Winning is contagious in Toronto
TFC is latest team from the Big Smoke on a title run, which culminates Saturday
Larry Tanenbaum can’t tell you how many games he has attended in his 18 years of ownership involvement with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, but the number is definitely above the 1,000 mark.
Yet Saturday night will be completely different for Tanenbaum, different for MLSE, different for this city. For a company best known for spending money, making money and never winning a thing, for this sporting equity investment of Tanenbaum’s dreams, here comes the anomaly in this calendar year of anomalies.
The first championship game for Canada’s largest and most powerful sporting company. The MLS Cup. By late Saturday night and for one night only, it could well be renamed the MLSE Cup.
Toronto isn’t much of a championship town, really. The Raptors have never played for a title. You have to be almost 60 to remember the last time the Maple Leafs played for the Stanley Cup. The Blue Jays last won the World Series 23 years ago. The Argos win on occasion, we celebrate for the moment and then move on like it didn’t really happen.
Then along came the laughing stock, Toronto FC, the embarrassing child of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment — which was hard to be, considering the other teams. TFC represented the MLSE brand almost to a fault. They could sell tickets and trip all over themselves on the field. The fan base was deep and dedicated, the roster was not.
Finally, when spending money worked and spending it on the right people worked, everything came together in a sporting symmetry this city isn’t used to. It should culminate with a Toronto FC victory over Seattle at BMO Field Saturday night and the eventual parade route former MLSE president and CEO Tim Leiweke once got caught dreaming about in public.
To the championship mountain in a year of Toronto sports unlike any we have known before.
The Blue Jays played for MLB’s American League championship. The Raptors played for the NBA Eastern Conference championship. The Maple Leafs won the NHL draft lottery and have unveiled the future with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, and what a beginning that is. This run by TFC is both a culmination of years of frustration and angst and a new beginning for a sporting city so desperately in need of a championship ending.
When has there been so much about Toronto to feel so terrific about? I don’t care much for soccer myself, but I was sitting in a sports bar in Florida last week, screaming at a television screen, as the Reds advanced to the MLS Final.
This sporting city is at its richest and most vibrant when a team can grab a casual observer, a disinterested one, and pull them along for the ride.
The Blue Jays did that in the summer of 2015, changing the path of that wayward franchise. The Raptors did that in April and May.
And the excitement is felt in the company by those not involved with soccer, but trying to win themselves.
“It means a lot,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said. “I went to part of the last game when they beat Montreal 5-2. We can always learn from winning. It rubs off on you.
“The Blue Jays’ success rubbed off and maybe as we began three years ago it rubbed off on others, too. As part of the same company, what’s happening is priceless. We support them and I actually get emotionally involved.”
This is a Toronto year we have rarely known before. Milos Raonic has vaulted to the No. 3 spot in the tennis world. We are coming off the rarest of Olympic seasons.
On Tuesday, the winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s athlete of the year will be determined. There are other candidates, but it’s basically a two-Toronto-athlete race: Penny Oleksiak and her four Olympic swimming medals against Andre De Grasse and his three medals from the track.
Success has brought more success in the same way failure for too long brought more failure. Michael Bradley, who has been with Toronto FC long enough to see both the great and the disappointing, understands.
“The sports landscape in Toronto is unlike anything I’ve seen. It’s an unbelievable sports city,” Bradley said. “We’re TFC and yes the Maple Leafs have their games and the Raptors have theirs — there’s a real sense of us — but a real sense of pride that we represent not just ourselves, but something much bigger. We’re incredibly lucky.
“I’ve been here three years. I’m a big Raptors fan. I’m a big Leafs fan. I don’t want to make it out to be like Kyle Lowry and I are best friends in any way, but the handful of times I’ve seen him over the past few years, there’s a real mutual respect and a real feeling. I love watching him compete every night.
“When I get home and after I put my kids to bed, having dinner with my wife, I enjoy turning the TV on at night and I enjoy watching the Raptors and you get the feeling that they have that same feeling towards us. What it means to represent Toronto and represent this city, that has been driven home time and time again.”
It’s why this championship game means so much. For Toronto. For MLSE. For Larry Tanenbaum. For all who have lived through so much disappointment.
“If we can make Saturday the most special night yet,” Bradley said, “then I think everybody is going to be amazed by what they see.”