SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. APRIL 8, 2022.O the Joy of Opening Day 2022. Games provide distraction. In a world where one delicately navigates the atrocities and reckless tyranny in Ukraine, the continual struggle to cope with the ongoing complications and uncertainty of COVID-19, every little bit of joy matters. Baseball aficionados always […]

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. APRIL 1, 2021. Life for the Toronto Blue Jays, like everyone else for that matter, was and continues to be upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. A year ago, Canadian government border restrictions forced them to be baseball’s version of the nomadic warriors playing all of their games south […]

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. JULY 24, 2020. The sporting world, like most everything else, stopped earlier this year on March 11 when Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz became the first athlete to test positive for COVID-19. In many ways the shut down of the NBA, and the other sports leagues that […]

“GREATER ONTARIO”. FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 2019. As rarely enough in Toronto these days, there is sun in the sky (along with intermittent foreboding clouds for tomorrow). According to our latest reports from the streets, it’s almost warmer than lately too. It is impossible not to be affected in some happy way as well by the […]

And then there were none … With the firing of John Gibbons at season’ end, and the off-season release of Troy Tulowitzki and trading of Russell Martin, the last vestiges of the best Blue Jays team in a quarter century are gone.  Slowly it seemed and then suddenly, the faces on the famous September 2015 […]

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2018. GANATSEKWYAGON,ON. Both Donald Trump in the neighbouring USA today, and his wily colleague Doug Ford right here in the new Old Ontario, have become so appalling lately that I have sought refuge in thoughts about the 2018 Grey Cup – annual championship of the Canadian Football League, held for the 106th […]

From the outset of 2017 something was amiss. The day before the first full-squad workout in the spring, all-star Josh Donaldson suffered a tear in his right calf and did not find his stride until late July. Then Canadian Blue Jay prospect Dalton Pompey suffered a concussion at the World Baseball Classic and spent the […]

Baseball is back in the great white north, signaling spring revival, while also commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Blue Jays’ inaugural game (April 7, 1977) at snowy Exhibition Stadium on the north shore of Lake Ontario. While it was an entertaining 2016 down at the ballpark known previously as the Skydome, last year once […]

There is symmetry in numbers…200 of them to be exact.  For that was how many days the Blue Jays had in 2015.  A mercurial season that began in early April and ended on the 200th day in heart breaking fashion, eliminated on a cold and rainy Kauffman Field in Game 6 of the AL Championship […]

MARCH 5, 2016. TORONTO, ON. For several days my morning TV news has been harshly reminding me that the Toronto Maple Leafs (in my hometown, I will quietly confess at the start) are the worst team in the entire National Hockey League/Ligue nationale de hockey. The NHL/LNH is now a much bigger operation than it […]