Remember when? Toronto Blue Jays become first Canadian team to win the World Series, 1992.
TORONTO. MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2010. Just in time for the Blue Jays’ home opener against the Chicago White Sox tonight, pretty close to what Walt Whitman once called “the blue foreground” of Lake Ontario, our resident sporting life authority Rob Sparrow has filed his 2010 report on the prospects for the MLB team that actually won the World Series in days gone by — and not just once but twice, in 1992 and 1993.
Things have changed since then, of course. And as Rob points out in the 2010 report, the Jays have lost far too many fans over the past several years. In an interview late last night, the Sparrow also stressed how “this is somewhat of a crossroads season” for the Canadian boys of summer “in trying to win back their core group of fans.” Like last year, it seems as well, the team has already made a strong start. And the Sparrow has bravely confessed “like many people I did not see them starting 5-1 from the opening gate.”
Yet as many surviving fans and fanatics will no doubt remember too, last year’s bold start soon enough settled into the more measured performance virtually all the experts were predicting. The Sparrow was among these wise men (and women of course) in the city with the heart of a loan shark. His expectations for this year are also more measured than the team’s current performance might suggest. But he does stress that the Blue Jays this year are starting “A new decade … a new direction,” under General Manager Alex Anthopoulos. And he urges that the biggest act of good faith by Jays’ fans in 2010 will be to support a team that may not yet finally prove as good as they’d like, but does have the potential to be very good in two or three years (a little of which is already showing in the strong track record for the first half-dozen games?).
The Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto, formerly the Sky Dome — “first stadium with a retractable roof allowing any sport to be played indoors or outdoors, rain or shine.”
Whatever else, as usual the Sparrow’s guide is profoundly informative, eminently engaging, and deeply fascinating — even if you are not (yet) quite the kind of confirmed fan and fanatic that the Sparrow is himself. CLICK HERE for his complete report, “Blue Jays 2010 .. if you build a better team will the fans come back?” Or see the Sporting Life category to the right of this page. (And btw good luck to Rob and those counterweights editor friends of his who have already left the office for the season opener in Toronto tonight — on what seems certain to be a very pleasant spring evening indeed. The rest of us will be watching on TV.)
