Blue Jays fans should relish chance to hate Yankees, but leave the turtle out of it

Open this photo in gallery:

Here’s the problem with making a big deal about a turtle.

When things are going good, everybody loves the turtle – in this case, a little guy who’s become the New York Yankees’ locker-room mascot during their recent win streak.

The turtle’s name? Bronxie. Because the Yankees aren’t all baseball, all the time. They’re renaissance men. Creative geniuses, even.

Just imagine the amazing team conversation that gave flower to such a powerful and resounding name:

‘Babe Turtle?’

‘Joe DiTurtle?’

‘Wait for it – Bronxie.’

/cue slow clap

The downside to a talismanic turtle is that when things go bad, you know who’s getting the blame.

Yankees trounce Blue Jays 7-2 to take command of wild-card race

First bad sign – Bronxie didn’t make it across the border for the series with the Blue Jays. We should assume that’s a drug thing, right?

Second bad sign – New York writers have started asking New York Yankees about Bronxie.

During manager Aaron Boone’s pre-game presser on Tuesday, some wisenheimer asked what “role” Bronxie has played in the Yankees’ sudden, inexplicable ability to win baseball games.

Boone got a look. It’s a look he would not get if he was the manager of a baseball team in Pittsburgh or Colorado or some other place where they don’t take themselves all that seriously.

But Boone works in New York, so that look said, ‘Somehow, and I have no idea how, this turtle is going to get me fired.’

Boone was smart enough not to say that. Instead, he said, “He’s a cute little guy, uh, so, we’ll see, he’ll be with us here in spirit.”

Truly inspirational.

There’s something about the Yankees, something so easily hated. No other team in sports invites such a compelling mix of jealousy and disdain.

Which made them the perfect houseguests for the return of baseball to Toronto on Tuesday night.

The Jays have been playing baseball for two years. They played it in Florida, where no one cared. They played it in Buffalo, where all the fans in the stands were Yankees fans (“They were mean to us,” Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said.). They’ve played it in Toronto to the sort of crowds that attend the Jays when they are terrible (so, often).

But the limits were bumped on Tuesday, and though 29,000 people isn’t anywhere close to capacity, it felt like it.

A playoff race in full swing, the Yankees in town, the Jays in the hunt – this was the first real Canadian sporting event of the post 3/20 era.

When Bo Bichette hit one up the middle to drive in a run in the bottom of the first? The first real cheer of that era.

When Aaron Judge hit a two-out solo home run in the third, you got the first real boos.

When Bichette was called out after a review of a close play at third in the sixth, you heard the first real rage.

And when Giancarlo Stanton hit a two-strike, two-out home run that put the game away in the seventh, it was hard to say what you heard. Some combo of irritation and that hopelessness that is never far below the surface in any Toronto sports crowd. That wasn’t a first, but it was definitely real.

The Yankees won 7-2. A week ago, New York was sliding out of contention. Now they have a commanding three-game lead in the wild-card race. Funny game, baseball.

The good news is that the Boston Red Sox were also losers, to the hopeless Orioles. As a result, Toronto remains one game out of the second wild-card spot with five games remaining.

If you were pressed to define what Tuesday did or didn’t change, it’s the likelihood that the Jays will have to play an as-yet-theoretical wild-card game in New York.

But wait until Wednesday and we’ll have a different definition for you. A lot of moving parts to this right now.

This would have been the biggest baseball series in Toronto since 2016 with or without the Yankees. But New York’s function in this local theatre is leeching the bile.

One of the things we forgot about over the last little while was how to work out a benign grudge (since a lot of us have been working so hard on real ones). That was the function sports filled in our lives. Draining the aggravation through harmless, highly focussed anger at people wearing differently coloured, moisture wicking, mesh shirts.

There are very few (no?) teams the Jays can really work up a hate against. That’s been a failing of this organization – its inability to find and maintain a non-contrived rivalry. Maybe because Boston and New York already have each other, and there is no better option, the Jays have always settled for temporary accommodations. Recently, they had Texas, and then Texas got terrible and that was that.

Now, for three days, Toronto gets to really put a hate on for the Yankees.

Back in the old days, they used to bring tours up from New York and fete them at Rogers Centre. You’d walk in hours before the game and a few dozen Yankee-loving fat cats who’d flown up here first class would be sitting over the visitors’ bullpen getting a pep talk from Reggie Jackson or some such.

The Jays have enough self-respect not to do that any more, but it’s always been a relationship of unequals. That alone gives the week spice.

One way of looking at the next two games is that Toronto can make the playoffs. But another – and, I would suggest, more fun way – is that they can ruin things for New York.

Never did any club so richly deserve getting it right in the neck. Every one of them. Excepting, of course, Bronxie. None of this is his fault. You can’t pick your parents.