A nine-year-old Etobicoke boy was at a complete loss for words Monday afternoon when two members of his darling Toronto Blue Jays presented him with four tickets to Thursday’s playoff game.
Grasping a blue inflatable bouncing ball, Jack Blunt, a grade four student at Warren Park Public School, was ushered into his school’s library where a gaggle of cameras and Blue Jays players Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins were waiting. The players motioned for him to sit in between them.
Blunt turned red, and beamed as Goins and Pillar gave him a new jersey and team jacket. He jaw dropped open when they presented him with four tickets to Thursday’s playoff game against the Texas Rangers.
“Are we going to win,” Pillar asked the boy. Blunt slowly nodded his head.
“I’m sure when he gets home he’s going to be jumping for joy,” Pillar said later.
Jack’s mother, Jenn, says baseball, and especially the Blue Jays, have helped her son cope since being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes last year and dealing with the loss of his father years ago to cancer.
“One of the biggest things for him has been staying involved with athletics — running and playing and living and breathing baseball.”
Jenn says Jack has been glued to the television since the start of the Jays’ season.
“We sit in front of the television and we watch every game there is.”
When asked who Jack would bring with him to the game, Jenn joked he ought to bring her and his younger brother.
Goins said the team is staying relaxed ahead of the opening playoff game, and not letting the magnitude of their playoff qualification weigh over their heads.
“(Jack) probably doesn’t even understand how long it has been,” Goins said of the team spending 22 straight years out of the postseason.
The first game of the American League division series gets underway at the Rogers Centre on Thursday afternoon.
