Blue Jays set to play games in ‘ home’ away from home

Toronto to play its first MLB game in Buffalo, home to a long baseball history.

How long has it been since Buffalo last had a big- league baseball game in town? Tuesday, for the first time since 1915 – two global pandemics ago – it is getting another go.

That’s when the Toronto Blue Jays will “host” the Miami Marlins at Sahlen Field, the downtown ballpark that is the Jays’ home away from home during this strange MLB season. The virus that brings them is the same virus that will keep Buffalo baseball fans away. They accept this cruel irony as the price of history.

If you don’t know much about Buffalo, or its baseball background, you’re in luck. We offer here a guide for the uninitiated.

First of all, Buffalo styles itself as the City of Good Neighbors. And what could be more neighborly than offering your minor league ballpark to a big league neighbor in need?

Wait, make that neighbour. See? Buffalo is happy to adopt Canadian spellings: That’s why, 50 years ago, Buffalonians named their new hockey team the Sabres, not the Sabers. We aim to please.

In fact, nonstandard spelling of our team names is a Buffalo tradition. That’s why our minor league baseball team – the Blue Jays’ top farm club – is called the Bisons. Never mind that the plural of bison is bison. Heck, we’ve been calling them the Bisons since 1879, when the original Bisons played in the National League.

That’s right, Buffalo has a major league pedigree. The Bisons played in the NL from 1879 to 1885. Hall of Famer James “Pud” Galvin, baseball’s first 300- game winner, was their biggest star. ( He got the nickname because he made hitters look like pudding.) Buffalo also had major league teams in the Players League, in 1890, again as the Bisons, and in the Federal League in 1914 ( as the Buffeds) and in 1915 ( as the Buffalo Blues).

So, in the century since the last big league ballgame in Buffalo, we’ve gone from Blues to Blue Jays.

The “Buffalo Blue Jays” will play at Sahlen Field, named for a local meatpacking company that makes hot dogs so good that some Buffalonians choose them over Buffalo wings.

( Important note: No one in Buffalo calls them Buffalo wings; they are, simply, wings. Additional note: Real Buffalonians do not order their wings with ranch dressing; blue cheese, please – as in Blue Jays.)

Buffalonians like to wash down their wings with Labatt beer, which should make the Blue Jays feel right at home. Labatt Brewing Company was the team’s majority owner in the mid- 1970s when the Blue Jay name was chosen as an homage to Labatt Blue, the brewer’s flagship brand.

Labatt’s headquarters are in Toronto, and its U. S. headquarters are in Buffalo. The cities are less than 100 miles apart if you’re driving. If you can fly – like, say, a blue jay – it’s more like 60 miles. ( Oops, make that 100 kilometers.) That’s because the Queen Elizabeth Way, the road that connects them, bends around Lake Ontario.

Lake Erie is just a few tape- measure Vladimir Guerrero Jr. home run blasts from Sahlen Field. The seagulls that lazily land in the outfield come from Canada, but for the rest of us the border is closed for now.

That’s hard, because Buffalo shares more than a lake and a river with its neighbours to the north ( or, in Buffalo’s case, to the west). We share a way of life, at least in several key respects: Buffalonians eat doughnuts from Tim Hortons, and tie their kids’ skates at dawn in cold hockey rinks, and know all the words to “O Canada.”

They’ll play the anthems of both countries before the Blue Jays’ games in Buffalo, but that’s nothing new; it’s already standard at Bisons’ and Sabres’ games, and the same when the NCAA men’s basketball tournament comes to town. One of the nice things about living on the border is you get to feel true patriot love for two countries all at once.

Buffalo’s baseball history is mostly minor league. The Bisons played in the International League from 1912 to 1970, when the franchise moved to Winnipeg, so you could say Canada is paying off an old debt now that the Blue Jays are coming. Another iteration of the Bisons returned in 1979, and has stayed since – first in the Eastern League and then the American Association and now back in the IL.

On their return, in 1979, the Bisons played at War Memorial Stadium, affectionately known as the Old Rockpile. Brock Yates, in Sports Illustrated, wrote in the 1960s that it “looked as if whatever war it was a memorial to had been fought within its confines.”

That was to Buffalo’s benefit when Hollywood, in the 1980s, wanted a ballpark that could pass for the 1930s. That’s how the Old Rockpile got a starring role with Robert Redford in “The Natural.”

So, as it turns out, Buffalo is an old hand at providing ballparks for teams from elsewhere. The New York Knights won a pennant at the Rockpile when Roy Hobbs hit a walk- off home run for the ages that exploded the stadium lights and lit out for the territories.

Might the Buffalo Blue Jays author a Hollywood ending of their own? Sure, they’re an extra- long long shot to win the World Series. But, hey, think of it this way: When the year began, how long were the odds of these Blue Jays finding a summer home in Buffalo?

The Blue Jays celebrate a win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park. They are 5- 8 as they come to Buffalo for their first “home” game. BOB DECHIARA/ USA TODAY SPORTS