The End of the Jays(' Season)

Once upon a time, 1992-1993 to be exact, the sky was the limit for Toronto baseball fans. Sitting within the appropriately named SkyDome, Blue Jays fans could bask in the sunshine and look up at their next door neighbour the CN Tower, the World's tallest building, before watching their baseball team spoil them with back-to-back World Series Championships. Today, the CN Tower has conceded defeat to another building half way across the planet, while the Blue Jays team has had its fans quietly move them into a modest retirement home, the Rogers Centre, where the team can always recite old stories of the glory days. This past Sunday, the Toronto Blue Jays ended their 2010 season with a goodbye to a legend, a fair bit of disappointment on the field, some promise for future talent, but, ultimately, not a lot of hope of there being any meaningful interest from fans in Canada's last remaining Major League team.

Brandon Morrow pitches for the dwindling Blue Jays faithful

Cito Gaston once was the envy of every Major League manager, as he would walk out to a consistently packed stadium, along the way coaching his Toronto Blue Jays to back-to-back World Series Championships. This week, after his second stint as Jays manager, Gaston will no longer be walking onto the field to watch his Jays play, instead opting to retire and let his name forever etched on the stadium walls be his proxy instead. For a man who once saw this stadium filled with so much excitement, we must feel a bit sorry for Mr. Gaston, forced this season to come to work in front of a Blue Jays crowd averaging less than 20,000 fans, embarassing for a stadium that holds nearly 50,000. Out of the 30 MLB teams, the Blue Jays ranked 27th in attendance, and this isn't for a lack of performing from the team.  In fact, baseball fans had plenty of good reasons to watch the Jays play this year. Jose Bautista hit a Blue Jays all-time record 54 Home Runs this year, the most in the entire Major League and well ahead of runner-up Albert Pujols (42).  The Blue Jays as a team led the entire league in home runs as well with 257, good for 3rd most in MLB history, and this year beating out their closest contender Boston (211).  The pitching staff performed well above expectations as 4 young pitchers ended the season with 10+ wins. On top of that, in early August against the Tampa Rays (the best team in baseball), Brandon Morrow was only one out away from pitching Toronto's first No-Hitter since Dave Stieb completed that enormous feat in 1990 (the only No-Hitter in Blue Jays history).  Morrow settled for the one-hitter and the 1-0 victory in front of 22,000 Toronto fans.

Home Run and pitching statistics may be fun on paper, but they mean nothing to the common fan if the team is not winning games. The ultimate goal is to win a Championship, and despite posting a winning record this year, as well as 4 times in the past 5 years, the Blue Jays have neither made the playoffs, nor been in any serious contention since the glory days of the early 1990s. This can be partially attributed to the fact that the Jays play in what is easily baseball's most competitive division, with the likes of the money-backed powerhouses New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, as well as the surprising young talent of the Tampa Rays. The negatives for Toronto being in baseball's most difficult division are obvious: it's tough to beat New York and Boston consistently when they can afford to buy a more talented roster. With little chance of Toronto making the playoffs, there's little reason for the average fan to have that need to get a seat. At the same time though Toronto did get to host the Yankees and Red Sox, two of the biggest draws in baseball, a combined 18 times this past season. One would have hoped that playing against star-studded teams would create a bigger draw for fans, but the increase has been minimal.

Management has maintained that winning games is the way of bringing fans back into their seats (1), and without the means to invest in buying star players (nor interest from star players to come to play for an average team in a city with no fans), the Jays have decided to build a team of young players who can grow into stars. Fans will now have to wait for the young talent to flourish and, ideally, hope the talented young stars choose to remain in Toronto come time for talks of a contract extension. The only consistent star player the Jays have had this decade is Roy Halladay, a Cy Young winner who represented the Jays at 5 All-Star games between 2002-2009. After years of never seeing the playoffs, Halladay was granted a trade to Philadelphia this past season, where he not only pitched a perfect game (the 20th in MLB history), but also won a Major League best 21 games and is currently enjoying his first taste of postseason baseball.

Seeing a player of Halladay's quality leave surely was good reason for less fans to show up for Jays games, but will young talent winning games even bring the fans back? The Tampa Rays are the kind of team the Jays want to emulate. Unable to compete with the financial backing of New York or Boston, the Rays signed prospects at a young age for less money and made use of this young talent. Two years ago, they lost in the World Series to Philadelphia. This year, they have the best record in baseball and look poised for a chance at redemption from the heartbreak of 2008. That being said, the fans in Tampa don't seem to care. Their attendance numbers rank 22nd in the league in spite of their on-field accolades. Evan Longoria, a star player for the Rays, recently expressed his disappointment in the lack of fans who want to see this top quality team. (2)  Who's to say that bringing winning baseball to Toronto will necessarily bring back 40 000 fans a night when the Tampa Rays can't get fans interested in a winning team?

Baseball in Toronto is dwindling at best.  Despite having game tickets available for as cheap as $13 (or season tickets as cheap as $99), the fans aren't coming to the ballpark. The team is in a seemingly constant rebuilding phase. Even their project for creating winners may not even be enough to bring out people to the ballpark. It's a shame for baseball fans across Canada, as well as fans in other baseball cities who would love their team to have the talent the Blue Jays possess. There are other teams with strong fan support waiting for a Home Run hitter like Bautista.  Other cities would have fans flock to a team hitting 250 home runs a year.  Toronto, however, is just not interested. We've seen the glory years and accept that they will never come back. One day, the only question Torontonians will have left of the Jays is what they should do with a massive empty stadium in the heart of downtown when baseball's retired from Canada. In the meantime, I'll remain one of the dying faithful, looking forward to my season tickets again for next year.
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1 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/toronto-blue-jays-ceo-paul-beeston/article1547324/

2 http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5625055

All statistics courtesy of espn.go.com