Vladimir Guerrero Jr. celebrates after a double play in Game 7. Toronto lost to Los Angeles, but Mark Kingwell writes that some moments from the game represent the Blue Jays at their best.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and the author of Fail Better: Why Baseball Matters.
Baseball is not a religion but it sure feels like one sometimes. The rituals, the costumes, the incantations. The narratives of sacrifice and redemption. The slow deaths and joyful resurrections. Above all, the return of days, the year-guiding calendar of spring training, regular season, and postseason.
Los Angeles Dodgers fans watch Game 7 during a Dia de Los Muertos party at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was peak baseball on the Feast of All Saints. The day after – All Souls’ Day by the traditional Christian calendar – is when we honour the departed, especially those in Purgatory. Together these two festivals make up Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Let’s agree, in an ecumenical spirit, that this combined observance of joy and mourning now embraces all Blue Jays fans, regardless of what other belief systems they may honour.
Nobody has to tell us anything more about the agony of defeat, the dashed hopes of a solo shot that breaks an extra-inning tie, the stranded runners, the broken-bat double-play that will live in jagged memory. We all saw the post-game tears and disappointed thousand-yard-stares of this so very likeable team, this cheerful band of brothers. A solitary Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the dugout will join, for some of us, Pafko at the Wall as an enduring image of baseball’s infinite capacity for pain.
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The game, and the series, were objectively epic for all the reasons historians will record. Record-setting postseason hits, complete games, marathon extra innings, multiple future Hall of Famers on both benches, the two-decade range between two of our starting pitchers, a bench-clearing almost something – the list of superlatives goes on. We can tell ourselves the simple truth: we have witnessed one of the best baseball series in the entire span of the game.
Blue Jays reflect on the team's loss to Los Angeles in Game 7 of the World Series. It's the closest the team has come to winning the championship in more than 30 years.
The Canadian Press
But baseball is made of more than records and stats, much as they feature prominently in the narrative of the sport. Like most fans, for me it is singular images that will stay in the mind, forever cementing this magic season and series, the last one before robo-camera challenges and other threats to the crooked timber of the game’s humanity.
So: Just from Game 7 I will cherish a few freeze-frames of my favourite players at their winning best, even if ultimately they lost. Bo Bichette’s grim hit-man satisfaction after hitting a three-run homer, dropping his bat contemptuously like a discarded McMillan TAC-50 rifle. Guerrero’s open-mouthed glee as he bolted for the dugout after turning that perfect 3-6-3 double play. Ernie Clement’s joyful, surely unnecessary playground slide into home after throwing off his batting helmet in a pure dash around third, looking around like a happy 12-year-old to see who’s watching.
Ernie Clement slides into home plate to score during the sixth inning.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
That would be everybody. Because this was, above all else, an eminently watchable team, fun to follow, brimming with love of the game. I’m biased, I know, but they were so much more charming than the po-faced Dodgers, those dour, greedy seekers after a repeat title. The Jays had rizz, as the kids say; or, to use a more old-fashioned word, style. They were resilient, courageous, buzzy, and creative. They made things happen, sometimes by conjuring something out of nothing, as great players can.
Baseball is not an art form any more than it’s religion, but these Jays played it like they were artists, every one of them, with an expansive play of imagination and collective exercise of their talents. Those different body types, my lord. (Like it or not, the super-slo-mo replay of Alejandro Kirk’s awesome swing will take up semi-permanent residence in my mental theatre.) Our injury-battered heroes grimacing and limping their way to still more hits and runs. The diving catches and jaw-dropping splitters over the plate. The ups and the downs.
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Now we deal with the loss of all that, the harsh, unforgiving logic of what might have been. It’s a game of inches, they say, of missed chances and almost-there sallies. Consider that toe-tap at home plate, or the almost collision of Dodgers in centre field, the hanging curveball tagged for a homer – these are all the little things that make the big difference. Of course they are.
Now November continues its bleak course into winter. But we have a duty to take the joy as and where we can. We must fold this series into all the other memories of this team, this improbable season, this sport that is made of memory.
Jays fans say thank you to the Blue Jays players and they expect the team to be back in the World Series in 2026.
I attended my first Blue Jays game in 1978, driving in from Mississauga with my uncle in his old Chevy Monte Carlo, parking in somebody’s yard for $5, and walking over to Exhibition Stadium – the Mistake by the Lake – to buy actual paper tickets from a human being at a kiosk. From that day to this, like so many other fans, baseball has sustained me.
This is a hard moment, fellow believers, but we are blessed to be here for it. And we all know that there’s always next year – because that’s how years work.