Emilie Miranda | Deputy Copy Editor
Featured illustration courtesy of Christopher Lai
For the first time in over 20 years, the Toronto Blue Jays made back-to-back appearances in the MLB playoffs. They struggled in April and September, even with the best starting pitching rotation in the American League, or AL, but managed to win their last game of the regular season to clinch the first wild card spot in the AL East Division. After sweeping the Texas Rangers in the AL Division Series, the Jays fell to Cleveland in five games. It was a season of highs and lows, but the fans were there to respond to it all.
On the morning of the wild card game against Baltimore, a fan called in to Sportsnet radio to say: “All of Canada should be proud of this team.” And though outfielder Michael Saunders and catcher Russell Martin are the only Canadian members of the squad—making up one-third of all Canadian MLBers on 2016 starting rosters—it does seem that the Jays have become Canada’s team.
Social science professor John Simoulidis believes the Jays may be Canada’s team by virtue of being the only Canadian team in the MLB.
“Not having a team to root for risks social exclusion in the image we have of the people-nation called Canada,” he says.
“There might be a few exceptions, though, in places where people might be closer to another team. For example, you might find a few residents of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia rooting for the [Boston] Red Sox.”
The Blue Jays organization has also been playing off of Canadian patriotism, says Schulich marketing professor Vijay Setlur. “The team has recognized where it stands, and it’s tried to leverage that by really marketing itself as a team that all Canadians should support.”
Earlier in the year, Jays’ third baseman and American Josh Donaldson commented he would consider playing for Canada in a future Olympic Games, and Saunders campaigned for the 2016 All Star Game under the title Captain Canada. When the Jays made the playoffs, social media exploded with well-wishes from Hockey Canada, the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and NFL Canada, as well as Canadian Olympians and pro athletes. Players from the Raptors and the Leafs were in attendance for several playoff games. Everyone from TSN to Coca-Cola to the players themselves refer to the Jays as Canada’s team.
“[They] play at a certain calibre, which allows them to gain an international fan base,” says third-year history and music exchange student Jonny Chard. “I feel their exposure through the [MLB] and their success in it has pinpointed them as the only Canadian baseball team many people recognize, not only in Canada, but worldwide.”
One of the Jays’ more memorable moments came during last year’s playoff series against the Rangers. During a heated seventh inning that saw two instances of bench-clearing, a beer can thrown from the stands toward a baby below and an infamous bat flip, fans were warned to calm down, or the Jays would have to forfeit the game. Though the Jays went on to win the series, the world was able to see just how much Canadian fans care about a sport other than hockey. Author Stephen King took to Twitter to comment: “Who said Canadian fans were polite?”
It wasn’t the only instance of the Jays being related to Canadians in general. In the same series, Fox Sports commentator Harold Reynolds personally felt the ire of fans. After saying that Canadians don’t “[grow] up playing baseball in Canada” and aren’t “used to catching a lot of balls in the stands,” Reynolds received a quick backlash via Twitter. He made an apology on the Canadian broadcast the next night.
The Jays’ following isn’t just centred at Rogers Centre. Not only are there always a large number of Jays fans at every road game, recent series at Seattle’s Safeco Field have been swept up in a home-game-like atmosphere. Toronto Sun estimated that out of the nearly 35,000 fans who attended game one of this years’ series against the Mariners, at least 20,000 must have been Jays fans based on the cheering alone.
The Jays’ two games against the Rangers this past Thanksgiving weekend were the holiday’s first- and second-most watched English-language sports broadcasts, drawing in 4.73 and 2.29 million viewers respectively, according to Numeris. Yahoo! said interest in the Jays has lead to increased Canadian interest in baseball overall; viewership for the National League Division Series increased by 53 per cent from last year.
“Social media might make it easier to keep in touch with this community, but it existed long before the cell phone,” says Simoulidis. “What continues to play fundamental roles are traditional media: TV, for the shared experience; and newspapers, for reliving the experience and keeping track of developments.”
The Project Canada 2016 Sports Survey, conducted in the beginning of April, found that 25 per cent of Canadians follow the Jays. In comparison, 40 per cent follow the NHL, 12 per cent follow the Raptors and a mere nine per cent follow Canada’s three Major League Soccer teams.
Setlur says that basketball is popular in big Canadian cities that have more cultural diversity, whereas baseball is popular in both big cities and rural areas where the demographic is more homogenous. “It has a longer history and […] more of a grassroots presence than basketball does,” he adds.
As for the NHL, you can’t single out one team as Canada’s. “There are seven Canadian teams in this league, and who’s to say which team is more Canadian than the other?” says fourth-year theatre student Alex Colle.
In a contribution to The Players’ Tribune, Jays reliever Jason Grilli wrote: “I’m not delusional. I know hockey will never be the second favorite sport in Canada. But right now, we’re sneaking up on it a bit.” That’s not to say you can’t combine the two.
The Jays are apparently the only team in the MLB to sound a hockey-style goal horn after a home run, and there have been two instances so far where hats have been thrown onto the field to celebrate a Jays’ three-home-run hat trick, in similar fashion to hockey’s hat-throwing tradition after three goals by one player.
The stereotype is that this is a hockey country. The three top jobs in the Jays organization are occupied by Americans. Even Canadian coaching legend Mike Babcock was criticized for naming the Leafs, who play the country’s favourite sport in the hockey mecca of the world, Canada’s team. No team has ever before been called Canada’s unless they wore the maple leaf on their jerseys. But I think in this case we can make an exception.
