A Day at the Dome.
The Jays, Mount Everest and appreciating Davis Schneider's glorious moustache.
August 26th, 2:52 PM.
Fifteen minutes before the opening pitch.
My Fitbit is screaming at me.
“Dude! What the hell are you doing?”
Well, if you must know, I’m trying to make it to my seat in the upper bowels of the Rogers Centre.
Small problem being, I haven’t walked up this steep of an incline since my brief snow-shoeing phase in the third grade.
I notice my buddies that I’m here with, Jake and James, are doing the same thing I am - looking around for the beer vendor.
“Think they’ll come up here?” Jake muses.
James laughs.
“Without an oxygen mask? No chance.”
The Toronto Blue Jays have spoken highly about their stadium renovations this season, a multi-year project to revitalize their beloved but aging ballpark.
But here, high in the 500s, I feel as though I’ve stepped back in time as I settle in to watch a game from the peak of Mount Everest, some 30,000 feet above sea level.
Seated well behind the loudspeakers, anything from the PA is a wash, drowned out by location and less-than-ideal acoustics, the anthems included.
There are no camera operators up here, visible security personnel or chances to catch foul balls.
No in-game entertainment prompts or opportunities to appear on the Jumbotron.
There is, somewhat quaintly, just the diamond.
The Jays, the Cleveland Guardians and Toronto’s postseason hopes, which have taking more beatings over the past few weeks than Peter Parker’s rent payments.
“Hey, look!” James says, “Beer!”
Thank God.
Top of the first, 3:09 PM.
When I wrote about the Blue Jays back in July, I was kinda hoping, y’know, that I wouldn’t be repeating myself come August.
Instead, the issues that have plagued them for most of their season may, ultimately, come to define it.
They stare down the possibility of missing the playoffs entirely if they cannot start stringing some consistency (and wins) together, as they jostle for positioning in the American League wildcard race.
That being said, their pitching staff, despite the flameout and (twice over) demotion of Alek Manoah, is still, very much, among the best in baseball.
The Blue Jays offence, on the other hand?
Continually charging face-first into avoidable frustration, which is greatly amplified given their tremendous on-paper talent.
Power surges, struggling to drive in runners and with Bo Bichette rehabbing from injury most of August, clearly missing their best player (we love you Bo, please remember sunscreen and to drink plenty of water).
So just when we needed them most, Davis Schneider and his immaculate facial hair appeared.
Bottom of the first, 3:17 PM.
I’m about three weeks older then Davis Schneider, yet our journeys to get here today, both in Blue Jay colours, couldn’t be more different.
His number 36 is perfectly pressed. Meanwhile, my Jays-adored Hawaiian shirt looks fabulous, the off-white shading matching my shoes to a tee - but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Around the same time I would’ve been preparing to head off to university, Schneider was a 28th-round draft pick of the Blue Jays in 2017, right out of high school in New Jersey. He would spend the next six years steadily working his way through the organization’s minor league system.
They don’t even have 28 rounds anymore.
He, like every other minor leaguer, lost all of 2020 to the pandemic and would play just 49 games in 2021.
But this year, in Triple-A Buffalo, he played like a man whose moustache was on perpetual fire - he slashed .275/.416/.969, while hitting 21 home runs in just 87 games.
The Jays called him up to the Majors for the first time on August 4th.
Schneider, of course, didn’t just hit a homer in his first big league at-bat against the Boston Red Sox that day, he made history: he became the first player ever (ever!) to have nine hits, including two home runs, in his first three games.
The team though, is still working to find a consistent spot for him in the lineup. After his incredible debut, his playing time has been somewhat sporadic.
But, manning second base, he’s batting fifth today.
From my seat, I can just make out his batting gloves, the blue of his jersey against the never-ending scaffolding of the closed-dome, as he moves from the on-deck circle into the batter’s box.
Billy Squier’s “The Stroke”, his walk-up song, echoes throughout the park.
“Echoes”, especially, is the right word for all of us here in the 500s. Whatever the rest of the Rogers Centre is hearing, we can’t.
We improvise by singing it ourselves:
Now everybody, have you heard?
If you’re in the game, then the stroke’s the word.
Don’t take no rhythm.
Don’t take no style.
With the game already tied at one and George Springer on, Cleveland pitcher Logan Allen tries to set the tone early, Schneider, caught looking at a four-seamer low in the zone.
0-1.
Allen goes off-speed next, a changeup. Schneider lays off it. Outside.
1-1.
Another four-seamer, expect this one is right down the middle and -
The funny thing is, I don’t even see the ball travel all of its 384 feet, as it lands in the left centre seats, already Schneider’s fourth homer in this, just his tenth career game.
But I do hear the reaction to it, this small section of the park, caught up in celebration as the home run horn fills our ears.
And sometimes, the simplest cheers are the best ones:
LET’S GO!
Top of the fifth, 4:37 PM.
All of Toronto groans.
Cleveland’s Tyler Freeman has taken Jays pitcher Hyun Jin Ryu deep on the first pitch of his at-bat, a 364-foot solo blast that will bring the Guardians within three.
It is the beginning of the end of the big man’s afternoon - he will be pulled an inning later, after two consecutive infield errors load the bases.
But Ryu, after being sidelined for the better part of a year while he rehabbed from Tommy John surgery, has been terrific in limited work so far this season, upon his return to the mound.
Two homers aside, the 36-year-old lefty will finish his day with five strikeouts (and a win).
This, much to the excitement of the quartet of guys from further down the row, not much older than us, who are currently squeezing past for their eighth bathroom/vape/shenanigans run of the game (yes, I’ve been counting: they keep stepping on my toes).
One of them, a burly and heavily-built dude who is half of my height but could probably drop me like an offensive tackle, smiles broadly.
“He’s back, man!”
“So are you, evidently!”
“What’s that?”
James taps Jake on the shoulder, both, making sure to catch my eye.
He’s drunk. Don’t engage.
But my toes!
Don’t engage!
I sigh internally, turning back to the row intruder.
“Free Shohei!” I say, hoping that’ll move him along.
“Yeah! Free Shohei!”
Jake snickers, as they begin their descent down the mountain.
“That’s the best you got?”
“I panicked!”
Top of the ninth, 5:32 PM.
With the Jays up 8-3, the home crowd, proactively, begins to file out of the stadium.
They’ve all but won, the offence actually showed up today (most notably, Schneider, who went 3-3, collected 3 RBI and drew a walk) and now fans must begin the time-honoured tradition of Toronto sports: leaving before the end to beat the traffic (or at least pretending too).
The hope, of course, as the celebration begins, is that the team will able to take the momentum they’ve gained today and parlay it into more wins as September and a rapidly tightening wildcard race, loom.
Baseball may be a fickle game but it is not without its flair for the dramatic, either.
And as the Jays, now 30 years removed from their last World Series championship, know well, there is nothing better than, at least, making things interesting.
Fingers crossed.
Love it, Buddy. Go Jays!