The U.S. can spare the Blue Jays its pity World Series fandom

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The L.A. Dodgers are easy to loathe. Between buying titles, living in the most out of touch place on Earth and generally lording it over the rest of us, it isn’t possible to dislike them. It’s inevitable. Everybody who’s spent more than a week in L.A. are like all joggers. They can’t go five minutes in conversation without telling you about it.

For strangers, hating the Toronto Blue Jays is hard. They come from a place everybody everywhere feels fine about, though the biggest compliment most of them can come up with is, ‘It’s clean.’

No great story has ever started, ‘So there I was, about to have the craziest night of my life, in Toronto ….’ That’s how we like it. If it wasn’t, we’d have more food trucks.

People hate the Dodgers as a collective, but not as individuals. Nobody hates Shohei Ohtani. So polite. So handsome. Or Mookie Betts. He’s delightful. Or Freddie Freeman. Absolutely charming man.

If you hate the Dodgers, it’s because you hate what they represent. Exceptionalism, and a place where people seem to be having more than their fair share of fun.

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Call it status hatred. It’s not the only hate we have, but it’s the one all sides of the political spectrum encourage. It is so powerful a force that Americans have banded together to support people who live in a place they’re working to wipe off the map – us.

I get daily emails from a guy who runs some sort of betting website. He floods me with odds on strange sports things. He once sent me odds on how many sex toys would be thrown onto the court in that night’s slate of WNBA games.

On Wednesday, he claimed that a measurement of social-media hashtags proves – not shows, proves – that most of America is rooting for the Blue Jays in the upcoming World Series. Only the saddos in Utah, Nevada and Hawaii support California in this. They’re probably just trying to suck up so that they can come along whenever the secession happens.

Is this polling scientific? No. I’m not even sure it qualifies as anecdotal. But this is America we’re talking about. Do you trust their science any more?

The vast majority of America rooting for Canada – great. Where were you six months ago?

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Canada needs America’s pity support like we need another coded message of allegiance from anywhere else in the world. If you want to help, buy some lumber. We’ll give you a nice price in bulk. Otherwise, stop tying up the phone lines. We’re waiting for a call back from China.

When America’s looking around for an underdog to pull for, here’s a suggestion – themselves. The way things are headed down there, they’re going to need it.

Up here, we’d like to marinate in our new national pride and old resentments for a while longer, thanks very much. If America insists on having feelings about the Blue Jays, it would be preferable that they are negative.

George Springer. America must hate him, right? He won a World Series on a team that was cheating so hard that I’m surprised they had time for batting practice. Nobody talks about that any more.

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Nothing happened to Springer once the story got out. No fines, no suspension. Just a half apology after he’d already skedaddled across the border. I’m sure he still has the ring somewhere. When former Houston Astros get together, they put those rings into the middle of the circle and remember the sweet sound of the trashcan lid.

You know how we feel about it up here? We feel fine. We don’t judge. We might judge if he’d done it to us, but he did to the Yankees and Dodgers, so we’re willing to forgive this one- or two- or 60-time mistake.

Now Springer’s up here, working for a foreign power to rob Seattle of its once-in-a-half-century chance at baseball happiness. Poor old Seattle. This was all they had, and now it’s gone. Baseball pirate George Springer took it from them.

That doesn’t make America mad? Because it would make Canada happy if it did.

I’m not sure which other Jays America might dislike because they’re mostly Americans. Maybe the blue-staters can hate the red-state guys, and the red-staters can hate the blue-state guys. Instead of listing their positions on the scoresheet, the Jays can mark down who they voted for president in 2024. Problematically, that might change Canada’s mind, too.

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Max Scherzer – they could hate him. He’s different. America usually hates that. Beyond that, I’m stretching.

The jingoism of the Jays’ honorary Canadians might turn America off. All that we-play-for-a-whole-country stuff. Manager John Schneider was leaning into it so hard after the ALCS that you’d think he was born in a lumberjack camp outside Regina. You don’t see the Dodgers getting weepy about doing it for Glendale.

Would that Toronto could be mean spirited like Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s whole shtick is that they want everyone to hate them, often including their own teams. Every final in any sport involving Philadelphia feels like a war.

Toronto vs. L.A. won’t be a war. Not to start, at least. It will be the collision of one city that really, really cares, and another that cares enough, but they’ve got other stuff going on, too.

Short of winning, what would constitute success for the Toronto Blue Jays?

Stretching the Dodgers to six or seven would give some people satisfaction. For me, it would be Canada getting under America’s skin. I’m not sure how that happens. It has to be organic. Somebody says or does something that provokes a national response. Something that makes America go, ‘Hey, have we done something to upset these people? Because they don’t seem to like us any more.’

If America came out of this thinking of the Blue Jays as baseball’s black hat and Canada as their acquaintance rather than their friend, that would qualify as a kind of win. Maybe even the better kind.