{"id":208735,"date":"2025-10-13T01:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/208735\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T01:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:43:07","slug":"blue-jays-playoff-run-inspires-fans-across-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/208735\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays\u2019 playoff run inspires fans across Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Kai Zarowny, left, and Kohlman Zarowny shop at the Toronto Blue Jays merchandise store outside the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Saturday.Sammy Kogan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Baseball fans from coast to coast turned out Sunday to cheer on the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>, as the team opened an American League Championship Series for the first time in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s only major-league club is hosting the first two games of the best-of-seven series against the Seattle Mariners. Game three will take place in Seattle.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high. An ALCS win would mean a Blue Jays appearance in the World Series for the first time since 1993, the year of Joe Carter\u2019s series-winning walk-off home run. The excitement has spread to parts of the country where enthusiasm for the team \u2013 and for Toronto in general \u2013 isn\u2019t always a given. <\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter Adam Baldwin, a lifelong Jays fan who is based in Dartmouth, had a unique vantage point on the team\u2019s nationwide fandom this baseball season, as he toured the country with Blue Rodeo.<\/p>\n

Travel to Seattle to see the Jays play in the ALCS could come at a cost<\/a><\/p>\n

Key storylines ahead of MLB\u2019s best-of-7 League Championship Series<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery tavern you walk into, there\u2019s people watching the Blue Jays,\u201d he said, adding that he\u2019s happy to welcome those getting on the bandwagon.<\/p>\n

Mr. Baldwin\u2019s most memorable playoff experience might have been listening to the Jays\u2019 final game of the regular season \u2013 in which they clinched first place in the American League East \u2013 while driving across the Canadian Shield in Ontario.<\/p>\n

After a home run by Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk, he said, \u201cI evidently was excited enough that I was going 130 kilometres in a 90 zone, and I was pulled over by the OPP.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Helen Vlahos, left, and Wolf Schneider show their Davis Schneider jerseys.Sammy Kogan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Mr. Baldwin recalled that he apologetically explained that he\u2019d gotten too worked up while listening to the game, and the officer said that he, too, had been listening and let him off with a warning.<\/p>\n

Amy Dixon, a head nurse in the geriatric medical unit at Kelowna General Hospital, described the playoff run as bringing some much-needed entertainment, solace and bonding to people spending time there.<\/p>\n

At the staff\u2019s encouragement, visiting family members and patients \u2013 including \u201ca lot of older gentlemen who were avid sports-watchers\u201d \u2013 have been filing into the unit\u2019s lounge area to watch together.<\/p>\n

Uptake has been high, and Ms. Dixon expected it to be all the more so on Sunday. \u201cIt sucks if you\u2019re in the hospital on Thanksgiving,\u201d she said, but the Jays might help lift spirits.<\/p>\n

Spending Thanksgiving with her American family, Yellowknife resident Melanie Begalka said she\u2019s thrilled to see the Jays go this far in the season \u2013 even if the competition has introduced a little bit of trouble on turkey day.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family are big Mariners fans, so I\u2019m going to be watching the Blue Jays with a bunch of Mariners fans,\u201d said Ms. Begalka, who was visiting family in B.C. Her mother is cheering for the Mariners, while her father \u2013 a long-time fan of both teams \u2013 is seriously conflicted, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019s going to be able to actually sit down and watch the game he\u2019s so stressed,\u201d Ms. Begalka said. \u201cThese high-pressure games, you don\u2019t want to see anybody fail. There\u2019s definitely some tension in this house about who you\u2019re cheering for today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vancouver has been home to complicated baseball loyalties, with some fans supporting the team whose ballpark is a two-hour drive down the I-5 Highway in Seattle. <\/p>\n

Journalist and baseball historian Tom Hawthorn said the 2001 signing of Japanese outfielder Ichiro Suzuki led to a big boost in Mariners support in B.C. It gave baseball fans the opportunity to see one of the all-time greatest players close to home. <\/p>\n

However, that energy has eased over the past quarter-century and the Jays are \u201cfar and away the more popular league team\u201d in Vancouver, said Mr. Hawthorn, who is author of Play Ball!, an anecdotal history of baseball in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

Much of that is likely due to broadcast access. The Jays are covered across Canada, while it can be difficult to find a Mariners game. Also, the Vancouver Canadians have been a Blue Jays farm team since 2011, meaning that fans who paid a few bucks to see a minor-league baseball game would later see those same players on television, Mr. Hawthorn said. <\/p>\n

He noted that when the Mariners have hosted the Jays, \u201chordes and hordes of Blue Jays fans would go down and essentially invade Seattle, much to the frustration and anger of Mariners fans, who hated all these Blue Jays fans in their stadium.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said he\u2019ll be cheering for the Jays to bring a World Series championship to Canada for the first time in 32 years.<\/p>\n

Liz McGuire, a hard-core Jays fan in Toronto who became something of a league-wide celebrity last year after she got hit in the head by a Bo Bichette foul ball and remained in her seat the rest of the game, said that she first noticed support for the team spiking in early July, when the Jays swept a regular-season series against the New York Yankees to move into first place.<\/p>\n

Ms. McGuire, who now co-hosts the podcast Jay Bird Watching, acknowledged that the sudden surge in interest has caused some frustration, including some related to the prices of tickets, which have shot up. But she has welcomed the new converts.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

An employee creates a custom jersey at the Blue Jays merchandise store.Sammy Kogan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited for more people to be involved, and the city to be buzzing,\u201d she said, particularly since baseball has otherwise sometimes struggled to bring in younger fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there\u2019s room for everyone on the Jays bandwagon,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Jason Lyons, one of Ms. McGuire\u2019s co-hosts, had 15 people over to his North Vancouver home on Friday to watch the American League Division Series decider between the Mariners and the Detroit Tigers. <\/p>\n

Local bars, he said, are uncharacteristically advertising Jays watching parties, and he\u2019s seeing Jays car flags for the first time he can remember.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Lyons were inclined toward any skepticism of casual baseball-watchers suddenly claiming fandom, that is outweighed by \u2013 among other things \u2013 the feeling of a shared experience during an otherwise tense time for Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all going through tough times right now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if this can unify an entire country, then I\u2019m all for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Kai Zarowny, left, and Kohlman Zarowny shop at the Toronto Blue Jays merchandise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101688,1513,101687,49,48,77052,513,56605,44],"class_list":["post-208735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alcs","tag-blue-jays","tag-blue-jays-vs-mariners","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-game-1","tag-mariners","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}