Blue Jays

Baseball, and beer, and more

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I have nine Major League Baseball parks left to visit and my quest to visit such exotic locales as Kansas City, Arlington, St. Louis, and Milwaukee is indefinitely on hold as travel south of our border really isn’t appealing to me these days. Fortunately, it’s been more than a hot minute since I had been to a few Jays games in Toronto and this past summer I was eager to visit the remodelled Skydome (I will not call that place by its corporate name) and enjoy the Blue Jays as they were in the midst of their supercharged season.

With baseball as the backbone of the trip, I coloured in the gaps with a lot of fun. I adore solo travel for the indulgence it offers, and after arriving on a dinner-time flight from Saskatoon, I stashed my bags at my downtown hotel and made my way up to Queen Street West to take in a show by The Montvales, a band I had become smitten with over the summer. In all of the time I have spent in Toronto over the years, I had never managed to see a concert at the Horseshoe Tavern and loved every minute of soaking in not only a great show, but also all of the history of Canadian music that has played on the stage. Even a pretty deep accidental cut on my thumb from some broken glass couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for my first night in TO. Take a listen to these two part harmonies on their song “Bad Faith” and you’ll understand why.

The Montvales concert at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto
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Jays games with Dad

/ Greg / 3 Comments

I’m having a pretty good year of seeing baseball so far – a couple of early season games in Chicago, a recent game in Boston, and back in May, my Dad and I took in three Blue Jays games in Toronto.   This is the second time over the past few years that we’ve moved into my sister’s downtown apartment while she was away, stocked up the fridge with a few days supply of Steam Whistle, and then spent most of our time down at the place formerly known as SkyDome.

For the first of the three games, the Phillies were in town to start a short two game series.   Dad and I were camped out way up in the 500 level with vertigo-inducing seats:

With Dad at Jays game

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Another return from Toronto

/ Greg / Leave a comment

It’s not quite an annual tradition, but my Dad and I try to make it up to Toronto as often as we can to take in some Blue Jays games and check out a few sights from around the city.   Lately, we’ve been pretty solid good luck charms for the Jays, and it was no different on this trip with the home team winning two of the three games we saw.  We also seem to inspire the best in Edwin Encarnacion on our visits.  He might want to include some free tickets and a plush downtown condo for us in his next contract negotiations.  Here he is circling the bases after one of three monster home runs he hit while we looked on:

Blue Jays game at Rogers Centre

A second trip to Toronto in 2014 for me, this was a really nice three days with my Dad.  There was a lot of time at Rogers Centre for the games, a trip to the new aquarium at the base of the CN Tower, some time over on the Toronto Islands on a pleasant spring day, a visit to the St. Lawrence Market and more than a couple of ice cold Steam Whistle beers enjoyed while just generally hanging out.  I’ll write more in the coming weeks on a few new to me experiences in Toronto.