The Toronto Blue Jays are one win away from a first World Series title in 32 years and they can wrap that up on Friday night in Game 6 in front of a raucous home crowd at the Rogers Centre.
The fact that this team heads into Halloween on the precipice of glory might come as a shock to fans who experienced what was a thoroughly demoralizing year that preceded this dream season.
In December of 2023, the Blue Jays appeared to be on the verge of landing, perhaps, the biggest free-agent prize in the history of the sport in Japanese two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani. Fans were sent into a frenzy on Dec. 8 when Ohtani was reported to be on a plane to Toronto. Social media rumours swirled that an introductory news conference was imminent. People frantically followed flight trackers to see when he would actually touch down in the city.
And a private jet from Anaheim did land in the city that day, but it was not Ohtani aboard – it was Shark Tank star Robert Herjavec.
Under 24 hours later, Ohtani posted a Los Angeles Dodgers logo on Instagram, indicating that he was signing with the Angels’ crosstown rivals on a 10-year, $700 million deal and not coming north of the border. Blue Jays fans were crushed, more than a little embarrassed, and the episode turned the genial Ohtani into a villain for life in the city.
That disappointment would set the tone for the Jays’ 2024 campaign. They would finish dead last in the American League East at 74-88 in a season that saw top prospect Orelvis Martinez make his big league debut only to get popped for PEDs a day later and its most compelling storyline being whether or not Joey Votto, signed to a minor-league deal in spring training, would eventually suit up for his hometown team (he did not).
The frustration from the 2024 season would carry on into the offseason, where the Blue Jays would once again come up short in two high-profile free agency pursuits. Slugger Juan Soto, coming off of a third-place finish in AL Most Valuable Player voting with the New York Yankees, passed on Toronto’s offer to head to Queens and join the New York Mets on an eyewatering 15-year, $765 million contract. In an even crueler turn, hurler Roki Sasaki, the most prized Japanese talent to be posted since Ohtani himself in 2017, also left the Jays at the altar to sign with – you guessed it – the Dodgers.
If that all weren’t bad enough, there was the matter of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. The team’s homegrown stars were heading into the final seasons of their respective contracts with the possibility of both entering into the last days of their Jays tenures growing more and more likely. Guerrero’s announcement that he didn’t intend to negotiate during the season seemingly placed a deadline on a potential deal that came and went without any movement.
Further maddening was general manager Ross Atkins once again beating the drum about “internal improvement” as fans bemoaned the team’s lack of activity in the winter. Where was this internal improvement going to come from? Was George Springer, whose production was steadily diminishing and was coming off of a 1.1 WAR season, all of a sudden going to bounce back in his age 35 season? Sure, there was no way that Bichette, who only appeared in 81 games in 2024 due to injury, was going to produce another -0.1 WAR season in a contract year if healthy, but the idea that a mostly identical roster – plus designated hitter Anthony Santander, second baseman Andres Gimenez, new closer Jeff Hoffman and a 41-year-old Max Scherzer, who only made nine appearances in 2024 – would improve on a moribund season didn’t hold much water. Fans weren’t about to drink the Kool-Aid.
Flash forward seven months and it turns out that Kool-Aid was delicious. Atkins, roundly mocked at the time, was right. Springer found the fountain of youth and posted a 166 wRC+, third-best in the AL, and a career-high 161 OPS+. Healthy again until very late in the season, Bichette notched a team-leading 181 hits. Utilityman Ernie Clement became indispensable with timely hitting and a slick glove. Catcher Alejandro Kirk returned to All-Star form and emerged as one of the best framers behind the plate across the majors.
And then there was Guerrero. The talisman and face of the franchise, the 26-year-old first baseman had another All-Star season, but it was what happened on Apr. 9 that seemed to firm up the idea that the Jays’ fortunes could change. Despite the self-imposed preseason deadline, Guerrero agreed to a 14-year, $500 million extension with the team, pledging his future to the organization he first joined at the age of 16. You certainly cannot quantify something as nebulous as a vibe shift, but something was different. Firm roots were planted and a team that had the potential to feel transitory no longer did.
That feeling became tangible as June turned to July as the Jays swept the Yankees at home in a four-game set, their first such sweep in franchise history, to overtake the Bronx Bombers atop the AL East. It was a lead that they would never relinquish as they went on to capture their first division title in a decade before dispatching the Yankees in the Division Series and coming from behind to ensure that the Seattle Mariners remained the only team in the majors to have never reached a World Series on the back of a Springer home run for the ages in Game 7 of the Championship Series.
The Dodgers are the defending World Series champions. They are a team awash in future Hall of Famers and dependable stars. They’ve done this all before. The possibility of them winning both games in Toronto to break the hearts of an entire nation is a legitimate one and Blue Jays fans would do well to steel themselves for it just in case.
But there’s an uncommon kind of resolve to this Blue Jays team. There’s an air of inevitability about them. They always find a way. A lesser team could have crumbled under the heartbreak of an 18-inning loss to fall behind 2-1 in the World Series on the road. Instead, this team won the next two in convincing fashion with rookie phenom Trey Yesavage etching his name in the record books with a 12-strikeout performance in the pivotal Game 5.
The improbable chance for immortality for the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays comes on Friday evening. People across the country will pause their trick-or-treating to live and die with every pitch and watch the game with bated breath. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who carved the Jays up in a complete-game performance in Game 2, stands in their way and represents as tall a task as any they’ve faced this October.
But betting against this team now seems like a fool’s errand. Exceeding expectations is just what this team does and has done over and over again. Aaron Judge found that out. Cal Raleigh did, too. Ohtani is learning it in real time.
Having Ohtani as the final boss that needs to be vanquished is only fitting. Both sides are getting a look at what could have been, but it’s difficult at this juncture to argue that either party isn’t happy with where things have ended up. Still, winning a title at the expense of the man responsible for – through no fault of his own – the most recent franchise nadir would undoubtedly be satisfying for Jays fans and, probably, for the front office, too.
Perhaps it’s apt, then, that a season that started with the potential to be so very scary for Jays fans could end on a cold October 31 in Toronto.
Horror maestro Stephen King wrote a short treatise on fear in the foreword to his 1978 short story anthology, Night Shift.
“Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiosity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hundred parts,” King wrote.
The story of the 2025 World Series has been the Dodgers’ struggle to deal with the whole made of the Blue Jays’ hundred parts. Guerrero, Springer, Yesavage, Clement, Addison Barger – it’s been a different hero every night throughout October. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if yet another member of this team steps up to be a difference maker on Friday. Win or lose, this version of the Blue Jays will go down in Toronto lore and be spoken of fondly for generations.
On a night when people traditionally dress as all manner of ghoul and goblin, the most unsettling Halloween sight of all for the Los Angeles Dodgers just might be 26 players in Toronto Blue Jays uniforms.
