Illustration by Michael Byers
When the first game of the Toronto Blue Jays’ divisional series begins, I might only watch the first inning. Maybe even less than that. Not because I won’t want to continue watching, but because my 11-year-old son, Louis, might not be able to bear it.
Whenever we’ve caught a game on TV this season, the moment the Jays fall behind, Louis starts to shift around on the couch, his eyes searching for the remote. More than once, we’ve both grabbed it at the same time. I usually win that tug-of-war, but it can take a while. He’s surprisingly strong.
“We’re watching another inning!” I’ll shout, holding the remote high above his reaching arm. “It’s just started.”
“No, please,” he’ll beg, lunging for it. “I can’t.”
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I’ll try to convince him that the game is hardly lost, but while he’ll acknowledge this is true, the stress is just too much for him.
I can’t totally blame him. As a Jays fan, Louis’s most significant core memory took place on October 8, 2022 – Game 2 of the wild-card series against the Mariners. Wearing his Bo Bichette jersey, and surrounded by his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and his cousins, he watched as the Jays blew a seven-run lead, losing to Seattle in one of the most stunning playoff comebacks of all time.
Worse, in that game, at an impressionable 8 years old, Louis was forced to witness George Springer carted away after a full-sprint collision in the outfield with Bichette – arguably the lowest, most tragic moment in franchise history. The entire family was crushed into silence.
So, for the sake of his mental health, when the Jays are down, I’ll eventually give in, turn off the TV and we head outside to hit wiffles.
Toronto Blue Jays George Springer, left, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., right, join teammates as they celebrate winning the American League East Division title on Sunday. It is the first division title for the Jays since 2015.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Maybe you have one of these young, traumatized family members in your household, too? Of course, any fan who has followed the Jays for the last five years – during which the team has lost six playoff games in a row and been eliminated in the first round three times – is likely feeling slightly nauseous. What if they make it nine losses in a row? It seems plausible.
Our household’s disposition towards the Blue Jays is mercifully balanced by my wife, Bryony. On opening day this season, she declared: “It’s our year!”
Maybe she’ll end up being right about that, but not for any other reason than perennial optimism. She has said the same thing at the beginning of every season, including in 2024, when we placed last in our division.
Her eternal hope springs less from naivete or analytical laziness than the fact that she’s the only one of the three of us who was alive and living in Toronto in the early 90s. Her core Jays memory? At 13 years old, she was present at the sold-out SkyDome to watch the Jays take on the Phillies during the second of their back-to-back World Series runs. She’ll still sometimes speak the names John Olerud or Paul Molitor in the hushed tone of someone who has witnessed a major historical event.
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Me? I’m not from Toronto; I’m not even from Canada. I grew up in Colorado before there was a team there to root for. I did, however, play baseball, since the age of 10. Although I played for many teams all the way through high school, by some freakish bad luck I was never part of a winning season. My team was always the underdog – in literally every single game.
And yet, one thing I learned early on is that, in baseball, you always have a chance. The other team can’t run down the clock. A game in the bottom of the ninth with two outs could theoretically last forever. I’ve been coaching Louis’s baseball team for a few years now, and when we’re down, I like to tell the kids: “Anything can happen in baseball.” (They never buy it in the moment, but every time we do come back and win, I think the truism sinks in a little more.)
This 2025 Blue Jays team might just be made for the variety of fan that I am – a believer in baseball miracles. The Jays go into the playoffs with the best record in the American League, so it’s hard to call them underdogs. And yet, aren’t they?
There are some things about this year’s Jays that don’t make sense. Our back-up catcher, not usually an important source of offence, is batting close to .300. The team’s best reliever is a rookie. The oldest position player on the roster is having the season of his life at age 36. Shortly after our top hitter’s regular season ended in injury, we went on a six-game winning streak. And amazingly, these oddities seem to make up for other things that sound more like details from a failing team. Like the fact that our most important off-season signing was for a home-run slugger who struggled for the first 50 games of the season and then missed all but the last week with an injury. Or that the closer has given up more home runs than any other in 2025.
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Then there’s this: The Blue Jays had 49 comeback wins this year – a franchise record. That sounds like an incredible achievement, but what it also means is that more than half the games they won, they could’ve easily lost.
So, I’ll venture this: the Jays are the very first first-place underdogs the majors have ever seen. The question now is, can this scrappy crew keep their baseball magic going?
Louis, who, after we lost the first series of the season to Baltimore, was already declaring that “the Blue Jays suck” now admits that they are a pretty good team and have a shot at making it to the World Series. (He says there’s a 60-per-cent chance they will). But win it all?
“No, probably not.”
He’s a Blue Jays fan for life, but his broken heart has not yet fully mended.
I hope for his sake (and mine) that the Jays will strike first in Game 1. Or, if they feel it necessary to make another comeback, I pray they will make it by the second inning.
Owing to those aforementioned miracles, baseball is so unpredictable that I won’t hazard to make a guess at what the outcome of the series will be. Whether it ends up being good or bad, I still believe anything can happen – and I’ll stick with that.
But I’ll be kind to all of us and give Bryony the last word, which hasn’t changed: “It’s our year!”
Chris Young/The Canadian Press