It’s taken me a few days to get around to writing this. Obviously, I was saddened by the Blue Jays’ Game 7 loss to the Dodgers. It’s funny, because I really didn’t believe this team could win it all, but I had been enjoying the unexpected run. It was SO MUCH FUN! As underdogs all season, it wasn’t until they were coming home up 3–2 in the World Series that it suddenly seemed like it would be disappointing if they didn’t win. And, of course, they didn’t. And it was.

Still, it’s hard to complain. Like I said, it was so much fun. And this team was so easy to root for. Sure, you can blame Isiah Kiner-Falefa for not getting a bigger lead (though I fault Daulton Varsho even more), or Jeff Hoffman for the ninth inning homer (I was already envisioning the perfection of a final out where Ohtani grounded to Bichette, who fired to Vladdy). But really, the Jays had so many opportunities to score more runs. After doing exceedingly well at hitting with runners in scoring position all season, they left too many runners on base throughout the World Series — especially in Games 6 and 7.

But why wallow in the disappointment at the end when it really was a season to celebrate?

I think what I’m saddest about now that it’s over is that it’s over.

No game tonight. Winter is coming.

Another part of why this has been hard to write is that my relationship with the Blue Jays runs so deep that there’s so much I could write about. I was lucky to attend plenty of games throughout the playoffs. (See the pictures below.) Our family has had season tickets pretty much since the day they went on sale back in 1977. Our subscriber number is 840, which I assume means we were the 840th people in the city to buy seats. I wonder how many of the 839 people ahead of us still have their tickets? I was at Opening Day on April 7, 1977, with my brothers David and Jonathan. We were 13, 11 and 9 at the time. We were all there again for Game 7 on November 1, 2025. We’re currently 62, 59 and 58.

I wonder how many other people were at both of those games?

I wonder if any of them were as young as we were?

Our mother is the reason we’re baseball fans. My father was a sports fan, but my mother loves baseball. Those of you who’ve seen her on TV (she had plenty of media hits this postseason, in addition to her almost annual Opening Day appearances since 2018) have heard her explain that baseball was the only sport she really understood as a girl. She played in gym at school, and went to the minor league games of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. She became a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers when a teacher she liked brought a radio to class to listen to the World Series. She was in Grade 7. Which would make her 12 years old. Which would make this 1949.

When we learned in 1976 that Toronto was going to get a Major League team for the 1977 season, my mother told my father we had to get tickets. And we did. I had not been much of a baseball fan before that. I played hockey and football as a boy, and was pretty good at those sports. I started playing softball in 1972, but I was terrible. Even so, I started watching World Series games with the Oakland A’s and Cincinnati Reds that October. The A’s won in 1972, 1973 and 1974. I would sometimes watch the Expos in those years too, but it was the legendary World Series of 1975 between the Reds and the Boston Red Sox that really captured my imagination. I’m pretty sure my Dad woke me up to see the end of Game 7 on Wednesday night, October 22, 1975.

But what really made me a baseball fan wasn’t so much the 1975 World Series itself, as it was the official film of the 1975 World Series, which I watched in a blue-and-white-striped tent promoting baseball in Toronto just outside CNE Stadium at the Canadian National Exhibition during the summer of 1976. My guess is this was on opening day for the Exhibition, August 13, 1976, when the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (who we had season tickets for in those days) were hosting the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. If so, this would have been one day after the name Blue Jays was announced for Toronto’s new American League expansion team. I do remember learning about the name in a story in The Toronto Star while up at our summer cottage, but I don’t connect it at all in my memory with attending the CNE the next day. Still, I do remember how enthralled I was by the behind-the-scenes look presented by the World Series movie.

I would pretty much say I’ve been hooked on baseball, and loved the Blue Jays, ever since.

The Blue Jays were terrible in the early days, but no one seemed to mind. In our house, when a game was on — home or road — there was a radio on in practically every room. (Not a lot of TV games in the early days.) And when the team was home, on weekends especially, we were there! Sometimes, we got to sit in “the good seats” with one of our parents, or even two brothers by themselves. But, as often as not, we were headed down in a group on the TTC. We needed to take a bus, a subway, and a streetcar to get there from where we lived. It took about an hour-and-a-half, but kids could do that in those days. You could buy bleacher seats for $2, and even sometimes get them for $1 at Dominion grocery stores, but we always preferred to buy the $3 seats down the right field line. That way, we were in the main grandstand and could “sneak down” to “the good seats.”

