There’s a photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that’s been making the rounds since the Blue Jays booked their first World Series trip in 32 years.
He’s about three years old and standing beside his father, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., on the field. He’s dressed in a tiny pin-striped Montreal Expos uniform, his blue cap held against his chest as the national anthem presumably blares. His eyes are fixed on something distant, as if he can already see where he’s headed.
It’s a snapshot of a life shaped by baseball. “I was born ready,” Guerrero told a roaring Rogers Centre crowd Sunday, after the Jays clinched Game 6. “And I want it all for this city.”
Here’s the thing about that photo, though. Canadians across the country have their own versions of it. In the wake of the Jays’ postseason run, fans have been sharing photos of their younger selves — perched on a grandparent’s lap, tugging on tiny Blue Jays caps, cradling miniature bats. Singular moments wrapped in decades of hope.
The Jays, by nature of being Canada’s only Major League Baseball team, hold a unique status among Canadians. They’re the only team the entire country can cheer for. Some fans cheer by geography, others by inheritance, but all are bound by the same goal: to survive the 162-game grind and still be watching when the leaves start to fall.
Most stories in that journey fade, lost to the churn of time and baseball’s relentless schedule. But some remain. The ones captured in moments like George Springer’s go-ahead home run on Monday night, a blast that cut through the tension and stitched another thread into the country’s collective memory.
In a time of division, of historic inequality and polarization, of institutional collapse and algorithmic distraction, baseball still manages to offer something simple and human — shared joy and a common interest.
Springer wrote himself into team lore on Monday night, no matter what happens from here. For Seattle, still the only franchise never to reach a World Series, it was heartbreak. They watched a lead they held most of the game disappear in a single at-bat in the bottom of the seventh inning. Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo, who had returned from injury late in the season to take the mound as a reliever rather than a starter, had stifled the Jays' offence through several innings. It was only after manager Dan Wilson made the call to bring in another pitcher, Eduard Bazardo, that Woo was left to watch helplessly as Springer sent a ball sailing over the left-field fence and the stadium erupted.
In the locker room afterward, Woo was asked about the legacy of the team, having made it further than any other in Mariners history. Before he could answer, one of Woo’s teammates let loose a single guttural scream.
That’s the simple binary of sport: beauty and cruelty, joy and pain, forever intertwined.
Now, the Jays await an extraordinary opponent in the Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending champions and baseball’s modern juggernaut. The Dodgers feature the game’s greatest star in Shohei Ohtani, often compared to Babe Ruth, a cheat code of a player, capable of brilliance both on the mound and at the plate. The Dodgers’ lineup of arms can overwhelm and stupefy an offence even as potent as Toronto’s. But that’s for another day.
For now, there’s this. A new generation of photographs was taken on Monday night, a new generation of sleeping kids woken by the sound of a joyous household celebrating a home run, just as Joe Carter woke us up 32 years ago. Young fans rubbed sleep from their eyes to watch Carter leap around the bases. Springer was light-footed in the same way, his fists balled, arms raised as he shouted and skipped along the basepath.
Baseball, at its best, gives us that rare thing: a moment that lives on, a moment that belongs to everyone.
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