When the Jays completed their fourth sweep in five series the other day — boasting the best record in the AL East — it got me to thinking: Geez, this team is pretty damn good.
At our Sportsnet office I sit next to baseball guru Ben Nicholson-Smith, who is one of the nicest human beings alive and also one of the most tolerable and knowledgeable baseball experts around. And finding a tolerable baseball guru is rare, so I always take advantage. Every day I ask Ben some iteration of ‘How ’bout those Jays’ and lately his reply has been something like ‘hey, they’re pretty good!‘.
As you know, this was not the case last year. Last year the Jays were pretty bad. And it hurt, because for the first time in a while I found myself caring. I bought into the hope and the hype, because hype and hope are fun. It’s why I first enjoyed sports. So last year was just annoying, particularly because so many people took some maniacal glee in I-told-you-so posturing about how they knew the Jays would suck. Damn, I hated how right they were. It was the worst.
But then yesterday, I went all in on the hope and the hype. In the top of the ninth as the Jays were on the verge of sweeping the Tigers—the Detroit Tigers!— I casually told Nicholson-Smith that Melky Cabrera was going to hit a home run on the next pitch.
He did. (My Ruth-ian call was recorded for posterity by news editor Mike Cormack.) It probably played just a small role in the actual home run, but here’s the important thing—it was awesome. The ball went over the wall and I felt this tinge of something like joy. It was fun.
I love sports because of the stories. I write profiles and features mostly—at least that’s where I’m most at home. I’m not really interested in sabermetrics (or Corsi and Fenwick while we’re at it)—not because I don’t believe in the value or accuracy of such things, but because frankly I just don’t care. Don’t get me wrong; I’m fine with people who do. Some of them can be cool. They just enjoy sports in a different way than I do. Some people love the numbers, the math, the stats—I was just more of an English Lit student in high school. Give me narrative ARC over wOBA or wRAA every time. I’ll take Longreads, you can keep Fangraphs. It’s just the way my brain works. (You won’t be surprised to know that I also loathe fantasy sports, but that’s another matter entirely.)
I like magic, even if it’s not entirely real. Tales of ordinary people living extraordinary lives. But sometimes even that takes me away from the real reason I started to watch and play sports. Joe Carter’s home run was the first moment of real magic in my life. It’s hard to capture that in a story. I’ve been searching for it ever since.
Truth is, after three years as a writer for Sportsnet magazine, and now also Sportsnet.ca I’ve realized that I’d rather sit in the blue seats than the press box. Not that Jays beat writers aren’t great people to be around. They are. But scrums and stats and game-over files, to me, seem like a great deal of mundane work. I’m a sports fan. I want to buy a grotesquely priced can of Bud Light and joke with the vendor about how utterly criminal it is. I want to cheer with the crowd as drunk idiots get tossed out by the cops, and to see the five-year-old catch her first ball. I want to see a grandmother who just turned 90 clapping for the Jays, and think of my own who is dutifully watching the game at home—as she has since her “boy” Joe touched ’em all in ’93. I want to sing “OK Blue Jays” loud and proud like I did back then and “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” like I imagine they did in the 50s. I want to hear the guy behind me yammer on to his buddies about how R.A. Dickey is a bum and we never should have picked him up. And I want to think to myself—Dude you’re a buffoon, Dickey won a very respectable 14 games last year, and I don’t care if you played rep ball in Ajax, even if you managed to make contact you wouldn’t hit it out of the infield. Tool.
I want to feel that mix of anger and love and nostalgia that makes being a sports fun such an emotional experience. I want to call a home run and see it happen, and feel stupidly thrilled and believe that I somehow sent it over the wall.
I’m now calling a World Series appearance for the Jays this year. Not a win, necessarily—let’s not be crazy.
Why? Because I want to. Because I can. Because sports in Toronto are fun again. (Stick tap to the Raps.) And I’m a proud fan again. May the gods of baseball bless us all.
That is, until the home run parade stops and the bullpen falters and the we-just-don’t-have-the-pitching chorus starts up once more. When the metrics even out and the Jays drift back to .500—back to boring, logical Earth—well then, what a bunch of bums they were. But man, what a story while it lasted.