Rooting for the home team can be awfully complicated
So the Raptors are going to play in Tampa. Toronto FC wrapped up its season in Hartford. The Blue Jays played in Buffalo. The Argos didn’t even bother.
Makes me wonder: If they don’t play in Toronto, are they really Toronto’s teams?
I imagine for the diehards — in the thousands for each team — it doesn’t matter where they play. If that’s your team, that’s your team.
But for the casual fan, the one who watches the fourth quarter or the second half or the ninth inning, I wonder if you lose a connection somehow because the team is not near you, not in familiar territory, not playing half its games in familiar surroundings.
Through the pandemic, sports doesn’t seem to have the hold on us as it once did. Ratings are down. Attendance is abysmal. (That last bit was a joke.)
If established teams feel like they’re losing their connection with the city because of the pandemic, how about the new ones?
The Toronto Six are supposed to play this season, the first Canadian team in the NWHL. The league has announced its season will take place in a bubble in Lake Placid, N.Y. While I like their chances of actually playing, I feel sorriest for them.
Good on the players for the self-sacrifice required to hive yourself off from the world like that to get this thing going and to build a brand.
The Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association — basically the players who would play in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League if it were still around — is trying to get traction, too. They announced Team Sonnet — sponsored by the insurance company — will represent Toronto on the Dream Gap Tour.
It doesn’t even have “Toronto” on the sweater. But is this Dream Gap Tour really going to happen? Is there a season? Will there be games for the Toronto team in Toronto?
If neither of these teams actually play in Toronto, can they really build their brand?
The self-isolation and physical distancing the pandemic requires of us all prevents a new team from even the most basic community outreach, like going into schools, rec centres and hospitals.
It may end up that the Maple Leafs are the only big-league team to play in Toronto, but I’m getting pessimistic about that.
I love the whole idea of an all-Canadian division, complete with two rounds of playoffs to determine a champion that will venture south to play the champions of the other three divisions. But maybe the owners would rather not play than lose money playing before fans.
Maybe the virus gets so out of control that everything — including travel to other parts of the country — is ended.
That would hurt hockey. Maybe the Leafs would have to follow the Raptors south.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe Lockdown 2.0 is very quickly getting to me, so sorry if this is bringing you down. But is there less of a connection because the teams are playing elsewhere — Toronto teams in name only? Or is there less of a connection because you can’t get tickets?
I know you probably can’t afford tickets, but in theory they were available. Maybe you could win them, or someone would come to you at the last minute because he or she couldn’t go. They existed. That means the possibility of going to see your team existed. Or bumping into a player at a King
Street West restaurant. But the players aren’t here and the restaurants are closed.
Maybe there feels like a lack of connection with our teams because it’s a pandemic. There are so many other things to worry about that the score of the game just doesn’t seem to matter that much.
We’re in unprecedented times, a phrase you’ve heard over and over again since March.
But how about this: Right now, in what is usually one of the busiest times of year in sports, there are no local teams in action whatsoever — unless the Buffalo Bills count.
As the virus strengthens, it appears to be weakening our links to the things we love the most. We can’t see each other, at least not frequently and in person. We can’t play the games we love. And we’re not watching the teams we love. And they’re not playing here anyway.