Sunday, 3:45 p.m.
Such angst. Which will only build over the next few hours until game time. The Toronto Blue Jays versus the Seattle Mariners, who are battling it out in Major League Baseball’s American League Championship series. Seattle leads Toronto three games to two, in a best of seven game series.
I’ll do the math for you. Seattle needs to win either tonight’s game or Monday night’s game. Toronto needs to win both. Huge advantage Seattle.
If you’re following along, you’ll remember that I am a Blue Jays fan. And while I am not attentive during the regular season (kind of hard to do if you don’t subscribe to one of television’s sports networks), when the World Series comes along (the world in this case encompasses the 48 mainland states and Toronto — talk about gerrymandering), some network will broadcast it, and me and my tinfoil rabbit ears antenna will get my year’s worth of baseball in one week. If my team makes it to the finals, that’s huge, in terms of my personal entertainment. The last time the Blue Jays made it to the World Series was near the end of the late Middle Ages. 1993. The mind boggles as to what’s gone on since. So it’s been a while.
To make it to the World Series, your team has to win their division, then they have to win their league, then they get to represent their league against the other league. If it’s your team doing all this, that amounts to a lot of must-see games.
My ex is the real Blue Jays fan, the kind who is attentive during the regular season, the kind who jumps on a plane and flies across the country to Washington so he can watch Toronto and Seattle battle it out and visit the family — a two-for-one. And as long as he’s in Washington, there is every reason to attend the games.
So there I was, Friday afternoon, at T-Mobile Park in Seattle for game 5 of the American League Championship Series.
The teams came into the game tied at two games apiece. I don’t know how many times people have commented that it must be a conflict for me, a Toronto native vs. my local home team.
It’s no conflict at all, I say. Blue Jays all the way. And has been ever since the day in early October 1985 when Lloyd Moseby ran in from centerfield to catch a high fly ball for the final out to clinch the division series. I was at the game. What a moment in time. The thrill of victory (followed by the ignominious agony of defeat when the Jays went on to lose in the ACLS). I thought the crowd in the stadium was loud that day, but it was nothing compared to T-Mobil Park on Friday when the Mariners’ bases-loaded home run in the 8th inning gave them the lead. Unbelievably loud. Ear-plug loud. Screaming fans, advantage Seattle.
Our daughter never saw Lloyd Moseby make that catch and has no interest, vested or otherwise, in the Jays. She’s all Mariners. She wasn’t at Friday’s game but did watch it at home. When we arrived back at her place after the game, suitably subdued by our team’s loss, we were greeted by a jubilant daughter waxing poetic over her Mariners’ win. So much so, she says, when the Mariners got the home run, she screamed so loud that her phone sent out an ALERT ALERT Too Much Noise! signal. I kid you not.
Baseball — it’ll drive you and your phone crazy. The anxiety is killing me. I’m heading over now to watch the game.
…
The game is over, and the Blue Jays won. So it comes down to Monday night. Whoever wins moves on to the World Series. If I wasn’t pumped before, I sure am now.
A different kind of ball, from Emmylou Harris …
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