Ever since Saturday night, I’ve been spending considerable time processing what happened both at the Rogers Centre and the entire season. I don’t normally post here without some loose connection to education, and I think there’s a link I can make, but as has been my habit on this space for the past 20 years, I often come here to wrestle with half-baked thoughts that I hope by the end resemble coherence. In the end, I ended up adding this one to my series on delights, but it goes beyond that.
I love what Chris wrote last week about baseball. Of all the major sports, it’s likely in the most decline among young people because of its pace, which is what Chris suggests we celebrate. I agree.
That pace and length of the season add to the heartbreak and joy. As someone who watches nearly every game beginning in April, I am pretty invested. What I say every year is, “As long as the Bluejays play meaningful baseball well into September, I’ll be happy”. I was. They could have lost in a wildcard series, and that would have been fine. But expectations continued to grow, game by game and series by series. With that build, the Jays gained more and more fans. Pretty soon, people I know who never watched a game all year, couldn’t name more than 3 players, were talking about bullpen strategy and quality at bats. Some folks get upset at that, but I’ve done that for other teams. Our local Moose Jaw Warriors hockey team had a good run a couple of years ago, and I gladly joined the bandwagon. Going to games with 5,000 other folks from our little city was a lot of fun and so good for the city.
If you’re not Canadian, I don’t think you can understand. We got a taste of this last February during the 4 Nations Cup. As a country, we rallied and used the political tension of the time to bring us together. In that case, a victory was the only outcome we would accept.
This was different. Yes, it was heartbreaking, and the number of podcasts and sports shows and social media posts dissecting secondary leads, lodged balls, base running errors and pitching mistakes is too numerous to count, and while it’s sometimes fun to debate, it doesn’t really matter.
This wasn’t just about your team having a good run. I’ve been part of many of those and sometimes even won. (Raptors in 2019 and Riders in 2013). Not often, but I know the feeling. This team was different. They loved each other. That’s rarer than almost anything. I remember teams like the New York Yankees in the late 70s, where there was so much infighting. Kobe and Shaq didn’t get along, but they won. The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays played for their city and the country. But mostly for each other. It was infectious.
I’m not sure what the lesson is, but before I wrote this (I’ve been writing this on my phone at the Toronto airport), I wondered if AI could help me come up with something. I don’t use AI for writing because I like what I’m doing now- challenging myself to say something of value. But here’s a link to my conversation with Claude. (It was better than the paid version of ChatGPT)
Some of those would be interesting to explore sometime. So is there a lesson for schools? Probably lots. But I found a video that perhaps captures things best of all. Courtesy Shelby Hayle
I think there are going to be books, documentaries and studies done about this team. There’s so much to learn about culture, team, fans and love. I suppose when I look back at some of my experiences, the best ones had an element of love and care for each other. The time I spend with my colleagues at Discovery Education probably most closely connects to the 2025 Blue Jays when I consider the quality of people, the fun we had together and how we relied on a variety of skills and talents. Chris Bassit was asked about replicating this team and its culture, and he didn’t think it was possible. A lot of pieces came together during this magical run. Perhaps it can never be created but at a minimum, the memory of the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays will endure and bring a smile to millions. That’s not nothing.
