game, the Toronto Blue Jays Bear Hug a Nation
There was Monday night, and now there is Friday night, and in between there has been joy. Good morning and welcome to a special edition of the Canada Letter.
The Blue Jays play the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Rogers Centre in Toronto in Game 1 of the World Series, with the first pitch scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time. The Dodgers, with the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, are the defending champions. The Blue Jays haven’t been here since 1993, when they won their second consecutive title. Baseball’s glamour team from California versus a scrappy club with a whole country where it’s sweater weather rooting for them, playing out against the backdrop of months of political tension between Canada and the United States. Everything feels bigger in America but because of that everything is smaller. Here, the big things feel enormous and all-in. The times in sports when Canadians truly lost their minds: Joe Carter’s walk-off home run to win the World Series for the Blue Jays in ’93. Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal in the 2010 Olympic men’s gold medal hockey game to lift Canada over the United States. The Toronto Raptors upending the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors to win the N.B.A. title in 2019. Then Monday night, one for the list. George Springer launched a game-winning three-run home run that lifted the Jays to the American League pennant over the Seattle Mariners. It was cinematic, appropriate for the best comeback team in baseball. Beer cans flew. Fans reacted with all their limbs. The stadium vibrated. I thought I’d sidestepped the clubhouse beer bombs and champagne showers, but the next morning I discovered knots in my hair and my pillow smelled faintly of Budweiser.
I’ve been to all the Jays’ home playoff games, and watching the crowd has been as interesting as watching the game. This team is causing people joy — and suffering in a few fleeting instances — but mostly joy. Postseason baseball is a roller coaster. The Dodgers are reserved, polished to a Hollywood gloss with the biggest payroll in baseball. The Blue Jays are nervy and cheeky and play with exuberance. Some of their best postseason performers other teams gave up on. The Jays, in a nod to Canada’s pastime, use a hockey goal horn to mark home runs. But something else has further endeared them to us. They have embraced being Canada’s team winning at America’s pastime. [Read: As Blue Jays Advance, America’s Pastime Is in Canada’s Cross Hairs] Most of the players are from the United States or from Latin America. The manager John Schneider is from New Jersey. But I haven’t seen Canadian hockey players outwardly express such animated emotions about the country. “We’re the only one that gets to experience that, we’re the only team that has the following that we do and the viewership that we do,” Schneider said. “Guys don’t realize that sometimes. But from coast to coast to have this team to grasp onto is really cool.” He added: “We know we have a whole country behind us.” Here at home the average viewership for Game 7 on Monday was a record six million people, about 15 percent of Canada’s population.
When the Jays were outscoring the New York Yankees 34-19 in the division series, it was hard to not see them as an avatar for America, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the Jays’ Montreal-born superstar’s grand slam in Game 2 felt like a shot across the border. The Blue Jays are the right team at the right time for a country that has spent much of this year rallying around the flag, asserting its identity and independence from its longtime ally and pushing back against an American president threatening Canada’s sovereignty. “I was born here. I grew up in the Dominican Republic, and then from the moment that I signed here, I knew I was going to be here my entire career,” Guerrero said after Game 7. “I knew I had to somehow make all the fans, the entire country, proud of me, of my team. And like I always say, my challenge is to bring the World Series here back to Canada.” I paid a ticket scalper $70 — a scandalous amount in 1993 — and watched Carter’s home run from the top row steep above left field. The city went bananas, and everyone in the stadium was swept into the street in a spontaneous party that seemed to go on for days. When I started reporting on sports I saw more and more of those big moments, and also many small ones. In 2000 I covered the Montreal Expos for a season, and Guerrero’s father was their star home-run hitter. I rode the subway home after games, and Guerrero, despite being a famous pro athlete, often took the subway, too. Vladdy Jr. had been born the year before and was soon hanging with his dad at Olympic Stadium in a toddler-size Expos uniform. Now in the postseason he has six home runs, a dozen runs batted in and has been playing defense with guts and precision.
For Guerrero, the weight of a country feels as light as a bunt. “No pressure, no pressure at all,” he said. “My father taught me that it’s a dream come true to be here, right?’’ “You want to give everything you have for your country,’’ he added. “You feel proud of it. You feel very proud of it.” Springer’s big moment has been clogging my Instagram feed for days, and I’ve probably watched it 75 times since seeing it live. My favorite perspective showed the pandemonium in the Toronto dugout as the ball sailed over the wall. The infielder Ernie Clement’s glee. The catcher Alejandro Kirk’s determination. Guerrero’s gratitude to his higher power. The disbelief on the face of the 41-year-old right-hander Max Scherzer, who has made stubbornness look like a personality holy grail. Even if the best moment has already happened, though that seems unlikely knowing postseason baseball, it feels like enough for one October. Joyfully, Canada’s team doesn’t agree. A regular edition of the Canada Letter will appear as usual on Saturday. Shawna Richer is an editor on the National desk at The Times. She lives in Toronto and has been editing and writing about sports for almost as long as the Blue Jays’ World Series drought. How are we doing? Like this email?
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