Are the Blue Jays really Canada’s team?

The Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Texas Rangers in Game 5 of the American League Division Series this week. This is kind of a big deal, especially since they're Canada's only major-league baseball team. But are they Canada's team? If we're not from T-dot, should we care about the Jays?

David McGimpsey, a part-time instructor in Concordia's Department of English, believes we shouldn't feel obliged to support them. He went on record with CBC reporter Thomas Daigle and The Wall Street Journal to say he was cheering for anyone but the Jays. We asked him to kindly elaborate.

Professional sport is a business, not a public trust. People are free to cheer or not cheer in equal measure, regardless of popular and media-hyped sentiment. Being Canadian has nothing to do with the Toronto Blue Jays — or the Montreal Canadiens, for that matter.

Millions of Canadians do not care about professional sports and millions will not be watching regardless of how big the maple leaf slapped on the product is. I have lots of friends who are Toronto Blue Jays fans and I wish them and their team good luck today. I like baseball a lot but it's just a game.

I grew up an Expos fan in a Montreal, which has, over the years, lost to Toronto in arenas far more serious than professional sports, and I have never felt comforted by the nationalism of English Canada for which Toronto — and the marketing of the Blue Jays — effortlessly speaks.

I'm predisposed to not cheer for teams from Toronto and, in the spirit of the fun professional sports articulates, I follow this predisposition with mustard and relish.

My father was a Yankees fan and, after Montreal lost the Expos, I gratefully took on my father's loyalty to the Yankees and being a partisan is, to me, the only reason to follow sports.

The Toronto Blue Jays handily beat my team this year and are in the playoffs so, of course, I hope they lose. If that makes me a bad Canadian well, I guess, when victorious Jays fans gather in Nathan Phillips Square to sing their favourite Barenaked Ladies songs, I just won't be there.
 

Author, poet and essayist David McGimpsey has written extensively about baseball. His book Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture (Indiana University, 2000) picks apart the mythology surrounding the game. 

What do you think? Should we be cheering for the Blue Jays in Montreal? Share your opinion on social media using the hashtag #CUJays.