It has been a week-and-a-half since the Toronto Blue Jays lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and I’m still not over it. I can’t imagine how Blue Jays fans must feel.
You wait for decades — if you were 8 years old when the Blue Jays last won the World Series, you are in your 40s now — for the moment your team wins a championship, and Jays fans were on the cusp of that moment … four times? Five? They can be forgiven if they blacked out and lost count. The Blue Jays had glory snatched from them repeatedly, down to the very last pitch, when one swing could have given them a ring but instead gave the Dodgers another one. It was devastating. It hurts to even repeat it here.
It has been a week-and-a-half since the Toronto Blue Jays lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and I’m still not over it. I can’t imagine how Blue Jays fans must feel.
You wait for decades — if you were 8 years old when the Blue Jays last won the World Series, you are in your 40s now — for the moment your team wins a championship, and Jays fans were on the cusp of that moment … four times? Five? They can be forgiven if they blacked out and lost count. The Blue Jays had glory snatched from them repeatedly, down to the very last pitch, when one swing could have given them a ring but instead gave the Dodgers another one. It was devastating. It hurts to even repeat it here.
I am not sure there is a worse way to lose a World Series, or a Super Bowl, or a Stanley Cup, or even a beer league softball game. This was the sort of generational defeat that will stick with Jays fans until they win another World Series — if they ever do. And it raises the question: What is the hardest way to lose? Is there a better way to lose? Or is losing just bad, equally, no matter what?
First off, it’s difficult to argue that the brutal way the Jays lost the World Series is not preferable to the alternative: Not reaching the World Series at all. Jays fans know exactly how that feels, because they went through it, every year, for 32 years. In 2004, the Blue Jays lost 94 games and finished last in the American League East. There was not a lot to celebrate that year. To reach the World Series and not win it is painful, but that pain followed many glories.
Would Jays fans give up the joy they felt when George Springer hit that dramatic American League Championship Series Game 7 home run to beat the Mariners if they knew they would lose the World Series 10 days later? Of course not. That homer was one of the best moments in Jays history; my ears are still ringing from the sound of Toronto’s Rogers Centre when that ball went over the wall. This is an argument for the pain of, say, the Buffalo Bills, who lost four Super Bowls in a row in the 1990s but at least did, after all, reach the Super Bowl, which is more than the Lions, Browns, Texans or Jaguars can say. They were there. That can never be taken away.
How about if the World Series had been a sweep? If the Dodgers — as many had predicted — simply blasted the Blue Jays four straight? Again, that would eradicate so many happy moments, from the nine runs the Jays scored in the sixth inning of Game 1 to the brilliance of 22-year-old rookie Trey Yesavage in Game 5. And moreover, the Jays would go down as somehow undeserving, mere cannon fodder for the Dodgers juggernaut — supporting players, at best. The Jays’ first trip to the series in 32 years would have been over before most people even noticed it had started. Certainly that’s not what any Jays fan would want. The last sweep in the World Series was the Giants taking out the Tigers 4-0 in 2012. Be honest: Did you remember the Tigers were even in the 2012 World Series?
How about something in the middle? If the Jays had not come within one inch of Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s spikes from winning, or one Andy Pages catch of an Ernie Clement flyball from winning, or one more Alejandro Kirk hit from winning — if they would have just won a game or two but never really threatened the Dodgers, never got that close? Would that have been better? If there had never been any hope in the first place?
Because the reason the Jays’ loss hurts so much is that, in the moment, Blue Jays fans really did believe. They thought this was their moment. You can have that sort of hope only if you haven’t truly been beaten down. You can have that hope only if, somewhere, deep down, you still believe. There’s a lesson in that for the Bills and Lions and Browns and Guardians and other tortured fan bases there as well — believing is always better than giving up.
In the end, if you have to lose a World Series, isn’t this the way to do it? To get that close? To have believed? Blue Jays fans, I’d argue there’s in fact no better way to lose than having your heart ripped out of your chest and stomped on in front of the entire world, your private pain on display until the end of time. See? Don’t you feel better already?
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