The Blue Jays were part of something truly enduring

National Post, 6 November 2025

Sports can be cruel; no one remembers who lost the championship. That’s usually true. But not this year

A quick consensus emerged after the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays to repeat as World Series champions. As heartrending as the razor-thin loss was for the Jays, they had been part of one of the best postseasons in the history of the game.

Sports can be cruel; no one remembers who lost the championship. That’s usually true. Not this year. The Blue Jays were part of something truly enduring.

Mike Petriello at MLB.com made the statistical case, in the way that only baseball devotees can do, that Game 7 had more high-impact plays than any other game ever played. That’s the sort of expertise that makes many baseball fans awkward in mixed company. You didn’t need the stats to know that something special was about on Saturday night.

The playoffs were both historic and fun to watch, which, it must be conceded, is often not the case. Baseball is the “national pastime” for a reason. Often it does just that, pass the time in a pleasant enough way. It can be slow and dull, as witness the various efforts in recent years — some welcome, some vandalizing — to speed the game up, to make it more exciting than enervating.

But this year, the league championships and then the World Series were simply astonishing. A typical baseball game may include three or four key moments — fewer if the pitcher is dominant, which is its own kind of excitement — all of which can be impressive, but routine.

This October every game included marvels aplenty. Things that simply never happen did. A ball lodged in the padding of the wall that might have cost Toronto a victory in Game 6. In Game 7, the Blue Jays were within a fraction of a second of winning it all on a walk-off replay.

In Game 7, Dodgers pitcher Justin Wrobleski hit Andrés Giménez with a pitch. The dugouts and bullpens emptied as players spoke loudly to each other. It was a bench-clearing bawl. Not a punch was thrown. No matter, George Springer, next up, immediately whacked a ball right at Wrobleski’s shin. That required more precision and more karma than a home run.

In the end, the Jays lost on a routine double play, the first time that has happened since 1947. My goodness, has a team ever had quite so many very-emphatically-not-routine double plays?

Trey Yesavage had three consecutive double plays in Game 6 of the American League championship series. The Blue Jays lost Game 6 of the World Series on a rare, rub-your-eyes outfield-infield double play. In Game 7, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. turned a magnificent double play to end the seventh inning, after which he exploded in such exultation that it seemed that the championship had been won right there. He was not the only one who thought so. Surely by then baseball had exhausted itself with the wild and the wonderful.

How wonderful? Autumnal prodigy Yesavage was playing in the minor leagues this summer. Has any pitcher about whom so little was known done so much so quickly to bring so much joy to so many?

The wonders did not cease. Game 7 would go to extra innings — the series could no longer be contained within the usual boundaries. The Jays had the game won — more than once. Ernie Clement was at the plate in the bottom of the ninth. Despite being next-to-last in the batting order Clement had set a record for most hits in the postseason ever, 30. Hit number 31 would bring home the winning run, or runs, as the bases were loaded.

Amazing that the eighth spot could have such an impact? How about the ninth hitter for the Dodgers, Miguel Rojas, who saved the final two games defensively at second base, and then hit the game-tying home run in Game 7?

Clement took the ball so deep into the left-centre gap that 99 times out of 100 the Jays would have won the game right then and there. This time, the Dodgers’ Andy Pages — who had entered the game just minutes beforehand — ran like a horse, knocked his teammate to the ground like a bull, leapt like a gazelle … and caught the ball.

The Jays would have more chances, but I feared then that they would not prevail. Recall Super Bowl XLII in 2008, when David Tyree caught a long, improbable pass, pinning the ball against his helmet? Even the mighty New England Patriots could not overcome that. Sometimes the game is not yours to win.

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