"You always hope to have one Blue Jays game a year."
In Chris Berman's "Ode to Codeine," he notes that you should take advantage if you draw a Blue Jays assignment. Well, ESPN rarely makes the trip up north, much less show the Toronto Blue Jays these days. Monday night proved to be an exception, and the U.S. cable sports channel's trip to Toronto had nothing to do with the Blue Jays, Toronto, or codeine.
ESPN wanted a chance to showcase long-time Japanese hurler Yu Darvish, and this was its best shot so far. While the focus and coverage was on Darvish, Canada and Toronto were not ignored.
In the graphic for the Blue Jays fielding alignment, defense was spelled with a c — defence — and play-by-play guy Sean McDonough pointed that out. McDonough, along with Aaron Boone and Rick Sutcliffe, also teased on-field reporter Tim Kurkjian for almost not getting into Canada because of an expired passport. McDonough made a joke on how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped Kurkjian with his passport.
Kurkjian, in his first report, said "Darvish has fit in beautifully here in the United States" though McDonough later made the distinction between the U.S. and Canada in a similar context.
The Blue Jays didn't impress in the U.S. national appearance. A rally without a hit in the second inning ended without a run. The only Toronto run came on a solo home run by Edwin Encarnacion in the fourth inning. Encarnacion is one of the few Jays sluggers hitting the ball well, hitting a home run in each of the last four games.
The game drew a relatively quiet crowd of 21,945 fans. Walkup wasn't much of a factor; while the roof was closed, the weather outside was rainy. The announcers thought there would be more fans because of Darvish. Boone pointed out the number of people of Japanese descent in Toronto, but the extra crowd for Jeremy Lin (Chinese descent, NBA) proved to be more of an impact at Air Canada Centre.
The announcers also had fun showing Sunday Night Baseball play-by-play guy Dan Shulman in the Rogers Centre crowd with his sons. Shulman is Canadian and from Toronto; you had to think he knew he might be on camera at some point. Sutcliffe mentioned that he had never met Shulman's sons before. Well, this is because ESPN rarely gets to Toronto.
Then again, ESPN ranked Toronto as the worst city for professional sports teams in North America last summer. The poll was based on fans voting online, so science certainly wasn't a factor. The playoff futility of the Blue Jays and Maple Leafs plus the overall futility of the Raptors played a lot into that take. They didn't take into account the CFL Argonauts or the score might have been lower.
McDonough referred to the long-suffering Toronto sports fans as having "not a lot to cheer about in this beautiful city." He pointed out the woes of the Blue Jays, Raptors, and Maple Leafs, and even the Argonauts though McDonough doesn't follow the CFL.
Toronto's past glory came up as well. McDonough relived his CBS-TV call of Joe Carter's World Series winning home run. They also paid tribute to the late Tom Cheek's call of Carter's home run.
Referring to 1994, Mc Donough noted that "the work stoppage that followed really killed baseball in Montreal and Toronto."
The city of Toronto was on great display in the bumpers coming out of the break. One particularly beautiful shot had the skyline of downtown Toronto lit up looking west as McDonough said, "one of the great cities in the world, Toronto, Ontario."
ESPN portrays itself as the Worldwide Leader. Canada is part of that world, especially when Toronto has teams in sports that the network cares about (MLB, NBA). Since ESPN doesn't carry hockey, the NHL gets very little coverage on the Worldwide Leader. At least ESPN made it up to Rogers Centre; Fox will show every MLB team this year except for the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays get another U.S. national appearance as the matinee series conclusion airs this afternoon on the MLB Network at 12:30 pm Eastern. The U.S. cable channel will take a local feed for the coverage.