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Canadians rally around baseball's Blue Jays after Trump trade outburst
U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled U.S.-Canada trade talks on Thursday night, another low point in what has been a rocky year for the long-time allies.
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Reuters - Sat, 25, Oct 2025
- 01:41 EDT
- 13
Toronto Blue Jays fans line up outside Rogers Centre ahead of Game 1 of the World Series against the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 24, 2025. / REUTERS/Wa Lone
Baseball brought Canadians some joy to counteract economic gloom on Oct. 24 night, when the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers, spurring nationwide celebrations.
Canada's only Major League Baseball team, playing in the World Series for the first time in more than three decades, has spurred hope for millions of Canadians who feel beaten and bruised from months of political struggle with their next-door neighbor.
U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled U.S.-Canada trade talks on Thursday night, another low point in what has been a rocky year for the long-time allies.
"They definitely are Canada's team," said lifelong fan Kirsty Crawford, who was wearing a Jays jersey while picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons in downtown Winnipeg, 2,240 km (1,390 miles) west of Toronto, on Friday morning.
"It's amazing. There's people in my office who have never watched a baseball game in their life and they're watching it."
For Max Babson, a Winnipegger proudly wearing a Blue Jays jersey while walking to lunch with his wife, Sarah, seeing the Jays in the series is uplifting in the fraught Canada-U.S. climate.
"It's an American-dominated game. There's one Canadian team. It means more," said Babson.
Decades ago, the Jays stamped themselves on the Canadian consciousness as a national champion rather than just Toronto's team. The team was launched with a small maple leaf in the logo in 1976. The maple leaf was greatly expanded in 1996, three years after the team won the World Series for the second time in two years. The maple leaf has come and gone from the logo since then, but today is a prominent element.
For Jays super-fan Marcie Matsubuchi in Niagara Falls, Ontario, investing 38 hours to create her "look," including a cap with 3,000 beads, for Friday's game was well worth it.
"Nothing's getting in the way of us winning the World Series, so, yeah, it doesn't matter" what Trump says, she said. "They can stay south of the border. We're Canadian. We live differently. We think differently. We think positively. And this is what's going to work for us."
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