After a heartbreaking Game 7 loss with the Blue Jays just falling short of a World Series win, this baseball superfan shares his reflections on a momentous season and a team that taught a country the meaning of true togetherness.<\/p>\n
Randy \u201cBatman\u201d Berdan knows ball. His love for the game spans decades as a player and avid fan with a wicked tattoo to prove it. He doesn\u2019t remember a time when baseball wasn\u2019t a part of his life. As a season seat holder for over 40 years, he has seen several iterations of the Blue Jays roster. Though he was in the Skydome (now the Rogers Centre) during the back-to-back championship seasons, he says he has never seen a Jays team quite like this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis team was just\u2014it was family.\u201d [They were] the most cohesive kind with an attitude of \u2018Put me in, coach, wherever you put me in, I\u2019ll do what you want.\u2019 They were all in it for each other.\u00a0 Not every team has that kind of thing going. Like, the Yankees, to me, got way too many egos over there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berdan says star player Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was not only a key element in their success but a testament to the team\u2019s ethos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gives 110 per cent in everything he does. And he\u2019s one of the smartest ball players, period. He does things that aren\u2019t conventional. For example, [in Game 3 of the American League Division Series] when he dove into home plate and [the Yankees] are trying to tag him, he basically went over the guy\u2019s arm and touched the plate. Most people slide to the bag but he touched the plate over the guy\u2019s arm to be safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would expect, when you\u2019re in that dressing room, Vladdy doesn\u2019t have an ego.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s the best player on the team, right? He thinks he\u2019s part of a team, and whatever he can do to help and be part of that team to make them successful. That\u2019s what his goal is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue Jays pride was infectious this October and spread across the country like wildfire. There were watch parties from Newfoundland to Nunavut. We were in it together in a way Berdan had never seen before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think back in \u201892 and \u201893 there was some of that, \u2018This is Canada\u2019s team,\u2019 but not to the degree I think I\u2019ve seen this time around,\u201d Berdan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not taking anything away from the 1993 champion team, but you know what<\/p>\n
they were, that was more of a big name, bought team. I don\u2019t know how to explain that, other than, you know, like Alomar and they brought over Dave Winfield, and they\u2019ve got Jack Morris at the deadline, and these are all Hall of Famers they\u2019re bringing in at the last minute kind of thing to shore up the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Berdan acknowledges that the Jays did secure some \u201cvery helpful\u201d players like future Hall of Famer Matt Scherzer, but the odds were still not in the Blue Jays\u2019 favour at the start of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I thought was very interesting was Milwaukee, who was the best team in baseball period, was lucky to score four runs against the Dodgers in their series, and the Dodgers won it easily, and we were deemed to be the third best in baseball. If Philadelphia was better than us and we took [the Los Angeles Dodgers] to extra innings in a seven game series, then yes we were David. But, [we proved] we were just as good as anybody.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, Berdan\u2019s perspective on what it means to win has evolved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve played in a lot of championship games. I\u2019ve been in a lot of finals in baseball, and I got to the point where my attitude became: \u2018We\u2019re now the two best teams left\u2019\u2026 and I\u2019m not embarrassed about anything in the end, because I got there, so if I lose, yeah, I\u2019m not happy about it, but you know what, I got there. And the same thing with the Jays.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he sympathises with the disappointed fans, he encourages them to \u201clook at what they gave us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[They] united us. You got to look at what they did for us, not what they didn\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Berdan\u2019s biggest disappointment:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the saddest moments, which I understand why it happened, I mean, the Dodgers won, so you clear the benches, [but] I was disappointed that I couldn\u2019t show my appreciation for the season they gave us. But, there\u2019s opening day next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a heartbreaking Game 7 loss with the Blue Jays just falling short of a World Series win,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3307,121635,49,48,4445,82,24418],"class_list":["post-262841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-baseball","tag-blue-jays-playoff","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fans","tag-sports","tag-world-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262841","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=262841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}