Regarding the Blue Jays, there is a lot to see and hear and read today, probably a lot more than there was the last time the team prepared to throw open the gates of the SkyDome for a playoff game, so I don’t want to get in the way of your taking all that in. I only want to tell you that in grade seven, in Mr. Barrett’s drama class, I conceived of, wrote, and performed a wordless dramatic piece about the Pirates and the Blue Jays in the World Series. It was called “Game 7,” and in it the Blue Jays won.
I’ve been waiting 25 years for that theatrical prediction to come to pass, and it looked like it just might this year. The Pirates, though, after going twenty years without so much as a winning season, have begun a new, painful October tradition of losing at home in the Wild Card Game. They’ve endured this three straight years now, having run up against Johnny Cueto, Madison Bumgarner, and Jake Arrieta in that span, which is a cruel gauntlet to run for a starving fanbase. Last night, between Arrieta’s dominance and Kyle Schwarber hitting a ball clear over the Allegheny River, the Bucs stood little chance, and so bowed out, their flame extinguished, the victim yet again of the strange, awful, violently sudden death that awaits the loser of the Wild Card Game.
So regardless of how far the Blue Jays go in these playoffs, this dream of mine—the Toronto-Pittsburgh World Series—will have to wait a little longer to become reality.
Anyway, you have a jersey to don, a face to paint blue, so let me just say that wherever you are, and wherever you’re going to watch the game—in a bar with friends, sitting on your own couch, through a tiny window open on your desktop at the office, or even in person at that big, noisy bowl of a stadium—enjoy it. The Blue Jays are playing Game 1 of a postseason series today, and there’s no telling when that might happen again.
A pennant-race dispatch from Invisible author Andrew Forbes (What You Need). In April 2016 we’ll be releasing The Utility of Boredom, a collection of Forbes’s baseball essays.