Uh oh. The World Series is starting, and you haven’t planned at all. You’ve been over there, sulking, but you don’t even have anything to wear. And you certainly haven’t given much thought to which teams are playing. You don’t even know which team to root for.
So let’s pull up the teams and see if we can figure it out. Let’s see, representing the American League, we have the Toronto Blue Jays! That’s fun. They haven’t won it all since 1993, and they’re a fresh face in this here world’s championship. I’m not saying you have to root for them, but it’s not tricky to find a reason.
And representing the National League, we have the … oh, sweet Yorvit, no. Even though the Los Angeles Dodgers spent the entire regular season with the bullpen of the 2016 San Francisco Giants, they’ve somehow fixed everything with duct tape, nylon cords and wads of old chewing gum. Now they’re in the World Series. Again.
You do know which team to root for, as it turns out. What you need are even more reasons to root for them. Here’s how to become the World’s Biggest Blue Jays Fan before the end of the World Series.
They’re playing the Dodgers
OK, perhaps you don’t need more reasons to root for the Blue Jays.
The Dodgers won their first World Series since the 1980s in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and while I’m sympathetic to the argument that it should have an asterisk, I’m not convinced by it. They had to play an extra round. All the other teams had to play under the same constraints, and all of the other teams got the benefit of a shorter season without the regular wear and tear of 162 games. It counts.
But you still got to make fun of it.
Then the Dodgers won their second World Series since the 1980s, and that one was harder to poke holes in. They got their championship the old-fashioned way: by dragging a bloodied, battered team over the finish line before collapsing. Now that’s two World Series wins in five seasons. The second one of them was an unimpeachable run, no asterisks needed. Now they’re going for their “third in X seasons,” which is a combination of words that means a lot to Giants fans. It’s how you can still claim that your rooting interests have been rewarded more often than those of Dodgers fans, at least since 1989 or so. The Dodgers have had an impossibly great and historically unusual run of divisional success, and they’ve won pennants and championships along the way, but they haven’t won three World Series in the last 37 seasons. And they definitely haven’t won three in the last five or six. Now they have a chance.
You root against the Dodgers because of where you were born, the team your parents rooted for, the color of the Giants’ jerseys, the existence of Barry Bonds or some other random reason. Maybe Milt May sounded like “malt” to your four-year-old ears, which reminded you to ask for one of those chocolate malts with the wooden spoon. I can still taste them (the spoons). You don’t need any reason to root against them. You cheered for the Yankees last year, if you can believe it.
Getting the Dodgers right back to where the Giants were during the greatest stretch in franchise history? That would be the wrong kind of closure. It would be official. As good as the Giants’ golden era was, the Dodgers’ golden era would be even better by every metric. Three in six isn’t the same as three in five, but it would still pass it. Consecutive championships would put them over the top.
If they lost, though? You might not believe the argument that it was better to be a Giants fan between 2010 and 2014 than it’s been to be a Dodgers fan over the last several seasons, but you could make it with a straight face.
If they win, the only thing you can do is dock them style points for not getting three championships in five seasons, which is empirically better than three in six. You can also dock a lot of style points (at least 100) if they don’t use Blake Snell for five innings on two day’s rest in Game 7. It still won’t take away the “three in X” superlative. This one comes with “back-to-back” and “Shohei Ohtani,” too. It would be over. It was fun to be a Giants fan for a few years there, but it might not have been as fun as it was to be a Dodgers fan from 2020 through 2025.
You were already going to root for the Toronto Giants at one point
This gets complicated, but there was at least a chance. In 1976, the Giants were gone. We all know about Sad Baby Crawford in 1992, but the Giants were just as gone 16 years before. The team was sold to Toronto interests, and the Giants were going to move. They were probably going to be renamed the “Toronto Blues” as a promotional tie-in with the Labatt Brewing Company, which was a part of the ownership group. Carl Hubbell (then in the Giants’ front office) was quoted as saying, “It is very sad. The (Bay) area just isn’t big enough for two teams.”
