TORONTO -- There’s a question Blue Jays players and coaches get over and over again.
It comes each Spring Training in the glow of a new season. It comes on Opening Day, over and over again. It comes each July 1, all dressed in red. It comes from reporters in road cities, over and over again. It’s a question the other 29 teams don’t get.
“How does it feel that you’re not just representing a city … you’re representing an entire country?”
Over the years, some sharp players have learned to lean into it, almost like a savvy politician knowing they’ve got a line that will land perfectly with their base of supporters. The Blue Jays are baseball’s other team. Sure, it’s a pain for the other 29 clubs to remember their passports for the Toronto trip, but the Blue Jays can’t leave home without theirs.
Every player that slides on this uniform feels it immediately, but those who stick around for a few years tend to appreciate what this actually means. On the eve of the ALCS against the Mariners, you feel it everywhere, in every city, coast to coast.
“Now, I understand,” Kevin Gausman said in the ALDS. “You have one team for an entire country and a lot of things come with that. There’s a lot of extra pressure that comes with that, but there’s also a lot of love that comes with that from fans who might never even see you play in person. That’s the advantage we have being one team for a whole country.”
That pressure, handled properly, feels like a responsibility. This is the only organization manager John Schneider has ever known.
“You always feel the weight of the world in decisions you make, but when you're feeling a country, it kind of gets a little dicey at times,” Schneider said. “Like the sixth inning with the bases loaded and nobody out and Aaron Judge hitting, you feel like people in Nova Scotia want to come murder you. That gets magnified a little bit, but it's kind of what I've come to know. It's something I don't take lightly.”
Schneider’s fears about the fine folks from Canada’s greatest province aside, this is the right way for players and coaches to approach playing for the most unique organization in Major League Baseball.
It’s what makes this place special, though. The rest of the baseball world is quickly learning again, too. When the Blue Jays capture Canada -- really, really capture Canada -- there’s nothing like it. The Canadian broadcast of Game 4 against the Yankees averaged 3.8 million viewers in Canada with 11.5 million of the roughly 41 million Canadians tuning in at some point during the series, according to Sportsnet.
Share those numbers with someone in any local American market? They just won’t believe you. It can’t possibly be. It’s something the Blue Jays have that no other market does, and they want it to give them an edge.
“Maybe some people don't believe in the team through the year, but I always remind everyone that we have an entire country behind us that believes in us,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said, “and hopefully we can get the World Series back to Canada.”
The flight from Toronto to Seattle is more than five hours, but that’s where the Blue Jays tap into their West Coast fanbase from British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. Their annual trips to T-Mobile Park, long dubbed “The Canadian Invasion,” pack the house with Blue Jays fans.
They want to see it again in the postseason. From Seattle to Detroit, Minneapolis and other cities within driving distance of the border, Blue Jays fans have turned so many stadiums into home fields.
“I was warned there was going to be a good amount of fans [in Seattle], but I wasn't expecting that many. That was crazy,” Myles Straw said. “I've been seeing things like the Blue Jays might have seven home games this series, which would be cool.”
The players really feel it. Even when they aren’t nudged in that direction by hearing that question … over and over … the players in their second and third seasons in Toronto start to reach for that feeling themselves. No other city has it. Besides, they’re just cities.
“We're playing for the Blue Jays organization, and we're playing for an entire country,” said Ernie Clement. “There's not another team that can say that. It's really, really special.”
They’ll be asked the question 100 more times this week. They’ll smile and answer as they always do. They don’t just want to win a World Series, they want to bring it back to Canada.