It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Toronto lost yesterday, even though a lot worked out in their favor. After all, the Blue Jays had won eleven of their last thirteen at home, there was a sellout crowd at the Rodgers Center, and they were playing a Detroit Tigers club that had just suffered a thirteen-game losing streak.
Unfortunately, the game was on Canada Day, a national holiday for the United States’ northern neighbors. It also turns out to be, according to the story, an unlucky day for the Canada baseball team.
The Blue Jays have played thirty Canada Day games at their home park over the course of their forty-year history, and all thirty have been celebrations of the national holiday. Overall, though, the baseball team has had little to celebrate on the field.
In those twenty-and-a-half contests since 1977, Toronto has won just nine and lost twenty-one. There have been eleven times the Blue Jays have played road games on Canada Day, and they’ll probably want to play road games much more often after the schedule shifts from June to July.
Unsurprisingly looking back on past occasions, the Blue Jays seemed doomed to lose on Canada Day again in 2018. They trailed the Tigers going into their final at-bat and were, in fact, one strike away from another holiday. loss.
At that point, pinch hitter Justin Smoak was walked with the bases loaded, allowing Toronto to tie the score and send the game to extra innings. That free pass incited the crowd at the Rodgers Center, who were sure this Canada Day would break history and see their team triumph.
That hope was short-lived, as the Tigers struck back in his next at-bat. Shortstop Joe Iglesias hit a sacrifice fly to make it 3-2 Detroit, which ended up being the final score.
Ontario fans can take solace in the knowledge that the one-run loss wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in 2001, when the division rival Boston Red Sox defeated the home team by a score of sixteen to four. A decade and a half before the Blue Jays suffered a nearly as bad Canada Day loss, the Seattle Mariners handed an eleven-to-two loss to Toronto.
Despite the poor Canada Day record in club history, there’s still reason to be happy when the Blue Jays play at home when July opens. Toronto’s two World Series championships came in 1992 and 1993, both seasons in which the Blue Jays won on Canada Day.