Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jonathan Davis throws the ball back after making a catch during live batting practice at MLB baseball training camp in Toronto on July 20, 2020.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
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 teaches at McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy.
Suddenly, there is joy in Pittsburgh. The homeless Toronto Blue Jays, cast onto the streets after the Canadian government ordered them to abandon Rogers Centre, may have found a new base on the banks of the Allegheny River in Southwestern Pennsylvania, where an unusual clutch of Canadians have settled, and where baseball fans are weary of settling for the Pirates’ usual mediocrity.
We already have Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby. Kris Letang, also. Now we are on the cusp of getting all 27 members of the Toronto Blue Jays. And manager Charlie Montoyo, too. Who says the coronavirus has prompted a lull in Canadian-American trade?
With the Rogers Centre out of the mix, Pittsburgh has stepped up and offered a helping hand. No word on whether that hand was covered by a medical-grade glove, proven more effective than many Pirates’ fielders gloves. After all, with the Penguins in Toronto this summer for an NHL series against the Montreal Canadiens it seemed only fair for the Blue Jays to come to Pittsburgh to play the New York Yankees.
Because – little known fact – Pittsburgh is Canada in exile.
Just this month Pittsburgh’s Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, completing a search for a new dean, reached into McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management and hired away its dean, the formidable Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou. For years, Pittsburgh’s powerhouse medical complex, UPMC, has been loaded with Canadian doctors, including the breast and bowel cancer pioneer Norman Wolmark, a Montreal native. Also in the act is the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where the estimable Bernard Hibbitts, reared in Halifax, edits the online legal news service Jurist. And pitcher Jameson Taillon, a dual citizen, is a Pittsburgh fan favourite, breaking for surgery for testicular cancer in May, 2017, and pitching three weeks later.
Besides, everyone here loved left fielder Jason Bay, who played here from 2003 to 2008 and made his British Columbia hometown of Trail (population 7,709) a household word. And Russell Martin, from Toronto, played here for two glorious seasons before his four-year star turn in Toronto. Women swooned when he came to the plate to the strains of Kanye West’s Touch the Sky, which contains the lyric “Feels good to be home, baby.”
Our hometown Pirate fans have had few reasons to feel good in our home ballpark, which is why the prospect of the Jays playing in PNC Park is so intoxicating, even though, with an empty stadium, none of us will be able to witness in person the Jays’ Hyun-jin Ryu 90.6-mph four-seam fastball or even one thunderous Vladimir Guerrero Jr. blast. Not a problem. For this truncated season, we beleaguered Pirates fans can take solace in the knowledge that a real major-league-caliber team will consider Pittsburgh home.
And we can be happy that the Boston Red Sox – one of Toronto’s rivals in this year’s truncated 60-game season and the Pirates’ opponents in the first World Series, in 1903 – now might play in Pittsburgh. Not that we can see them, either.
And not that the Toronto ballplayers will see much of Pittsburgh.
They may want to wander to the city’s Oakland area for the famed French fries at the Original Hot Dog Shop, but the beloved grease-filled dump closed in the wake of the virus and its owner donated seven tonnes of potatoes to charity and said farewell to its habitués forever. There’s no Gardiner Expressway-style traffic here, but then again, there’s no place to go; the clubs and music halls are shuttered. The Jays would be bunked a few blocks from the famous collection of contemporary art at the Mattress Factory museum, but it’s closed for the duration of the coronavirus, which could mean for many months to come – unless somehow U.S. President Donald J. Trump decides that experimental art labs are essential for his re-election and he orders the doors unlocked.
But for all that, the Blue Jays may like it here. There is no more beautiful baseball stadium than PNC Park. Pittsburgh’s weather is lousy for 10 months of the year but August and September are splendid. There are so few flights out of Pittsburgh International Airport that the Jays will always be number-one for takeoff for away games. And when they get lonely for Canada, they can always ask special permission to summon the great Eddie Johnston to the clubhouse.
Mr. Johnston, a Montreal native, was a netminder for four NHL teams over the course of 17 seasons, including one (1973-1974) for the Maple Leafs. The last man to play in goal in each of his team’s games in an NHL season, he’s lived here for more than 35 years, with two stints as coach of the Penguins. “I could drive them around, the way Bobby Orr used to drive me around Boston, and show them the night spots,” Mr. Johnston, still a fabled bon vivant at 84 years old, told me the other night. “Too bad they can’t enter any of them.”
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