Jays feel as if they’re at home on the road
When does a sports team go on the road and become the home team? In what sport? In what country? In what freaking universe?
Never, is the answer. It just doesn’t happen. Except one place. And the Seattle Mariners, as irritated as they must be, have to be content that it only happens one series a year.
Every time the Toronto Blue Jays come to Safeco Field, it turns into a home invasion. The Blue Jays and their fans bust down the front door, collect all the silverware, raid the liquor cabinet and leave the Mariners feeling like they’ve just been violated. And they’re not wrong. Not in our house? Well, yeah. In. Your. House. On Monday when the Blue Jays beat the Mariners 3-2, holding on against a ninth-inning rally, the crowd was announced at 34,809. If so, then at least 20,000 of those warm bodies had a maple leaf etched on their butts. And every one of them brought a megaphone because how can so few be that loud?
You have to understand first that Blue Jays fans travel well. For the past several years, at practically every Blue Jays road game wherever they play, there has been a groundswell of support for the visitors. Not just a smattering of applause, but a significant, boisterous, partisan following that always gets under the skin of the home folks. Name the stadium and you’ll find plenty of blue in the seats making their opponents uncomfortable.
But nothing anywhere in the world of sports compares to what happens in Seattle. You wake up in this beautiful city on the shores of Puget Sound on the first day of a Blue Jays-Mariner series, go out and walk down to the world famous Pike Place Market and you have to look twice to not think you’re at the St. Lawrence Market instead. Thousands of people, all wearing blue.
Ballplayers are hard to impress. They’ve seen it all, or at least they usually pretend to. It is part of their professional persona, part of their intense focus, to ignore fans as much as they can. Players will often tell you they hear nothing when they are between the lines. It’s not entirely true, but to admit otherwise might indicate a crack in a player’s concentration that he cannot tolerate.
This all makes the Blue Jay players, and even their well-travelled manager, John Gibbons, gush about the support they get here.
In the moments after Monday’s important win, Gibbons wanted to talk about Marco Estrada and Edwin Encarnacion and Kevin Pillar, but he first wanted to talk about the fans.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Gibbons, “these western Canadian fans are something special. Hard-nosed, luv ya. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I guarantee you (the players) hear it the whole time. It is like a home game. They’re special out here: good, hard-working people, down-to-earth and they love us, good bad, or ugly. It’s pretty cool.”
Estrada, who has encountered some bumps in the road in recent starts, took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and wasn’t shy about crediting the fan support for keeping the mood in the Blue Jays dugout buoyant from the time they stepped onto the field until it was over.
“It’s incredible how many fans showed up and I’m sure it’ll be the same the next two days,” he said. “It is awesome to be a Blue Jay, being on the road and seeing all the love we’re getting from all of Canada. It’s awesome watching these fans. It gave us a lot of energy in the dugout and adds to the excitement of being here.
“It feels like a home game. It happened here last year, too. It gives us a lot of energy.”
Pillar drove in what turned out to be the game-winning run and also made a spectacular diving catch of a sinking liner hit by Kyle Seager with two men on in the fifth inning. Yet he, too, wanted to give a shout out to the fans.
“You can’t describe this,” he said. “It’s something every Blue Jay fan should come out and experience. My parents are here and I tried to tell them what it would be like, but they had to see it for themselves. It’s probably the only place in the world where a team can go on the road and get this kind of support.”
In truth, it has been happening when the Jays come to Seattle for, maybe, 10 years but over the past three years, it has become a “thing,” taking on a life of its own. Fans are now realizing they can be part of something extraordinary, something truly special and unique in the world of sports and the planning begins as soon as the next year’s schedule comes out.
The bulk of the support comes from Vancouver, but it’s also Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and all parts in between. It doesn’t hurt that Seattle is such a jewel of a city, with plenty of nightlife as well as touristy things to do during the day.
There was a mistaken expectation that the Jays’ 2016 mid-week trip to Seattle, coming in September after school was back in, would discourage some fans from making the trek. Big miss on that prediction. If we’re not mistaken, the throng of Canadian fans at Monday’s series opener has never been larger.
The Blue Jays hope their 2016 season still has a long way to go but you can bet that throughout Western Canada, now that the 2017 dates for Toronto’s trip to Seattle have been set (June 9, 10 and 11), plans are already being formulated to be part of next season’s intrusion.