As a lifelong Blue Jays fan who worked selling popcorn as a teenager at Exhibition Stadium in the team’s first two years of existence from 1977-1978, I was delighted with the outcome of Monday’s game seven. After all, World Series appearances are rare enough; my memories of the back-to-back championships of ’92 and’93 are getting a bit hazy. I still remember exactly where I was watching those final games and I certainly remember the last at bats. Some of the other details are dimming, and I would prefer to attribute this to the number of years gone by rather than any diminishing capacity on my part. Whatever happens in the upcoming finale with the Dodgers, just getting there is an accomplishment worth celebrating.

Yet a part of me was thinking not just of the jubilant Jays, their families hustling on to the field, the delirious fans in the stadium and the millions jumping up and down in their family rooms, but rather of the vanquished Mariners. This, of course, is the Blue Jays twin franchise, birthed in the same year of 1977, and it has never managed to attain the lofty heights of the World Series. They came achingly close this time. Up two games to none going home for three, then up three games to two, and up through six innings of game seven. Undoubtedly, they likely felt this was their year. Having outdistanced the Astros for the division, with the Yankees and the Red Sox out of the way and having outlasted the Tigers in a memorable fifteen inning deciding game, they must have felt that destiny was finally riding shotgun with them.  To then have things wrenched away by one swing of the bat must leave a hollow feeling. To consider all the pitches thrown over those 162 regular season games and the 12 playoff games that followed, and the hope that the players and fans carried over those eight months and then realize that it all vanished in one swing of the bat is to understand that baseball is an especially cruel game.

Of course, as a Toronto sports fan, part of me thought about those poor Mariner players lingering in the dugout watching the official and unofficial on field celebrations; they looked like ghosts unable to move, forced to watch the victory party as part of some instinctual need to make the unimaginable real. For who amongst Toronto fans has not been in that dugout too, forced to watch other teams rejoice, staring in a daze as the shattered athletes speak numbly into reporters’ microphones, and quietly pack up their equipment to await another year? It may be that the trauma of being a Toronto sports fan has resulted in my having an overdeveloped empathy for the heartbreak of others. And yes, I know that some Seattle fans cheered when the heroic Springer was kneecapped by a Brian Woo fastball, but you can’t condemn an entire fan base for the actions of a callous few.  And yes, I know Seattle is an American city and we continue to find ourselves in the midst of a trade war with the U.S. But that doesn’t mean their pain was any less real.

As the League Championship Trophy was being presented to the Blue Jays, I was hoping that someone would spare a thought for the Mariners amidst the Dionysian fervour. Could someone not recognize a Seattle team that had a great season and came one run short? Could someone not offer them some hope that one day they will arrive in that promised land that has been so elusive? Apparently not. Baseball lacks the closure of the handshake lineup that distinguishes hockey. And on this evening of wild abandon, as the CEOs and Executives stepped to the microphone, it was as if there wasn’t even another team playing. They were made invisible. With all the gushing about “a great group of guys”, I kept waiting for someone from that great group to acknowledge the Mariners, their season, their pain. None was forthcoming.

Nor did reporters ask Schneider about his managerial counterpart Dan Wilson or about his thoughts on how tough this had to be on the opposing team. Maybe if you’ve waited your whole life for something and you get there, you take a moment to consider the people who have waited even longer and are still waiting. And so, in the midst of the jubilation, a part of me is a bit sad that the victors could not take even a moment out of their revelry to consider the flip side, the crushing of hope and the long wait for spring training. How hard would it have been to spare a few words of encouragement to an organizaton that has been waiting almost fifty years to contend for a championship? Yes, it would have just been words. But when the game is over, words are all any fan has to hang onto.