Most Canadians Dislike Toronto. So Why Do They Love the Blue Jays?

The American League East Division champion Blue Jays have brought playoff baseball back to Canada for the first time since the Clinton administration. They’ve given their city, Toronto, pretty much its only genuine reason for sports swagger in two decades (sorry Raptors). What that should mean, based on the history of both sport and citizenship in this country, is that everyone else in Canada should be flexing and hydrating for a massive pile-on of schadenfreude should the Jays not win it all. That hasn’t been happening, and I’m confused.

I have the kind of job that has me travelling a great deal across Canada. And, I’m from Toronto. Torontonians, at least those of us sensitive to the intricacy and socio-political delicacy of the Canadian national character, spend an awful lot of time on the road not talking about where we’re from. In fact, I put a great deal of energy into actively disguising the fact that my job and home are in Canada’s largest, most-prosperous, and most-reviled metropolis. It’s just easier that way. Especially during hockey season.

I’ve learned from hard experience, for instance, that the thing you don’t ever want to do in a sports bar anywhere outside Toronto is to ask the barkeep if she can “put the Maple Leafs game on.” I did that once in Ottawa, which is not even that far away from Toronto, and spent the rest of the evening deflecting verbal potshots from around the room. “Why would anyone want to watch that crap team?” “Oooh, Toronto-guy doesn’t want to watch our team play. He hates winning.” You get the picture.

And yet, suddenly, everyone in Canada loves the Blue Jays. Do they know the Blue Jays play in Toronto? I’m just not sure.

If you don’t live in Toronto and you’re a Canadian, chances are you don’t much like Toronto. That is a statistical given, in my experience. Even if you don’t actively despise the very idea of Toronto, you’re probably pretty good at one of Canada’s beloved national pastimes, the overly-dramatic rolling of the eyes at the mere mention of this city. This stuff is not mysterious. Every country in the world has its own Toronto. The US has New York, the UK has London (and yes, I can see all the non-Torontonians right now rolling their eyes at this comparison). I imagine in the smaller communities of Paraguay, you might hear people grumbling about Asunción and how those lazy, privileged Asunciónites don’t know what it’s like to really live in Paraguay.

I get it. To the disgust of many Canadians, Toronto is the center, the focus, the entitled child of Canada, for whom everyone not in the center, everyone less noticed, and less privileged feels an understandable antipathy. This is not a complaint. I understand the resentment of Toronto. Sometimes, I even agree with it. A lot of Toronto-bashing is perfectly accurate. There are (many) more attractive cities in Canada, cities with more vibrancy, less snobbishness, friendlier people, better traffic flow, fewer crack-smoking municipal politicians, more efficient snow-removal. And yet so much of the national budget, media focus, and international notice flows to the northwest shore of Lake Ontario. That has to burn a little bit.

So then, what’s up with all the sudden Blue Jay love? Back in the day when the Montreal Expos still bashed balls around Olympic Stadium, preferring the Expos to the Jays was de rigueur for the ROC (rest of Canada). The Jays were the un-serious little brothers, sniffed at by anyone with real baseball cred. After all, the Expos took on the Dodgers in the ’81 NLCS. The Expos brought us Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Tim Raines, and Warren Cromartie. Since the Expos moved to Washington to become the Nationals, I’ve watched with dismay as many former Expo-fan friends made a deliberate turn away from Toronto and to, say it ain’t so, the Yankees.

I can’t help being from Toronto, and I can’t deny my sports loyalties. I was born five city blocks due south of Maple Leaf Gardens just two years before the Toronto Maple Leafs won their last Stanley Cup (look it up — that’s a long time ago). I purchased one of the first 100 season ticket packages for the Toronto FC Major League Soccer club (an investment that looks to be finally paying off with a first-ever play-off appearance only eight years later). I’ve been going to Toronto Blue Jays games since 1977, and I have suffered through all 22 years since the glory days of the Jays’ back-to-back world championships in ‘92-‘93. I’ve let the Raptors and their superstars of razor-thin loyalty break my heart repeatedly. To top it all off, I somehow let myself become a fan of the Buffalo Bills, the closest NFL team to my couch, and a squad whose greatest claim to fame, really, is how many Super Bowls in a row they managed to lose many years ago. I’m all geared up with jackets and t-shirts and jerseys and caps showing my Toronto (and area) sports pride. But you’d never catch me wearing any of it anywhere else (in Canada) outside Toronto.

It’s become a cliché in the sport press to say that the Blue Jays are playing for a country, not a city. How did that happen? Winning helps, of course. And the way the Jays have been winning — stomping all over the competition, showcasing character players like Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion, and ignoring all the naysayers — is an infectious, proven formula for getting the old bandwagon heading down the road.

It helps as well, I think, that the Canadian heart of the current Blue Jays, catcher Russell Martin is most closely associated with Montreal, where he grew up watching Expos games and where his father still lives. The Jays very smartly made Martin the center of attention during their pre-season visit to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium to play the Cincinnati Reds. Martin has also played for the Yankees, which means that many former Expos fans naturally like him. Sigh.

And yet, Russell Martin was born in Toronto (it’s true, ROC… sorry), and is now anchoring what could be this city’s third world champion team; something the Expos failed to do even once. What’s more there remains no other major league baseball team in Canada, and despite recent hopeful noises from Montreal, the likelihood of a second Canadian team anytime soon is slim. Russell Martin and his blue brethren seem to have accomplished for Canada what no politician in close to 150 years has managed. True to the Blue Jays marketing hashtag this year, Canada has #ComeTogether behind Toronto for really the first time in our country’s history.

Feeling the warmth of this great big national hug all around me, I’m sorely tempted to pack my Toronto away-jersey with me on my next trip to Vancouver. Then again, I’m not an idiot. Hockey season has already begun.

- John Degen