Honestly, it’s great how many new fans the team has attracted with this successful season and World Series run. The same thing happened in 2015 and 2016, but hopefully it’ll last longer this time. Still, I honestly feel sorry for people who haven’t gotten to follow the Blue Jays since the very beginning. Learning to love a terrible team in the 1970s, watching them grow into a contender in the 1980s, and finally winning it all in 1992 and 1993… If you weren’t along for the ride, you really missed something!

Those 17 years took me from age 13 to 30, so I truly did grow up with this team. And I loved it. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve often said I feel like I’ve only stuck with the Jays out of loyalty to my younger self. But this year reminded me again how good it can be!

I joined the Blue Jays ground crew in 1981. My father had a cousin (Herb Solway, technically a cousin by marriage) who was a big wig with the team. He helped get me the job, but when I showed up for what turned out to be my first day — I thought it was only a job interview! — I was wearing nice clothes and spent the day shoveling sand into a big wooden box that broke before we could fill it! So, we shoveled it into a nearby … closet … room … I don’t really know what to call it, but there was still sand in there five seasons later!

I was with the ground crew through the 1985 season, so truly in the “Worst to First” years. I don’t remember the year for this picture, but it might be 1985. It looks like it must have rained at least a little that night, but we’re actually rolling out the tarp to cover the field after the game was over. No matter what the weather forecast, we covered the infield every night.

That’s me on the field (identified by the red ME) when the Blue Jays clinched the American League East for the first time in 1985.

I still have a champagne bottle (empty) that I took from the Blue Jays clubhouse at Exhibition Stadium after the 1985 celebration. It’s currently among the boxes of Blue Jays items from over the years that are being stored in Jonathan’s basement. And that’s me, in the clubhouse again at Skydome in 1989 while working for Digital Media, holding a tape recorder in front of Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick and George Bell.

Jumping ahead to this year, that’s me in the stands, repeatedly saying “I don’t believe it!” after George Springer’s seventh inning homer put Toronto ahead of Seattle in Game 7 of the American League championship series, then hugging Jonathan after the game was over.

The Jays celebrating their 2025 American League pennant on the field after the game. I didn’t get into the clubhouse this time!

But I did get to celebrate with my brother Jonathan. In the picture of me on the field in 1985, I’m looking at Jonathan in the seats while I’m clapping.

Game 1 of the 2025 World Series. Addison Barger and company coming off the field after Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam. Barger’s blast was part of a seven-run sixth inning that broke open a 2–2 tie en route to an 11–4 victory. It was fun!

David and I were at Game 1 of the World Series, as we had been in 1993 (and also at Game 4 in 1992). The win that night ran our World Series record at games together to 3–0. Unfortunately, the streak wouldn’t last.

With Jonathan, his daughter Zara, and wife Sheri in our season ticket seats before the start of Game 7 of the World Series. David and his wife, Carrie, were seated elsewhere. Maybe David and I should have been sitting together. Oh, well…

Three shots of Bo Bichette heading for the plate after his three-run homer in the third inning put Toronto up 3–0. Though I hoped we’d score more runs to make the lead a little more comfortable, I really thought the Blue Jays were going to win the World Series at this point…

But no. This is the Dodgers celebrating on the field shortly after Alejandro Kirk’s broken bat double play ground ball ended the game in the bottom of the eleventh. Boo!

Well, I’ve avoided writing about the Blue Jays all season long. Truth is, I never believed they could do this. I tried to put my skepticism aside and just enjoy it. But, any time trouble arrived, I’d think, ‘That’s it. They stink. Can’t keep it up.’ I didn’t think they could hold off the Yankees down the stretch. I was pretty nervous heading into the Division Series too. Don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong!

Our family has had Blue Jays season tickets pretty much since the moment they went on sale prior to the first season in 1977. We were all there, in the snow, on Opening Day. I was at every opener until 2018, when Barbara was diagnosed with cancer. I’d even skipped school again in 1980 to attend the makeup game after the official opener was rained out. My mother (Joyce) and brother Jonathan still have their home opener streaks in tact.

My mother is the reason our family became Blue Jays crazy. (Many of you will have seen her TV appearances over the years, including one on the CBC last week. There might be another on CTV this evening!) My father was a sports fan, but my mother was a baseball fan! She always says it was the only game she really understood as a girl. She used to attend the minor-league Toronto Maple Leafs baseball games in the 1950s and root for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees watching the World Series on television.

Of course, I watched plenty of games this year — and attended a few — but I wish I’d more fully embraced the team. I should have! They play the type of baseball I really enjoy … putting the ball in play and making things happen, as opposed to slugging and strikeouts. And they really do seem to like each other. But after the playoff flame-outs of recent years, and the terrible season last year, I didn’t think they’d done nearly enough to turn things around. (I certainly wasn’t alone with that thought!) The Jays got off to a good start, but then sort of fell apart and it was easy to believe it would be another frustrating season.

