Takin' a T/O with BT: How Commercialism Killed the Toronto Blue Jays

Now, at first you'd think the straightforward answer would be to close the roof and let the climate controlled atmosphere do its work, right?

Wrong.

Turns out the Jays' two fans (Note: No one asks why it's only two fans...or where the rest of the team is at game time.) are stuck waiting for the street car which has inexplicably stopped moving.

At first notice of this, the Jays players spring into action. Instead of calling the City of Toronto and getting someone on that broken car, they each adopt super powers. Well, everyone except Lyle Overbay.

Vernon becomes "VW," Roy Halladay becomes "Doc," David Eckstein becomes "Specs," AJ Burnett turns into "the Flamethrower," and Lyle Overbay...remains Lyle Overbay.

At this point, to be continued flashed across the screen.

I prayed to God that it'd be continuing after I left.

All this did was prove how far we've strayed from the good 'ol days here in T.O.

Back in the 90s, all the team had to do was take the field and the crowd was into it. Was it dolled up with a lot of razzle and dazzle?

No, it was exactly as baseball should be—baseball. From time to time the wave would circle the stadium and as Eldon told us "When that place got going it was just a beauty to behold."

Over the next few years, the Jays would become a little more corporate, but nothing overly outrageous that this mind could remember. There were between inning draws for prizes, but aside from that, there were no inane cartoons or goofy side shows. It was still baseball and it was still glorious.

Side Note: I may have actually missed more of those contests and things than I thought at that age. You're talking about a kid who would rather watch Felipe Crespo take his warm-up cuts between innings than watch the Jumbotron.

That same attitude held steady until around 2005—the last memory I have of a game not featuring that computerized Blue Jay flying to the tunes of Pirates of the Caribbean.

At that point, everything started to slide. The Blue Jays became less about baseball and more about dinner and a show (albeit dinner will cost you at least $20 and it'll taste like the tinfoil that it comes packaged in).

Whether it was to try and turn more Canadian children onto the game of baseball or not, the Jays experience became flashier and funnier, straying further and further from what true fans of the game expected when they entered the SkyDome.

It was all in an attempt to sell tickets and build a buzz about the team, and it worked. The attendance for games has started to climb back to where it should be and people are actually watching baseball in Toronto.

This leaves us at an interesting crossroads.

With what they have here, the Jays can do one of two things.

1) Now that they've acquired the fan base, they can start to slowly pull all the gimmicks away and revert back to selling solely the game of baseball.

If they do that, then the fans in Toronto will still care. And if it's done right they can grow a love and an understanding for the true game—not the polished, tacky, clap-trap they're calling baseball right now.

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