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Saturday, August 15, 2015

Baseball North of the Border

On a recent visit to Canada to visit family, my husband and I planned our trip so we could catch a ball game at Rogers Centre in Toronto.  This would be ball park number 6 in our quest to visit every Major League baseball park (we only have 24 more to go - no biggie!), and it was a great visit.

The ball park itself was kind of "eh," but the experience was a good one overall.  While I'm not a fan of artificial turf, the Centre's retractable roof was something I'd never seen in person before, and that made it interesting (my husband the engineer kept trying to figure out how the whole thing worked).  I'm glad the weather was nice enough to leave the roof open, because I'm not sure I would enjoy an indoor baseball game (I know; I need to prepare myself for Miami and Milwaukee).  It was a bit chilly for us southerners, but the crowd was lively and extremely well-behaved (it's Canada, after all).

The first noteworthy tidbit is that every single Canadian in that ball park knew the words to their National Anthem.  Everyone sang along while "O Canada" was played, and unlike our hard-to-sing song about bombs bursting in air, the Canadian anthem talks about love and God and pride.  Yes, God was mentioned 5 times in the song, and no one complained about it.  No offense to Francis Scott Key, but not all of us can reach the high notes like Whitney Houston, so even if we knew all the words, 35,000 fans singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" would not sound as good as the same amount of Canadians singing their song.  There was also no "pomp" like at Nationals Park - no presenting of the colors and no football-field-size flag undulating in the outfield.  I was totally OK with that.

Also interesting was the person who threw out the ceremonial first pitch.  It wasn't a season-ticket-holder, war veteran, or big corporate sponsor - it was a man who performed CPR on a stranger and saved the person's life.  Now that to me is a true hero, and he was very worthy of throwing out a first pitch and so much more. 

The game itself was very exciting.  It's always nice when the home team is winning, so the Blue Jays' 10-3 victory over the Oakland A's was a definite plus to my ballpark experience.  Former Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey pitched for the Jays, Chris Colabello and Justin Smoak hit homers for the home team, and the victory put the Jays in first place above the Yankees. 

What were my least-favorite things about the Rogers Centre?  Well it's another one of those parks that was shoehorned into a bustling city with big buildings around it, so it made the concourse area very dark (though not as cramped as Oriole Park).  The epoxy coating on the floor made it seem almost airport-like, though it was very clean (the whole city of Toronto was spotless, actually).  The concession vendors that go up and down the seating area were way too quiet - they were all like "Would anyone like a cold beverage?" as opposed to the "ICE COLD BEEAH HEAH!" guys I'm used to.   The grilled prosciutto and provolone sandwich I had was very good, but the food selection wasn't as extensive as in other ball parks (not sure if they had a gluten-free or vegan stand, like at other parks).

And oh my gosh, those Canadians do NOT swear or use cuss words of any kind!  When you leave a ball game in the US, regardless of whether your team has won or not, you always hear four-letter words being used - not in anger or anything; they're just part of people's conversation ("That was @#$% awesome!" or "The umpire $%!#% sucked!").  After the Jays won and took sole possession of first place in the AL East, everyone was happy and cheerful and said "Let's go get a drink" without placing any bad-word adjectives in front of the word "drink."

Overall, our visit to the Rogers Centre was one of the things that made our trip a very nice one.  As if the movie "Argo" wasn't enough to make me want to hug a Canadian, this trip reinforced my belief that Canadians are super-nice people and Toronto is a very nice place to visit.  In August.

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