Families who had once celebrated Joe Carter’s walk-off home run in Game 6 in 1993 united again in blue-and-white to watch the Toronto Blue Jays play in the World Series decades later, accompanied by a new generation sitting with them on the couch.
And even though the Blue Jays could not bring home the title - losing in Game 7 in heartbreaking fashion - they did bring families together to root for Canada’s baseball team.
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“It really is that sense of community. It’s kind of like a big episode of ‘Ted Lasso,’ everybody wants them to do well, and everybody wants them to succeed and everybody wants them to heal when they’re hurt and lift their heads up when they feel defeated,” Tammy Care, 55, told CTV News Toronto. “It’s not about wins or losses.”
For Care, the time that has passed between the Blue Jays being in the World Series essentially signifies the entire lifespan of her 33-year-old son, who was born on the day the team hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy for the very first time in 1992.
“We walked into the emergency room and every nurse had on something Blue Jays. Blue Jays cups and banners, it was like we walked into an after party rather than an emergency room,” Care said, noting she and her husband had driven to the hospital soon after Toronto clinched the Game 5 win.
Their son “became the Blue Jays baby,” Care said, with a knitted grey-jumper sporting the Blue Jays logo already readily made for him to wear later that day.
Care has continued to watch the Blue Jays with her family through the years, and though her son now lives in British Columbia, she still made a point to watch some World Series games together. For Game 7, Care said she Facetimed her son as soon as the BC Lions game ended and they were making their way home.
“They (her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter) were glued to their phone, their little faces were pushed up against the phone as we were trying to show them the game as it was going on,” Care recounted, noting how her mother was on the other line.
“It’s such a generational piece. They’re like, I don’t know, sports glue. They just glue people together.”
Adam Martinelli, 39, has been able to connect with his two sons, James and Oscar, in this World Series almost in the same way that he was able to celebrate with his family back in the ‘90s.
“I remember the throw to first in ’92, in ’93, I think I fell asleep during it, but I remember waking up and my dad and brother talking about it,” Martinelli told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday. “It was really exciting to get to be a part of that with our kids this year.”
Martinelli’s eldest son James, 4, watched every game with his parents, rooting for his favourite players Addison Barger and George Springer whenever they were up to bat. Oscar even sported his own Blue Jays Home Run jacket for Halloween this year, already a family heirloom as his older brother had worn it in 2022 when the team was ousted in the Wild Card Series by the Seattle Mariners.
“It was a really neat experience to be on this side of the coin, as a parent this time, and having your kid enjoy and watch,” Martinelli said.
Ana Horemans, 45, can, in a way, relate to Martinelli in that she has been able to experience the Blue Jays with her two children, decades after watching the team play with her father when she was a teenager living in Mexico. Seeing how Canada was portrayed through her TV screen then inspired the Horemans to later move to Canada, and she has been here for the last 16 years, now living in Mississauga.
“It’s like repeating the story, right? I’m watching, in which way, the Blue Jays are inspiring my son,” Horemans told CTV News Toronto.
Watching the games, Horemans said she could see her eight-year-old son, Liam, get so excited.
“He’s like, ‘I’m gonna be a baseball player, a professional player,’” Horemans said.
Her son joined an intramural baseball league this summer—to a team called the Blue Jays, Horemans noted.
“Suddenly, he started hitting the ball and he started being amazing… to the point that (they) asked me that they want him to be on the All-Star team,” Horemans said, later noting that she can sort of relate to Trey Yesavage’s parents when they watch their son play in the postseason, because of the sense of pride they must feel to watch their son play well.
The Blue Jays went the distance against the Los Angeles Dodgers in this year’s World Series, pushing two games into extra-innings in a white-knuckling best-of-seven series where some initially thought the Toronto team would be swept by Game 4.
Though it was heartbreaking to see the Blue Jays lose, Martinelli noted how everyone rallied behind the “team of leaders,” following their example of expressing their love for the players by cheering them on and wearing jerseys and hats, crying for their wins during pivotal moments of the postseason as well as supporting one another now that they lost this year’s World Series.
“This is what being part of a team is like,” Martinelli said. “I hope that rubs off on my kids.”
Years will pass and players will come and go, but these families show team spirit for the Blue Jays will carry on from generation-to-generation.
