Filming your son's World Series homer? A Dad move like none other
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LOS ANGELES -- Blue Jays left fielder Davis Schneider tells his dad not to film his at-bats. There’s no need, Davis has told him. The at-bats are all on TV anyway -- filmed from a dozen different angles.
Steve Schneider doesn’t always listen to his son.
“I like getting everybody’s reaction,” he said from Dodger Stadium’s Loge Level on Wednesday night.
You know what? We’re all better off for it. Because Steve Schneider just so happened to capture a first-person account of some World Series history.
Leading off the Blue Jays’ 6-1 Game 5 victory on Wednesday, Davis Schneider launched the first pitch from lefty Blake Snell into the first row in left field. Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. also went deep. Toronto led 2-0 after three pitches -- and became the first team to begin a World Series game with back-to-back homers.
“I was kind of sitting fastball,” Davis said. “Especially being a leadoff guy, you're going to at least get one. I thought he was going to throw a changeup that first one, but saw a fastball and hit it out.”
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Steve Schneider captured it all in a wonderful video of the Schneider family and other Blue Jays families celebrating as Davis is circling the bases. Steve posted the video to X, and it quickly went viral.
“I mean, his Meta glasses are a little bit -- they're kind of dumb, I don't know why he wears those all the time,” Davis said with a laugh. “But those are the glasses that he was wearing. It's great to have my family out here and get to experience the World Series. It's the first time being here. We're from a small town in New Jersey, and they deserve it just as much as me and couldn't be more grateful for them to be here.”
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A 28th-round Draft pick of the Blue Jays in 2017, Schneider earned his big league callup in 2023 and promptly went deep in his first at-bat -- a homer over the Green Monster at Fenway Park. Steve and his wife Elena admitted they didn’t have the best view of that one.
“This was much better,” Steve said. “This was unbelievable.”
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Shortly after Davis’ home run, the texts started rolling in. One of them was from one of Davis’ childhood friends back in southern New Jersey -- a screenshot of a message between the two before the game. Evidently Davis had told his friend that if he got a first-pitch fastball from Snell, he’d be swinging.
He wasn’t kidding. Snell’s fastball caught too much plate at the top of the zone. Schneider ambushed it. Guerrero was also sitting on a Snell fastball, and he got one, sending it into the left-field bullpen.
“You have to be ready to hit when [Snell] comes over the middle of the plate,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider (no relation). “Schneid was and Vlad was. That was a good start for us, you know, to get a little two-run cushion. ... That was the approach going in, to be ready to hit.”
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Davis Schneider’s first-pitch leadoff homer was the first in a World Series game since David Freese in Game 5 of the 2018 Fall Classic, also at Dodger Stadium. But Freese did it for the home side, meaning he did so in the bottom of the first inning.
Schneider’s was the first homer on the actual first pitch of a World Series game since Derek Jeter took the Mets’ Bobby Jones deep in Game 4 of the 2000 Fall Classic.
The Schneiders, naturally, went crazy.
“We all feel so much graciousness for the Toronto Blue Jays fans,” Steve said. “They deserve a World Series. They’ve been so good to Davis and our family. We’ve met so many people.”
“We’ve made so many friends there,” Elena added.
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The Schneiders didn’t always have so much love for the Blue Jays. They grew up Phillies fans in South Jersey. For years, Joe Carter’s walk-off home run to end the 1993 World Series was a sore spot in the Schneider household. Not anymore.
“We can’t be any happier for the people of Toronto and Canada … if the fans of Toronto can get another World Series,” Steve Schneider said. “We grew up Phillies fans. But Joe Carter -- we love him now.”
Meanwhile, their son is carving his own place in Blue Jays history.