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Baseball, for me, has always meant “Dad.”
On Oct. 27, 2020, the Dodgers won their first World Series in decades. It was late, but I called Dad immediately – busy tone. A few tries later, the line connected. All I heard was: “Whoooooooooooo! Gotta go!” He was, no doubt, juggling calls from everyone who had ever had his phone number. I had never heard him happier.
Born in Montreal, my dad moved to Anaheim, Calif., as a kid, where he played Little League with his brother. Those early days are when he discovered his love of baseball, and the game stayed with him for a lifetime.
The family moved to the Greater Toronto Area in his teens, and my grandpa became a Blue Jays season ticket holder. He took Dad to one of the World Series games – in ’92 or ’93, I can’t remember. Somewhere in Dad’s belongings is that ticket stub, forever memorialized in plexiglass.
My Uncle Tom was a sports columnist in Toronto and later in the U.S. and Calgary. Dad may never have become a professional commentator, but he knew baseball deeply and instinctively. Every so often he’d call into a Fan 590 radio show to debate on air. They knew him by name and always had time for him. He’d act a little sheepish afterward, but he just couldn’t help himself.
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Canadian Thanksgiving aligns with October baseball, and at my aunt and uncle’s house, a game was always on. I can still see Dad and my uncle standing behind the couch – arms crossed, beers in hand, wide-legged, unimpressed but unblinking. Grumbling about “overmanaging” and “analytics ruining the game.” Two men who could read the game like a novel. They didn’t need stats or screens to know the next pitch or manager move. Watching with them was like being let in on a family secret.
Even though he’d lived in Toronto for decades, Dad’s devotion to the Dodgers never wavered. For him, the Dodgers weren’t just a team – they were a way of life. A cottage named Dodgertown. Two beloved dogs, Dodger and Sandy (Koufax). The LADGGRS licence plate (pronounced Diggers, if you asked me). Every item of clothing in that exact shade of Dodger blue (it’s a specific colour, did you know?).
Three years ago, our family experienced a sudden shock when my dad died by suicide during an exceptionally difficult time in his life. It was so unexpected that it’s still hard to accept. We have spent endless hours questioning why this happened but, as anyone who has ever lost a loved one to suicide will tell you, no answer ever feels complete.
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As time passes and life reshapes itself around loss, nostalgia creeps in – and with it, clarity. I find myself reliving the Saturday afternoons of the nineties, when Dad would take my siblings and me to the SkyDome. He’d buy $2 tickets, sit high in the 500s and soak up the sun. He’d have his copy of the Toronto Star, we’d have the game – and maybe a hot dog or an ice cream in a small blue plastic helmet. He took us on road trips to Ohio for rollercoasters and the Jays and to minor league games in Florida. My siblings even got to go to spring training and Dodger Stadium.
In a baseball stadium, in the sunshine – that was peak Dad.
When the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series began on Oct. 24, I felt the collision of elation and ache: the hometown pride and the unbearable truth that this once-in-a-lifetime matchup would happen without him. I’ve been imagining how it would have gone: My dad would have been unbearably obnoxious, my brother and I would have dug in hard for the Jays and the trash talk would have been epic. It would have been the time of his life.
So, even as I sit with the quiet echo of my dad’s absence, I’m all in on the Blue Jays. I find myself having those familiar conversations with him in my head. I can hear his voice, clear as ever. I know he wouldn’t hate it if the Jays won. He’d never admit it, but he wouldn’t.
This may be Canada’s World Series – but it’s even more my dad’s. Amid the nerves, nostalgia and joy, I’m reminded that the people we love live on forever in the gifts of memory they leave behind. I can see him so vividly, and I have the Toronto Blue Jays to thank for it.
Hope and resilience are often the focus of suicide prevention, but meaning and connection matter just as much. Baseball, at its heart, is built on those same things – showing up, staying the course, finding grace in the long game.
The Blue Jays’ return to the World Series after 32 years feels like a perfect metaphor: proof that resilience, heartbreak and rebirth can co-exist. That joy can follow loss. That connection endures.
Those are the lessons Dad taught me.
Those are the lessons baseball teaches all of us.
Go, Jays, go!
Erin Maloney lives Toronto.
