Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts speaks during a news conference ahead of Game 3 of the World Series on Sunday in Los Angeles.Mark J. Terrill/The Associated Press
On Sunday, a post began circulating on social media claiming that the President of the United States was alleging that the World Series had been fixed by the Mafia. Everyone involved knew it wasn’t true because if it was, wouldn’t it be easier to get around?
If you’re going to fix something, fix the L.A. freeway system. We took the 105 to the 110 at midafternoon, and we might have been better off covering baseball from the Hertz at LAX. They have TVs and you’re already there.
Before we left, someone asked if I could do a traffic comparison – Toronto to L.A. I said fine, as long as I didn’t have to drive anywhere.
The official numbers favour Toronto. Something called the Global Traffic Scorecard claims L.A. has the eighth worst traffic on the planet, based on hours lost per year. That puts them behind other driving nightmares like Mexico City and Istanbul. I’ve taken a cab in Istanbul. A part of me is still trapped there.
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Toronto ranks 25th, between Milan and Rotterdam. As a past veteran of the traffic wars – 401 to the 427 to the Gardiner to downtown and back, every weekday for a decade – I call shenanigans on this.
We live downtown now. Not because we like it, but because we refuse to drive anywhere, excepting only major holidays and incoming ICBMs.
Toronto is barely tolerable to get around if everything’s going perfectly, which may be when the Global Traffic people did their measurements. But if one person who lives on Jameson Ave. has a couch delivered at 4 p.m. on a Thursday, the resulting back-up will stretch a trip from the core to Mississauga until Saturday.
Both cities are so traffic-obsessed that this World Series has ginned up its own travel conspiracy theory.
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Apparently, the Dodgers had trouble getting out of Pearson Airport after Game 2. That makes them like every other person trying to escape Pearson, and the rest of us don’t have our own little private Customs and security set-up. Pearson isn’t an airport. It’s a sociology experiment. How far can we push people before they start eating each other?
The Dodgers, like all pro athletes, are accustomed to a frictionless existence. So one delay means perfidy must be afoot.
“I just arrived about 30 minutes ago,” L.A. manager Dave Roberts told a news conference on Sunday. “So there was some delays. I don’t know if there was intent or not. But, man, the international stuff was a bear. But we made it. We made it.”
Did you hear that – he made it. We can all breathe again.
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The word “intent” set people off. Does Dave Roberts really think Canada controls Pearson Airport?
If it did, maybe Pearson would have a Terminal 2, instead of skipping from 1 to 3. How many confused foreigners are currently dragging their luggage along an overpass near the 409 saying, “It must be here somewhere, right? I can see 1, and that’s 3.”
And what does Roberts mean by “international stuff?” Does he mean having a passport? Does carrying I.D. and being asked to present it qualify as “a bear” in Dave Roberts’s life? If so, I’d like to live with him, as long as he will pick me up and drive me there.
Roberts walked back his comments later to The Athletic.
“It was just a long day,” he said.
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This World Series (hopefully) has some superhuman moments still to come, but this will easily be its most human.
I cannot imagine what it must be like to be Shohei Ohtani. Does he carry his own wallet? Do his assistants have assistants? Has he ever had to restrain himself from punching a hole in a wall when he’s put on hold for the third time, and then cut off? I doubt it.
But when our travel is interrupted, we all return to the same primordial state. Ragey, and maybe just a little weepy. Unable to comprehend how we did all the right things, followed all the rules and that didn’t stop anyone from diverting the 504 streetcar FOR AN ENTIRE SUMMER.
What’s the problem? Is it the tracks? Fine. It’s the tracks. Give me a few crowbars and a high school basketball team and we’ll replace every track on King Street in a week. I’ll pay for it myself.
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There is no frustration short of the pain of a loved one like travel frustration. It will turn responsible people into the temporarily insane. L.A. and Toronto aren’t places you live. They are tests. Only the strongest among us can survive the GO Train.
Granted, the Dodgers do this species of exasperation differently from the rest of us. They’re sitting on an all-business-class jumbo jet deciding between the hand-rolled soba noodles and canard à la presse. You and I are stacked like cord wood eating pretzels that are 30 per cent sawdust. But the roots of our frustration are shared.
The gulf between the highest reaches of the upper class and the bulk of us in the middle has never been greater. This may be the last thing that binds us – knowing that wherever we go, and however we get there, it’s going to suck hard enough to pull golf balls through a garden hose.
If anyone knows a way to avoid South Sepelvuda Blvd. on the way back to the airport from Pasadena, drop a line. Or send a helicopter.