I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit how much of my life I’ve spent watching sports. But only somewhat. Sports is unlike anything else. Even if I do the perfect interview (which I’ve never done), write the perfect column (which I’ve never done), or nail moderating an election leaders’ debate (also, something I’ve never done), I have never experienced the elation I see on the diamond, on the ice, or on the field when a player hits a walk-off home run, scores the winning goal, or kicks the winning field goal.
That’s one reason we love sports. The joy and the agony of it all is so much more intense than our real lives.
All of that has been particularly true over the past month, as we have watched the Blue Jays pursue their quixotic mission, going from last place to the World Series in one year. And even though the team lost in crushing fashion in the wee small hours of Sunday morning, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team that was this likable — even adorable — to its supporters. And that’s saying something, because the harsh reality is that the Jays not only could have won Game Seven: they should have won it.
Their astonishing ability to find a way to stay alive, leading Major League Baseball in comeback wins, made them especially fun to cheer for. Who didn’t love Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s post-game interview on the field with Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae? With tears in his eyes, Mae asked him if he was ready to go to the World Series: “I was born ready.”
There was much Canadian pride at Game Six of the World Series. (Steve Paikin)
These were not a bunch of overpaid megastar mercenaries. In fact, time and again, what made them so lovable were the average players who were achieving things so beyond their perceived capabilities.
Was anyone surprised that Vladdy, he of the 14-year, $500 million contract, came up big during the playoffs? Not this observer. We all knew he had it in him.
But who saw third baseman Ernie Clement increasing his batting average from .277 in the regular season to a mind-blowing .411 in the playoffs? Not to mention the fact that he set a new record for most postseason hits, with 30.
Who predicted that a 22-year-old pitcher named Trey Yesavage would go from performing in front of 326 people in the lowest level of minor league baseball to the biggest stage in the baseball world? And then to strike out more hitters in one game than any rookie ever, breaking a 76-year-old record? Come on.
Who imagined that Addison Barger, who will turn 26 years old in less than two weeks and had his third kid during the playoffs, would hit the first-ever pinch-hit grand slam home run in World Series history?
I could go on, but you get the drift. They’ve been playing the World Series for 120 years, and yet this team did unprecedented things. The journalist Tim Kurkjian, who’s covered the fall classic 50 times and has surely seen many more, observed that was the best one he’d ever experienced: in part because it went seven games, in part because there were so many wondrous storylines, and in part because agony and ecstasy were regular bedfellows throughout. We all got to experience a fabulous range of emotions, almost all the time.
This was the 54th World Series I’ve seen, but I feel on completely solid ground in saying these Blue Jays were a team any baseball fan could fall in love with. I mean, how many times have you seen a post-series locker room interview in which a player admits he’s having a hard time doing the scrum with reporters, because he’s been crying for the past hour? That was Ernie Clement.
Or Chris Bassitt wiping tears from his eyes as he was answering questions?
Or poor Jeff Hoffman, who didn’t (but insisted he did) cost his teammates a World Series championship ring by giving up a home run in the top of the ninth. How gutsy was he to not dodge reporters after the game and take accountability for the team’s loss? (Note to Jeff: yes, you gave up a game-tying homer, but it wouldn’t have mattered had Yesavage not given up a homer in the eighth inning, or had your mates won the game in the bottom of the ninth or eleventh inning, as they could have. You win as a team and lose as a team, and it’s rarely ever only one person’s fault.)
Game Six was one to remember. (Steve Paikin)
Finally, one of the most joyous aspects of the Jays’ postseason run was that, even though only one of them was actually born in Canada (that’d be Vladdy, in Montreal), they made us feel proud to be Canadian. They manifested Canadian qualities of hard work, modesty, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and wanting to defeat the flashier, massively more expensive group representing the United States. We cheer for teams, and fall in love with teams, because at some strange level, we think they represent us. These guys very much represented us. And I say that knowing full well that there are people in southwestern Ontario who are Detroit Tigers fans, and people in Atlantic Canada who are Boston Red Sox fans, and people in British Columbia who are Seattle Mariners fans. But for much of October (and two days in November), we were all Blue Jay fans.
How many times have I heard our national anthem sung at a sporting event? I can’t even begin to guess. But I know this: I have never heard O Canada sung with more gusto than when I was in the Dome for Game Six, joining 44,709 others. I think a bunch of players and coaches from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama made 40 million people feel even better about being Canadian.
And ultimately, that may have been an even more important contribution than winning the American League pennant and taking the Los Angeles Dodgers to 11 innings in Game Seven.
I’m happy to rip off the great baseball announcer Ernie Harwell, who in praising the Detroit Tigers that won the World Series in 1984, signed off by saying, “Bless you, boys.”
Works here too.
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