I was hopeful Bo Bichette would bounce back, and even though Vladimir Guerrero has mostly been good-but-not-great (and I have trouble wrapping my head around anyone making $500 million!), I figured they really did have to re-sign him. Still, I wasn’t very optimistic. My friend Leslie was an early believer. I warned her not to get too excited, but it turns out she was right!

Like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong.

Doesn’t get much better than beating the Yankees!

And now, it’s on to the American League Championship Series.

Whether it’s Detroit or Seattle, it should be exciting!!

Though I’m putting this out on April 11, I actually wrote it two days ago, on April 9. With the Blue Jays opening at home today, I’m waxing nostalgic about the home opener from 40 years ago, which was played on April 9, 1983. And, really, for that entire 1983 season.

What a great year!

So many memories…

My family has had Blue Jays seasons tickets since the moment they went on sale when the team began in 1977. I worked on the Blue Jays ground crew from 1981 until 1985. Those were the “Worst to First” years … and it’s hard for me to believe how long ago it was.

I am nothing like the sports fan I used to be. Though Lynn might tell you differently, I watch nowhere near the amount of hockey and baseball I used to. My two brothers still live and die a little with the Blue Jays. Even my mother does.

Me?

Well, I still enjoy baseball, but some times I feel like I only follow it as closely as I do out of loyalty to my younger self. Because, man, my younger self loved this team!

Our family was Blue Jays crazy … even with a team that lost more than 100 games in each of its first three seasons, and finished last (seventh place then) in the American League East five years in a row. That fifth season of 1981 was the strike year, when a big chunk of summer baseball was wiped out. The Blue Jays actually showed a lot of improvement in “the second half” of that season and, come 1982, I was optimistically predicting they would win 75 games. I remember us on the Ground Crew writing down our predictions and burying them under home plate before the season started … though I don’t ever remember digging them up to see if anyone had correctly predicted the Jays’ 78-82 record that year.

The 1982 Blue Jays finished strong. They went 44-37 in the final 81 games of the season, winning nine of their last 12. The 78th win was a 5-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners on the final day of the season, and moved the Jays out of seventh place … albeit into a tie for sixth and last with the Cleveland Indians. Jim Clancy pitched a complete game, and though there were only 19,064 at the game, the crowd roared as he came off the mound. Clancy, and several other Blue Jays, fired their hats up into the stands, where fans were shouting “We’re Number Six!” and “Bring on the Indians!”

The Maple Leafs were particularly terrible in the mid 1980s … so I couldn’t wait for spring and for baseball to start again.

The Blue Jays began the 1983 season in Boston on April 5, and I can clearly remember watching on TV in the Common Room at C House in Otonabee College at Trent University. Not a lot of other people were watching. Rance Mulliniks hit a two-run homer to cap a four-run second inning and the Blue Jays romped to a 7-1 win over Boston. But, after dropping the second game to the Red Sox, the Jays were 1-1 when they opened at home against the Yankees.

I don’t remember much about that game (I had to look up most of this), but I do remember the key play. The Jays had led 2-0 since the bottom of the second, but the bullpen (a crippling weakness all that season, and the next) coughed up two in the seventh and two in the eighth and the Yankees led 4-2. In the bottom of the eighth, Damaso Garcia led off with a single off Doyle Alexander, and the Yankees went to Goose Gossage, who was a little past his prime but still one of the most intimidating closers (we called them “stoppers” then) of his day. But Gossage walked Dave Collins and then gave up a run-scoring single to Willie Upshaw and it was 4-3. Surprisingly, Cliff Johnson laid down a bunt, moving Collins to third and Upshaw to second.

That’s when the key play happened.

Ernie Whitt was the batter, and he popped up into shallow right field. Collins was fast, but no way this ball was deep enough to score him. But then second baseman Willie Randolph, center fielder Jerry Mumphrey, and right fielder Steve Kemp all collided.

The ball fell in!

I leaped so high I hit my head on the bottom of the concrete roof atop the third base photographers dugout where I was watching the game! But it was worth the pain. Collins scored to tie the game, and then Jesse Barfield hit a three-run homer. Roy Lee Jackson — who had pitched poorly over 1 1/3 ineffective innings, helping to blow that 2-0 lead — pitched the top of the ninth and hung on to get the victory as the Jays won 7-4. (Jackson did this sort of thing so often, we used to call a reliever blowing the lead but getting the win “a Roy Lee victory.”)

