While the streets of Toronto saw seas of blue after the Blue Jays\u2019 11-4 victory in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday, the celebrations stretched all the way across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
In London, members of a group called Blue Jays Fans UK got together for a late-night watch party, cheering the team deep into the early hours.<\/p>\n
Steve Hunter, a Bournemouth resident who started the fan group more than 20 years ago, said the party began at 1 a.m. local time and ran past 4 a.m.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had an absolute blast,\u201d Hunter said. \u201cYou\u2019re never quite sure who\u2019s going to show up at that hour, but everyone who rocked up played their part. It was just great fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said dozens of British and Canadian fans showed up to watch the Jays\u2019 explosive nine-run sixth inning. At one point, Hunter said he was on the phone with a friend when Addison Barger hit a grand slam to put Toronto up 9-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cI literally couldn\u2019t hear her,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s just so raucous and loud in there. Everybody was high and celebrating and standing on chairs and just enjoying watching the game together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter first fell in love with baseball during a trip to Hamilton in 1994, when the Blue Jays were just coming off winning their second straight World Series title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what I fell in love with was just the passion of the fans for the game,\u201d Hunter said.<\/p>\n
When he returned to England, he said he found it almost impossible to keep up with the team or meet other fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was pre-internet, pre-TV coverage,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only way I could find out how the team was doing was to go down to my local newsagent and look for an international paper, maybe USA Today, or something like that, just to read a little bit about what the Jays were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That changed in the early 2000s, when he started a small Facebook group, which only had 13 fans at the time.<\/p>\n
Now, Hunter’s group has grown into an online community with nearly 4,000 followers on X, as well as fans on Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s about supporting the fandom here on this side of the pond and just connecting fans together so they can find a common space to talk about games and to do things like we did last night,\u201d Hunter said.<\/p>\n
He said the group is planning to host more parties as the World Series continues.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
Fatima Raza, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the streets of Toronto saw seas of blue after the Blue Jays\u2019 11-4 victory in Game 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-240026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240026","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=240026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}