Blue Jays Fans Seen Less In Seattle

What do you want? For us to play ball?

Photo: Catherine G. Galley/Wikimedia Commons

Ken Jennings is famous for having a world-class brain but isn’t much good at reading the room.

The all-time Jeopardy! champion turned host suggested last week that British Columbians should jump aboard the Seattle Mariners bandwagon in the ongoing American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays due to our closer geographic proximity.

British Columbia, it’s not too late to come over to the right side of history. The Blue Jays play 2,500 miles away. They are not your home team!

Leaving aside pitching the American side as being on “the right side of history” nowadays, you’d think a nerd as smart as him would know the distance between the two airports is far shorter at roughly 2,054 miles. It might’ve also gone over better with Canadian baseball fans if he’d used the correct stat 3,306 km, which we spell kilometres, not kilometers that y’all weirdly insist is the correct spelling for a unit of measurement you don’t even use as one of only three countries including Liberia and Myanmar yet to adopt the metric system.

Alex Trebek would be spinning in his grave if he weren’t cremated, but we should cut Jennings some slack since he grew up outside the Emerald City rooting for the M’s and it’s okay to get carried away by a home team’s chance of winning its first World Series. It’s worth remembering he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religion that says it’s no biggie to simply change teams, and he may also have a blind spot for a fellow TV gameshow host now in the Oval Office as well as for the potential jeopardy many Canadians would be in just to catch a ballgame.

It’s silly to pretend the Jays are Canada’s unofficial team, although if ever there’s been a year when fairweather fans would love to see the sole remaining domestic MLB club beat America at its own game, it’s definitely this one. As much fun as it was when the Jays defeated the Phillies in ‘93, way more people remember the year for being the last time the Stanley Cup came home. But it seems somehow fitting the top hitter is the son of an impoverished Dominican immigrant who achieved greatness here while the Mariners have a white dude nicknamed for having a fat ass.

Nobody in sports media wants to admit the main reason Blue Jays fans didn’t show up en masse as usual for the best-of-seven series the Mariners lead 3-2 that continues today with Game 6 in Ontario. The Seattle Times put on a masterclass in denial last week with a story headlined “Why Blue Jays fans might not take over Seattle for ALCS games vs. Mariners” spitballing reasons for why Canadians might take a pass despite the stellar Jays season, although cartoonist David Horsey gets it.

The first is there simply weren’t many good seats left! Standing-room-only tickets were starting at $280 plus tax before the first home game last Tuesday, and that’s a significant chunk of change for residents of a country facing a recession thanks to insane tariffs from noted Yankees fan Donald J. Trump. Never mind the exchange rate.

MAGA Pitches New Idea To Repel Canadian Tourists

While “the underlying relations between the United States and Canada which seemed to lead to a drop in the number of Jays fans coming to Seattle when Toronto made its regularly scheduled appearance at T-Mobile Park back in May” may seem to lead as a potential factor, surely a better explanation is that games were all scheduled mid-week, and it would’ve been tough to get the time off work to make the drive south to Seattle! Which is a fair point although BC residents are entitled to five paid sick days thanks to a law brought in by the NDP during the pandemic, and October is the beginning of flu season.

But the funniest was the suggestion the ghost of Ted Turner [edit: reports of his death were greatly exaggerated] could partially be to blame because fans can’t be bothered to come cheer for the Jays as we’ve gotten so used to watching games for free on television:

“The Blue Jays have nationwide broadcasts of their games, in a similar way to the Atlanta Braves when they had national broadcasts on what’s now TBS beginning in 1977.”

Corporate outlets on both sides of the border continue to pretend the reason nobody wants to travel south much anymore is due to the forever trade war and/or arglebargle about the 51st state while ignoring the oliphaunt in the room that the US under Trump 2.0 has become about as inviting as Mordor.

Is that a fly ball, or is it a Nazgûl?

It reminds me of a story a friend told me about a guy from her hometown in Alberta who caused a fatal crash while drunk driving. He was from a prominent family, including a relative who was a local celebrity through a recurring role on Battlestar Galactica, and they held a small gathering welcoming him home after he completed his jail sentence. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” and all that. But he got hammered, stole someone’s car, and found himself shunned by the community for good.

Americans collectively did the stupidest thing ever in 2016 but earned some redemption four years later. Now the drunk driver has dementia and is behind the wheel of a Cybertruck while the cops can’t even give him a ticket, let alone lock him up. No international visitor with a conscience wants to risk lining the pockets of anyone who voted for this motherfucker by dining in their restaurants or renting their Airbnbs.

The late Maya Angelou, an author whose books MAGA enjoys banning, famously said: “Believe people when they tell you who they are.” Which is from her sixth memoir A Song Flung Up to Heaven, as Ken Jennings could probably tell you.

Bring on the White Sox, bring on the Bosox, bring on the Angels, the Rangers, and the Yankees too. We can always just watch from home.

[Sports Illustrated / Seattle Times / iPolitics / Wonkette Bluesky Starter Pack]