The Jays actually struggled during that first month of the season, but won a huge game on April 19. I was back at university in Peterborough, where I had trouble getting radio reception in my dorm room. (Not a lot of TV coverage in those days.) But for some reason, I could tune in the game on my car radio in the parking lot behind C House. So, I was sitting out there on a cool evening, listening to the bottom of the ninth. The Jays were trailing Cleveland 7-5 when — with two outs — first Cliff Johnson and then Lloyd Moseby (after a Buck Martinez single) hit two-run homers to pull out a 9-7 victory.

That big win turned the season around, and the Jays won 22 of their next 35 games. When they moved into first place all alone in the AL East with a 7-6 win over Detroit on May 24, I took Bobby Cox’s team lineup card from the wall in the dugout to keep as a souvenir.

Toronto, Baltimore, New York and Milwaukee were all in a tight race for first throughout June, and when they reached the All-Star break on July 3, the Blue Jays were 44-33 and on top by a single game. Not only was it the first time Toronto had been in first place at the All-Star break, it was the first time the team had been anywhere other than last place! Three days later, Blue Jays ace Dave Stieb started, and won, the 50th anniversary All-Star Game.

The Jays remained in first place until July 25. But not everyone was a believer. I remember Duke Snider, the Hall of Fame player and Montreal Expos broadcaster, saying, “Water always finds its level, and so will the Blue Jays.” And Hal McRae of the Kansas City Royals said something along the lines of he didn’t think the Blue Jays would win the AL East because they never had. That seemed stupid to me! Nobody wins anything until the first time they win something.

The Blue Jays did begin to slip from contention in August, but there were still highlights. A doubleheader sweep of the Yankees on August 2 … and Dave Winfield sort of accidentally-on-purpose killing a seagull with a throw two nights later. Still, it all fell apart late in August at the end of a two-week road trip with a series of crushing, last-inning losses in Baltimore and Detroit.

Our family was in Detroit, visiting our American cousins, when the Jays played the Tigers. At least 10 of us were at the first game of the series on Friday night, which was a tense, tight, 3-3 tie through nine innings. With no faith anymore in our terrible bullpen, Bobby Cox stuck with starter Jim Gott to pitch the bottom of tenth … and, with two out, he gave up a game-losing homer to Alan Trammell.

Jim Gott was the friendliest Blue Jays player during my five years on the ground crew, and before the Jays set out on that long road trip, I had asked him if he would be able to put aside tickets for my brothers and me for the Saturday game in Detroit. Of course, at that time, I had no idea he’d been pitching on Friday night … nor how devastating that game would be. Still, on Saturday morning, he called at my aunt and uncle’s house to tell me he’d got the tickets.

(My family’s end of the bargain was that we were going to invite him and his wife to dinner after the season … but he never followed up on that. I was in touch with Gott via email through the Los Angeles Dodgers about 10 years ago and reminded him that we still owed him dinner! He didn’t follow up then either.)

The Jays won that Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday, we drove back to Toronto from Detroit listening to the game on the car radio. The Jays were leading 2-1 heading into the bottom of the ninth when the bullpen struck again. Dave Geisel, who’d come on with two out in the seventh and done well since then, got the first out in the ninth, but then walked Lance Parrish. Bobby Cox went to Randy Moffitt (brother of tennis star Billie Jean King), who retired Glenn Wilson on a screaming line drive for the second out of the inning.

Maybe Cox always planned to use Moffitt for just one batter.

Or maybe the loud out changed his mind.

Whatever the reason, Cox made the switch to our supposed relief ace, Joey McLaughlin.

Tigers first baseman Rick Leach singled on McLaughlin’s second pitch.

Then, on Joey’s third pitch to Chet Lemon, the Tigers’ centerfielder smashed a three-run homer.

At that point, we had turned off the 401 at London for either a late lunch or an early dinner. That part, I can’t quite remember. But, what I can clearly recall is that as we drove up to the restaurant (a Swiss Chalet) in stunned silence, my father asked, “Anybody still feel like eating?”

None of us did.

So he turned the car around and got back on the highway.

The Blue Jays finished in fourth place in 1983 with a record of 89-73, but were only nine games out of first. It took another two years, and the addition of Tom Henke to the bullpen, before they finally won the American League East in 1985.

It was another seven seasons until the first of back-to-back World Series titles.

It’s now been 30 years since that second Blue Jays championship.

We’re still waiting for the third.

Maybe this is the year.

Maybe not…

But, I guess I’ll remain loyal to my younger self a little while longer.