Blue Jays give city a reason to come together

We could use more moments like this, when bandwagon hoppers, diehards unite in shared fandom

Thestar.com
Oct. 7, 2015
By Edward Keenan



On the day this year that the Blue Jays last played at the Rogers Centre, I was riding the subway. This was right after Josh Donaldson sent a ball over the Home Hardware logo in left field for yet another walk-off home run, putting an exclamation point on both his own MVP campaign and on what is by some measures the best offensive season recorded by a major league baseball team since the 1953 Dodgers. Everyone on the train seemed to be talking about the game, and the team. A man near me was talking about where he was when Joe Carter hit his 1993 walk-off blast to win it all. A woman responded that she had not been born yet back then, but she had recorded the one Donaldson had just hit, in person, on her phone.

“Attention TTC passengers,” a tinny voice came over the loudspeaker, the one that usually tells us to sit tight because some signal problem is about to ruin our commute. “I’d just like know,” the voice went on, “if there are any Blue Jays fans on this train?”

Passengers started laughing and clapping.

“I said, are there any Blue Jays fans on this train?” And then there was howling and cheering.

“All right, then! Go, Jays, go!” the voice said.

And the chant went up from one end of the Toronto Rocket train to the other: “Go Jays go! Go Jays go! Go Jays go!” It didn’t really let up until we reached the next station, and the memory of those smiles and that excitement hasn’t let up on me yet, more than a week later.

“Come Together” has been the motto of this Blue Jays team since spring training, and as they push on into the playoffs for the first time in a generation, that motto is coming to life in the streets and shops and subway tunnels of Toronto. And even at City Hall.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, centre, raises the Blue Jays flag with the help of the Jays' own Ace.

On Tuesday, Mayor John Tory appeared with Ace, the Jays mascot, assorted city councilors and the mayors of the other cities in the GTA at the ceremonial flagpole outside City Hall.

“There are a few moments in your life that you have where you remember where you were and who you were with,” Tory said to the crowd in Jays caps and jerseys gathered in front of the podium. “And I think if we go back, those who are old enough, to 1992 and 1993, we remember when our Blue Jays won the World Series not once, but twice. And we remember how the city felt and what a great moment it was.”

Oh, I remember all right.

Everyone remembers Joe Carter’s 1993 homer (I was at the Phoenix Concert theatre watching it on a big screen above a rapt dance floor full of alternative rockers and club kids, who went on to dance the night away in celebration), and they hardly ever stop talking about it - “Touch ’em all, Joe;” the shot heard round Canada.

But even more vividly I remember, after Carter on first base caught a lightly tossed ball from Mike Timlin to end the series in 1992, driving in from Scarborough and celebrating all night on Yonge Street with tens of thousands of strangers, crowded into the road like it was rush hour at Union Station, hugging and high-fiving and kissing in what is still the most ecstatic Toronto moment I have ever been part of. At one point that night, a stranger ran up to me and gave me a giant Canadian flag on a pole and shouted “WE WON!” I still have that flag somewhere, a reminder of one night that helped me fall in love with the city I’d always lived in.

This is what sports does - or can do. Provide defining collective moments for people who decide together that this thing (this game, these players, this team) will matter to them. The long-suffering die-hards and the bandwagon hoppers alike invest themselves, for a time, in the story of a group of players, and invest themselves in each other through their shared fandom. Struggle, conflict, hope, heroics, heartbreak, tradition, triumph, tragedy: we watch the story unfold in real time, experiencing all the most important stuff of life together, unchained from the life-and-death consequences of politics or war or all the other situations where the stakes make tribal investment too dangerous to enjoy. Win or lose, the stories are true and the emotions are real. And win or lose we all wind up back in the same place at the end, once the hangover wears off: determined to go out and get ’em next time.

Canada has had a few of those big moments that stand out: the 1972 Summit Series was before my time but has been replayed and relived in heritage moments so frequently it feels like I was there. And I recall the rapturous Olympic hockey wins by both our women and men. In Toronto, there are the Blue Jays wins. And then there are the repeated heartbreaks of the Leafs - as vividly as any personal milestone, I remember crying in a room full of friends after the great Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark playoff run of 1993 was ended with a shocking comeback by the Kings. And just as clearly I remember holding my son in my arms for an hour while he cried himself to sleep after his first (and still only) experience of playoff hockey ended in overtime with a shocking comeback by the Bruins in 2013.

Our memories of our teams, win or lose.

This city can use more of these moments of togetherness. In the midst of this endlessly divisive election campaign, it seems the country can use more of them too.

And now here we go again, finally. On Thursday, playoff baseball returns to Toronto.

“Game on,” John Tory said at City Hall, and then he and the mayors of the other GTA cities raised a blue flag with the Jays logo on it up the pole. It hung there limp for a bit while the politicians milled around, and then, just as someone cued up “Hooked on a Feeling” over the PA system, the still air finally stirred and the flag flew to mark the playoffs, after all these years.

Finally, another set of collective memories will be formed, made up of a million personal stories about one story, to be treasured and retold in the years to come. Finally, a chance for us to fall in love, together, again.