Confessions of a Blue Jay fan…

I don’t post too many entries about it, but I am a diehard baseball fan. Love to play the game and more than that, I love to watch my team as much as possible. Growing up in Southern Ontario, there was only one e team that I gave my undying loyality to… the Toronto Blue Jays.

Since I was just a wee little one, I would go every summer with my Mom and Dad to old Exhibition Staduim and watching the Jays for as long as I could remember. I remember some nights when cold and those steel benches in the bleachers were not too comfy on my arse. But I didn’t care. I was at the game, had a great view of the field. Combine that with a few hot dogs and a ball cap, and that was the perfect time out with the folks. It was some of my most fondest childhood memories.

We had the chance to see a lot of games when we were younger. There were summer trips we took to the C.N.E. Ever summer we would go on the rides and play games at the Canadian National Exhibition and then top the day off with a Jays game. Also… my Aunt and Uncle have season tickets and have been watching the Jays since they first started in 77. So whenever they didn’t want to go to the game… Mom and Dad chipped in and paid for some of the games and took us to the ball park on various nights. It was nice to have some one on one time with those tickets, and again some of the fondest memories.

Old Exhibition Stadium… this photo brings back some memories.

I can still remember sitting on those cold steel benches about a thousand rows behind the first base line and having all the leg room a little kid could want. Even though I was in the nose bleeds, I still had my ball glove with me… hoping that someone at the plate was strong enough to pop a fowl ball that high and give me something to take home. I remember watch the great Jays of the mid and late Eighties. George Bell, Ernie Whitt, Llyod Mosby, Tony Fernandez and Dave Steib. I remember watching the Jays play their first playoff games against the Royals in 85. My 5th grade teacher was a Jays fan and let us watch the payoff games from the classroom so he wouldn’t miss the games either. Since it was the first playoff appearance for the Jays, the school didn’t seem to mind and let it pass. The Jays lost the series in 7 games after going up 3-1. Talk about a heatbreaker of a series for a young team.

One of my favorites… Catcher Ernie Whitt.

A true fan doesn’t hang around for the good times, they stick around and suffer the hard times as well. It was difficult to watch the Jays suffer the season ending collapse to the Tigers in the season of 87. They were up by almost half a dozen games with less than two weeks left and just imploded and gave up the division to Detroit. Then two seasons later in 89, the Jays had a strong season and took the division from Baltimore, only to be crushed by the Athletics and the Steriod bashers (Canseco & McGwire) in the League playoff. The Jays up to the point had a bit of success but just couldn’t move to the next level.

During that same season in 1989, The Jays moved away from the cold benches of Old Exhibition and into the comfy confines of the new and super advanced SkyDome.

(The SkyDome… as you can see a bit of an upgrade for Toronto fans…)

This place was at the time the only dome to have a fully retractable roof, and that made it a nice improvement from the outdoor benches we had to sit on. Just a nice timbit of useless information, the fans originally wanted to call the new staduim the Conn Smythe Dome, named after the original and much loved owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs… Hockey fans should know that name since the Playoff MVP award in the NHL is named after him. The Jays turned down the suggestion only because they were afraid that people would call the stadium the Conn-Dome. Funny stuff, eh?

I love the Dome. Compared to the unfriendly confines of Exhibition Stadium, the SkyDome was like moving from a rat trap motel into the Ritz. The retractable roof was a marvel to watch as it only take 25 minutes to fully open or close it. After 89, no on in Toronto ever had to take their raincoat with them to the game ever again, and I can tell you that make the traveling to the game a little easier on the back. To pay for the new crib, however, ticket prices soared and a team that was playing well helped to increase those prices even higher. To help out my Aunt and Uncle, Mom and Dad chipped in and split the season tickets with them right down the middle, starting in 1991. So we bought up to forty games a season for a few years. That season, my brothers and I saw serveral games over that season and that year the Jays won the divison, only to get beaten by the late Kirby Puckett and the Minnesota Twins, who went on to take the series from Atlanta in seven games.

This guy was an amazing all round player, the best 3rd baseman
I’ve ever seen play the game… Kelly Gruber.

The next year is when everything all came together and the Jays went all the way. It was amazing to watch a few games that year as our tem marched their way to their first championship in their short twenty plus year history.They had signed some big players in the off season that made an immediate difference. Jack Morris who had aided Minnesota the year before came over and helped lead the Jays to victory. Combine that with experienced batters like Dave Winfield, it was a tough team to beat. My Mom and Aunt actually went to Game 3 of the 92 series against Atlanta and then eventually went to the DOme for the championship parade. I couldn’t go with them since I had to go to school… like that was going to happen very often.

Dave Winfield driving in the run that won the 1992 Series…

Apparently it did. The Jays made some good moves in the off season and repeated in 93. That was another amazing season for the Jays… but the next year and the next decade for that matter has been a difficult one for Jays fans. We went from world champs to chumps in less than half a decade. Fortunately I was never there in person to see the disaster with my own eyes. I moved out of the province to attend college and only saw a scattered game here and there. But I still watched on television as much as I could and even then some years were hard to bear. But sports is about ups and downs, every team is going to have there struggles. It’s times like those where you can determine who are the real fans and only the ones who hang around when all is well.

The Jays did have had some decent seasons, but haven’t made the playoffs since those two championship years. That’s a little tough to take, but it’s hard for the Jays to make the playoffs when two of the two spending and compeditive teams are in your division. The Yankees and the Red Sox make any season an uphill battle right from the start, and right now they seem like aclimb that is too tough for any team in that division to climb. The Jays have tried to make the best of it on a 70-80 million dollar budget, but it’s tough to compete when the opposing teams ignore the luxary tax and spend 120 (Boston) and 200 (New York) million on just team salaries. I’m afraid that until a hard salary cap is brought into baseball, no team in that division will be able to keep up, which is rather unfair to Toronto, Tampa Bay and Baltimore.

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Players like the guys above (A.J. Burnett, Vernon Wells, Roy Holiday, Troy Glaus and B.J. Ryan)
are making current seasons fun to watch, but they’re not ready to challenge just yet…

This season has been a little different. The Jays went out and signed some good players and have made a decent run of it. While it looks like they don’t have enough to challenge the Yanks just yet, it was good to at least see them put up a fight this year and at least make a run if at least a small one. I got to watch the Jays again for the first time in four years and had a lot of fun at the park with my brother Chris. Next year I plan to take Ethan to his first baseball game… and I hope he has as much fun at the Dome as I did when I went with my Dad. The next time I go to Tennessee, I’m gonna try to twist Dad’s arm to get him to take Ethan and I to another game. We are only a 4 hour drive from a National league team, going north to Cincinnati or south to Atlanta. I’ve never seen a National League game before and I would love to the next time Ethan and I go south. That will be a lot of fun.

One thing I also plan to do before I perish is take Ethan to the more traditional parks before they are eventually torn down. Fenway Park, Wrigley Field are at the top of my hit list, and even though I wouldn’t mind visiting the park that Ruth build, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to visit Yankee Stadium before the new park is built. Whenever I make it to the big apple, I guess I’ll have to settle for Shea. SO I plan to see a few more games in the years to come… but how many depends on how well things go here in the island. Until then, I’ll enjoy watching the games on the tube like everyone else. Go Jays Go!

Peter