If they left, you might have followed the Toronto Giants. Or maybe you would have dropped the sport entirely. The likeliest outcome, though, would have been an expansion team at some point, possibly in the 1998 class, which gave us the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. The area was humming with sweet, sweet tech money at the time, and it was a bubble that was going to keep growing and growing. The ownership group of the New Giants would have been spearheaded by the CEO of Pets.com (Ed Pets), and he would have had to sell a few years later. He would have sold to an embattled consortium of tech vets, who would have run the team on a shoestring. The team would have been renamed the Teraflops by people who don’t know any better.
So this is an opportunity to root for the Blue Jays and thank Toronto for being patient.
(While we’re on the subject, remember that there was once a plan to move the Oakland A’s to Denver and make a “Bay Area Giants” that played half its games at the Oakland Coliseum. It’s a helpful reminder that having a lot of money isn’t the same thing as having a lot of good ideas.)
The list of Blue Jays/Giants combined greats is compelling
Brandon Belt, the ultimate Giants-Jays split hero. (Getty Images)
You want a full team? Can do.
C – Bengie Molina
1B – Brandon Belt
2B – Jeff Kent
SS – Omar Vizquel
3B – Matt Chapman
LF – Fred Lewis
CF – Kevin Pillar
RF – Candy Maldonado/José Cruz Jr.
DH – Joe Carter
C/P – Tyler Heineman
SP – Kevin Gausman
SP – Doyle Alexander
SP – Robbie Ray
SP – Jim Gott
SP – Aaron Sanchez
CL – Sergio Romo
SU – Gary Lavelle
SU – Jeremy Accardo
RP – Vinnie Chulk
RP – LaTroy Hawkins
RP – Scott Eyre
RP – Dave Righetti
Apologies to Rajai Davis, Melky Cabrera and Joe Panik. Maybe next time.
This is mostly just a way to remember some guys, although I made sure to get both Maldonado and Cruz in there, just to remind everyone that this is the postseason we’re talking about. Dumb things can happen. Never forget.
An even more compelling list, though, is for the players who have played only for the Giants and Blue Jays. There weren’t any others:
• Brandon Belt
• Bob Brenly
That’s as Giants as it gets. And, of course, you can pretend that Kevin Gausman is still on the Giants, which he should be, but there’s something very satisfying about Belt and Brenly being the only representatives on a list of two. The Blue Jays were very nice to these wayward lads.
Compare that to the players who have played for only the Dodgers and Blue Jays. I haven’t looked them up yet, but there’s no way they’re as cool. Here goes:
• Andy Burns
• Hyun Jin Ryu
• Darren Hall
• Luke Prokopec
Booooooooo. Not nearly as fun! Blue Jays in six.
Rooting for the Blue Jays is all you have
And it’s pretty pathetic. No way around it.
Rooting against a team isn’t nearly as satisfying as rooting for a team. Giants fans have been told to stand in the corner and think about what they’ve done, and all they can do in timeout is yell profanities at the teacher. It feels good, don’t get me wrong, but these are the crumbs and stale crusts of sports, and you’re happy to have them, but you know it’s a consolation prize. And it’s not even a good consolation prize, like a vacation or a year’s supply of Turtle Wax.
See? Even when you try to justify the pure spite that comes with rooting against a team, it’s not very convincing. Maybe if I mixed in a fourth metaphor, it would have sold you.
At the same time, there’s only one thing sadder than rooting against a team in the World Series: Not rooting at all. At least Giants fans have something. It’s not a fun something yet, but it can be. Keep those fingers crossed. You can worry about how pathetic it is when it’s all over.
And if the Blue Jays win, it won’t be pathetic at all. You’ll have a neener-neener-neener in your back pocket, and it might not even have an expiration date. The three-in-X construction wouldn’t be cooked, because three championships in seven years is still impressive, and the Dodgers could still win the World Series next season, too. Until then, though? Neener-neener-neener.
It’s all you have. But if you’re petty enough, that should be plenty.
In conclusion, here is an alternate Blue Jays logo that I created 10 years ago:
May it provide them strength in these troubled times.
