Prime Minister Mark Carney visits the Toronto Blue Jays personnel on media day before Game 1 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Rogers Centre.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
David Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics. He cheers for the Pirates, though not when they play the Red Sox.
Quick quiz: What do tariff threats, the talk about becoming the 51st state, the 4 Nations Face-Off and the World Series have in common?
Answer in the United States: Nothing.
Answer in Canada: Everything.
Old maxim to explain how to determine the difference between Americans and Canadians: Say they are in fact not different. The Americans would nod in agreement and probably not care very much. The Canadians would go nuts and choke on their Timbits.
New maxim to determine the difference: Say that World Series is only a series of games. The Americans would agree and then examine the injury reports that affect their NFL fantasy teams. The Canadians would argue that their cultural identity and sense of sovereignty are at stake.
Least surprising sentence in The Globe today: Donald Trump is the reason.
Gary Mason: The Blue Jays are the perfect antidote for all that ails Canada at the moment
Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said that her father, Theodore Roosevelt (president between 1901 and 1909), wanted to be “the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” Mr. Trump is the starting pitcher, designated hitter, and dugout skipper of this World Series.
One of Mr. Trump’s predecessors, Ronald Reagan, was known for one sentence he uttered in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American, when as George Gipp he said at halftime of the 1928 Notre Dame-Army football game, “Win one for the Gipper.” Many of the Blue Jays seem to be saying: Win one (or, more precisely, four) for Canada.
Americans have little conception of how Mr. Trump’s tariffs and taunts have served to erode centuries of close ties between the United States and Canada and all but negated the warm words about the links between the two countries. The friendships that Brian Mulroney had with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (at whose funeral he was a eulogist) are inconceivable when it comes to Mr. Trump and both Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney, though the President does seem to at least respect the latter.
The great American coach Vince Lombardi used to say that football was not a game but instead was a way of life. In a way, this World Series is not so much a series of games but – please permit a writer’s inclination to exaggerate for effect, and also for fun – a metaphorical test of a way of life.
Living for several months in Montreal and possessing both passports, I sense that American sport fans, particularly in Southern California, would merely prefer the Dodgers to prevail – but that Canadians from the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland to Boundary Peak in the Yukon are deeply invested in the hope the Jays prevail.
Cathal Kelly: The U.S. can spare the Blue Jays its pity World Series fandom
The ironies abound. Most of the Blue Jays are Americans. Only slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was born in Canada, though raised in the U.S. and his Hall of Fame father’s Dominican Republic. The hero of the moment, George Springer, the artist of the three-run blast heard ’round the sporting world, was born in New Britain, Conn. He spoke shortly after his act of diamond artistry and referred to representing “our country.” The manager of the Blue Jays, John Schneider, was born in Princeton, N.J. The president of the team, Mark Shapiro, was born in Cambridge, Mass.
And of course here is the greatest irony of all: The Toronto Blue Jays are the champions of an entity called the American League. (No matter. The film pioneer Mary Pickford of Toronto was known as “America’s Sweetheart.”)
Listen for a moment to Kyle Wyatt, who left the United States for Canada to pursue a PhD at the University of Toronto and now is the editor of the Literary Review of Canada:
“I entered Canada 20 years ago without strong feelings toward any professional sports team,” he told me. “We didn’t have them in my home state of Nebraska. But as I’ve made my life and career here, I’ve also made the Blue Jays my own. Especially as decency and compassion rapidly disappear from American politics, I am as proud of Canada’s team as I am of my Canadian passport.”
He’s not alone. Me, too.
The other day the Toronto lawyer Stephen Halperin wrote me with an urgent inquiry: If the Blue Jays win the World Series, will Mr. Trump invite them to the White House?
That is the question of the age, or at least of this moment in sports and politics – and an unusual period when sports and politics converge, at least in Canada. Let’s hope the Blue Jays make it a conundrum for the White House.