TORONTO — Thirty-two years of frustration and failure, disappointment and self-loathing, trauma worn as badges of honour, came out in spectacular fashion Friday night. The sixth inning of Game 1 of the World Series was an exorcism. Toronto, one of the world’s great metropolises, a city that has loved its baseball team for decades and not been loved in return, screamed and hollered and remembered what championship baseball looked like. and this toronto blue jaysThe architect of the heavily favored 11-4 devastation los angeles dodgersdid more than just author One of the greatest offensive innings In World Series history.
He showed the world what he was already confident about coming into his 121st World Series: He’s no pushover.
“We had this real feeling for a long time that if we played a certain brand of baseball, we would win games,” the Toronto right-hander said. Chris Bassitt Said, and he is right. In an era of abundant strikeouts, the Blue Jays don’t do that. In times of poor defense, the Blue Jays have clean plays. And even against a juggernaut like the Dodgers, a team full of late bloomers and second chancers can look like a dominant force.
Nothing expressed this like the bottom of the sixth. It was one of the great half innings in World Series history, a nine-run frenzy in which the Blue Jays offense performed well. Toronto entered the series with the best offense by far in Major League Baseball this postseason, scoring 6½ runs a game, nearly two more than Los Angeles. The sixth shows how.
Starting with a six-pitch walk, adding a single, drawing a hit-by-pitch on the ninth pitch of the at-bat, and chasing down the two-time Cy Young Award winner blake snell set the tone. The single scored the first run and gave the Blue Jays a 3–2 lead. A nine-pitch walk scored another run and one more run. And after Tapper got the first out on the mound on a force play at home, Blue Jays manager John Schneider called on his third pinch hitter of the inning, addison barger,
The past week has been at least that busy for Barger. On Monday night, the Blue Jays pulled out seattle mariners Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to clinch the pennant. The next morning, Barger said, he flew to visit his wife in the hospital for the birth of their third child. A day later, he booked back to Toronto for a Blue Jays workout – but he had nowhere to stay.
“They made a place, but I felt like I wasn’t paying for a hotel room for a few days,” Barger said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m just trying to save some money.”
So after the Blue Jays outfielder crashed on the couch miles straw For a few days, Barger spent Friday nights with teammates davis schneiderSleeping on a pullout couch in the living room of a hotel suite overlooking Rogers Center from center field. Barger wasn’t exactly comfortable – Schneider said he heard screaming sounds from the bed as Barger tried to find peace – but that didn’t stop him from getting the biggest hit of his young career.
On a 2-2 slider from a reliever. anthony bandaBarger hit a ball over the center-field fence for the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, sparking chaos inside the domed stadium, where initial screams bounced off the ceiling and echoed to create a tsunami of sound.
The Blue Jays’ expertise in this particular style is nothing new – they won the most games in the AL this season because they are so adept at grinding pitchers’ souls like sandpaper – but to see it on this stage, against a Dodgers team that limited Milwaukee to four runs in the entire National League Championship Series, highlighted the fact that Toronto is Los Angeles’s best. There won’t be just another stop on a back-to-back path. Championship.
The deluge continued. A Vladimir Guerrero Jr.alone. Another home run from the catcher alejandro kirkwho went 3 for 3 and drew a nine-pitch walk in the first, when the Blue Jays threw 29 pitches to Snell and predicted his early exit. All told, Toronto saw 44 pitches, scored nine runs – the third most in a World Series inning and the most since 1968 – and turned a 2–2 nailbiter into an 11–2 stomping.
That’s what the Blue Jays are for. They’ve got a superstar (Guerrero) and a veteran of playoff battles (george springer) and a returning All-Star (bo bichetJoe played in a position for the first time since September 6, at second base, where he had not worked since being in AAA six years earlier). The rest of their lineup is filled with players who have embraced Toronto’s philosophy that as long as they don’t beat themselves, they are good enough to beat anyone – even a team as talented as the Dodgers.
“If we don’t strike out and don’t give up and we don’t necessarily beat ourselves out and give up home runs, we’ll win games,” Bassitt said. “It’s not about facing any team. It’s just the belief in our team that no matter who we play, this brand can win.”
It’s the kind of brand that’s made the city fall in love with jazz all over again. Toronto baseball knows heartbreak. After consecutive championships in 1992 and 1993, the Blue Jays fell into a pattern of continued mediocrity. Even when they were good in the mid-2010s, they fell short in the ALCS. Their last three postseason berths ended in Wild Card Series sweeps. he tried to get shohei ohtani In free agency. He went to the Dodgers. he tried to get juan soto In free agency. He went New York MetsThe Blue Jays, rattled for decades, entered 2025 with little hope of change.
However, baseball is fun that way. Sometimes a team unites around an idea, and that idea turns into an ethos, and that ethos fuels a revolution. And the Dodgers are so good that this source of all this joy, emotion and excitement may be short-lived. Maybe it was the pinnacle of a season that was very good, but not good enough.
Or perhaps the 44,353 people at Rogers Center were onto something when, with two outs in the ninth and Ohtani at the plate, a chant began to echo throughout the stadium.
,we don’t need you,” Blue Jays fans said of the best player in the world. They didn’t need him this season. They didn’t need him Friday. They didn’t need him moving forward.
It was arrogant, but it makes sense. A night like this has not been experienced in Toronto for the last 32 years. He certainly had his moments. Jose Bautista’s bat turned. Edwin Encarnación home run. All this, ultimately, in the void. However, this time? With this team of true believers? In a city that’s living a dream?
The rest of the World Series will provide the answer. However, on this night, it was true. The Toronto Blue Jays just needed theirs. And they were in abundance.
