Jays go to bat for national unity
National Post, 26 October 2025
At a time of division and polarization, we have the chance to rally together
The World Series has always been a bit of United States pretension. Major League Baseball has an “American League” and a “National League,” with no doubt as to which nation is the referent of the latter adjective. This World Series will be a touch more “worldly” than most, including teams from two (!) countries.
The last time that happened I was a student in Kingston, Ont., and remember throngs exuberantly pouring into the streets after the Blue Jays’ victories in 1992 and 1993. It is a matter of fact that, after two Canadian victories, the World Series was cancelled in 1994 — something that did not even happen in wartime. The ostensible reason was the players’ strike, but when the 1994 season was suspended, the other Canadian team, the Montreal Expos, had the best record in baseball. Three Canadian champions in a row would have been intolerable. Better to cancel it.
World Series 2025 features two non-American stars. There is Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese national, the best player on the Los Angeles Dodgers, the best in the major leagues, the best in Japan and perhaps the best in the history of baseball. It’s hard to measure that precisely, but his last combined pitching-hitting outing against the Milwaukee Brewers — 10 strikeouts, six shutout innings, three home runs — was, indisputably, the greatest single-game performance in the history of baseball. To be able to watch it was a marvel, even for those he vanquished.
On the other side — our side — the star is actually a Canadian (a dual citizen with the Dominican Republic). How a Guerrero gets the very Slavic name Vladimir I do not know, let alone that he is Vladimir Jr. Given that Guerrero means “warrior,” and there have been many warmongering Vladimirs, from Lenin to Putin, that he goes by Vladdy is a happy, more cuddly, Canadian thing.
The Japanese-Canadian-Dominican World Series is underway. There was kvetching about the eye-watering cost of tickets at the Rogers Centre, but otherwise sane and sober citizens, having gained some measure of manifest material success, spent tens of thousands to watch Taylor Swift at the same place less than a year ago. Say what you will about Swift, she is no Shohei.
What Shohei himself says is usually delivered through an interpreter, and the Japanese linguistic filter makes him even more admirable. The translation makes him seem what we stereotypically expect the Japanese to be — respectful, humble, honourable. Ohtani could be trash-talking in foul-mouthed local slang for all I know, but I doubt his interpreter has to clean any of it up. He appears decent. Sports could use more decency, especially in a digital age, when too many people are shouting all the time.
The Blue Jays, too, are a decent bunch, with their newest star — so new that no one had heard of him a few months ago — a freshly-scrubbed kid who appears to have emerged from a casting call for a Crest toothpaste commercial. Trey Yesavage, the wunderkind pitcher of these playoffs, has fewer starts this year than Ohtani had strikeouts last week. Many kids dream of one day playing in the World Series; few do it when still kids. He is younger now that I was revelling in the streets back in 1993.
At a bleak time, it is a blessed thing for a country to rally around a championship series — as Canada did this year and last with the Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals. With the Blue Jays as the only Canadian team, it is even easier, as there are no rival loyalties in play.
It’s part of what sports offer. Professional sports are a business like other businesses — witness the two-headed monopoly of Rogers and Ticketmaster bleed fans white — but also not a business like others. It’s hard to rally around an aluminum smelter, or the third-quarter earnings of a mine.
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