Beyond the Six String Nation #48: A Familiar Feeling

Two Confessions = Appreciation Squared

Voyageur with Blue Jays mascot Ace (August 10, 2014) and Tragically Hip’s Rob Baker (April 4, 2014)

I should confess first that I’m not really a big sports fan. I appreciate feats of athleticism (I could watch highlight reels for days on end) and I can get wrapped up in pretty much any playoff game in any sport in any league after watching just a few minutes by some weird force of emotional gravity. But the day to day stuff of off season trades and injuries and regular season play is not really my thing. After a childhood playing house league hockey, going to Leafs games with my dad, collecting cards and autographs (Norm Ullman was a neighbour!) and idolizing Tony Esposito from the Blackhawks, I more or less gave up on hockey in the rock’em sock’em era – why the celebration of fighting in a sport with so much elegance and precision at high speed? Football I found too militaristic and never bothered to learn the rules because it was more fun to have my friend John Twomey hilariously explain them to me every so often. Basketball seemed impenetrably chaotic in such a small space. Golf was so tedious to watch. Tennis I enjoyed a lot but the international tournament structure always felt like a series of exhibition matches rather than a season you invested in.

And then there was the exception: baseball.

The pace of baseball is one part of it. There’s no clock. Nine innings – extra if needed – take as long as they take. Like many other sports there are periods of inactivity punctuated by moments of high tension and action but it’s all part of the laconic/frenetic flow of the game, unlike something like football that just feels like the imposition of inaction by refs and linesmen and flags and whistles and clocks and coaches just to generate a few seconds of brute force territory capture, occasionally accented by some gloriously arcing long pass or agile evasive manoeuvre. The other thing I love about baseball is that every player in every role on the field - offensively or defensively - needs to understand the precise implication of literally millions of potential outcomes on any given play. In football, you see a lot of guys who are given the grunt-work of blocking other guys while QBs and receivers go for glory. In baseball, any one in any position at any moment could be called upon to turn encyclopedic knowledge into split second action.

The second thing I should confess is that I never really thought of myself as a Tragically Hip fan. In fact I was but I just didn’t know it. I embarrassingly confessed this to guitarist Rob Baker when we met at a history fair and conference hosted by the Ottawa District School Board back in 2014. This will sound like a backhanded compliment perhaps but I didn’t mean it that way at all. I said: “I always liked your music but didn’t really think of myself as a ‘fan’ in the usual way. But when I was looking to downsize my out-of-control CD collection in the early days of ripping discs into digital storage, I realized that I had ALL of the Tragically Hip CDs without consciously having ‘collected’ them. Then, when I went through each album to rip only the songs I really wanted to keep, I realized I wanted to keep just about ALL of them and discovered in that moment that in fact I was a Hip fan!” Maybe that’s not what Rob Baker wanted to hear or maybe not the way he wanted to hear it from a stranger in a school board building dressing room and maybe it makes me something other than a proper ‘fan’ but I said it and I stand by it. Words, riffs, performances all resonated at various levels and I was glad to finally see the uniquely Canadian gems embedded in my mountain of music.

Sarah and I had started watching Mike Downie’s excellent four-part documentary “The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal” a few weeks ago. We had a number of other series on the go at the time (as always), had to keep up with Taskmaster and Hot Ones on YouTube, and were bingeing various Disney+ shows before our membership - cancelled during the Kimmel affair - ran out, so we were watching in drips. This pace was further challenged by the Jays’ ALCS run against the Mariners. So by the time we were into the World Series we were effectively watching these things in tandem.

Now, I know the Blue Jays always get called “Canada’s Team” and sometimes I’m a bit embarrassed about that. Being Canada’s only MLB team it sometimes feels like it’s something we’re imposing on the rest of the country against their will. But even if my uneasiness about that is misplaced, in recent years I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed because the Jays weren’t in contention. Heck, at the beginning of this season they weren’t in contention! But because of the feeling in Canada right now brought on by Donald Trump’s capricious tariffs and obnoxious threats to our sovereignty, the conditions are right for all Canadians to get behind something that challenges the American behemoth. And the Dodgers were certainly a behemoth.

But as we watched the playoffs unfold – not just on the field but in the mood of fans and the coverage of the team all across the country – I realized that there was something familiar about that galvanizing feeling, something that I think we all last felt during the Hip’s Man Machine Poem tour in the summer of 2016. This was vast swaths of the population embracing this band that reflected something so essential about us – not by offering jingoistic phrases over rousing power chords but by articulating something specific through poetry and a kind of rock that didn’t sound like anyone else’s. Gord Downie’s devastating brain cancer diagnosis just before the start of the tour made us all want to hold on tightly to let them know how much they meant to so many of us and by that final night on August 20th in Kingston (the Jays topped the AL East that night following a road win over Cleveland) you could feel Gord and the band embracing us all right back. We all knew that a momentous loss was coming but this was a moment to celebrate a truly unique and special bond.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the only actual Canadian citizen on this roster of “Canada’s Team” and yet this team - everything about them and everything about them in this historical moment – screams Canadian. Shawna Richer, writing in the New York Times, put it this way: “Most of the Blue Jays players are from the United States or Latin America, and yet as a group they emit a distinctly Canadian spirit. They’re likable. They’re loose but tight-knit. They play with joy. They take winning seriously, but not themselves.” Her article also quoted Canadian rock icon and baseball aficionado and collector (and No Dress Rehearsal interview subject) Geddy Lee saying, “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of arrogance and Canadians identify in that regard. Proudly quiet and self effacing. Maybe that’s how we connect to them. They’re quiet yet persistent and they seem to have no quit in them and Canadians like to see that in themselves.” Rochester NY-born third baseman Ernie Clement added, “It is truly an honor to play for this country.”

It was easy to cast the Dodgers as the blue-chip villains in this series. Their massive payroll and entitled superstar roster made every dugout high-five seem fake and their hand-dance when they got base hits looked rehearsed - not like the heartfelt donning of the “La Gente del Barrio” jacket in the Blue Jays’ dugout or Trey Yesavage’s unlikely and history-making metamorphosis or Bo & Vlad’s BFF embraces! It’s entirely possible I’ve simply drunk the Kool-Aid on this occasion. Look, I’m under no illusions. Roger’s Communications spent $400,000,000 to upgrade the Dome and $255,000,000 on players (fifth in MLB payroll spending) and the off-season will bring trades and free agencies and parades of players we will suspect as being mercenaries. It’s not hard to be cynical. But I 100% believe this team cared and that this was our team, Toronto’s team, Canada’s team when we needed them the most.

Likewise, Mike Downie’s documentary reveals some uncomfortable truths about Canada’s band. There were conflicts and resentments and tensions most of us never even imagined and so much of our understanding of the place of the Hip in the Canadian musical firmament is conveniently mythologized but, in the end, that’s no different from any band anywhere. Just like this 2025 Jays team, the reality of the feeling among them and between them and their fans was built on genuine love and respect and a belief that it was all about something bigger than any individual, more substantial than any “market”, something no one can really touch or see but that everyone can feel in their hearts.

To the Tragically Hip and to the Toronto Blue Jays and to everyone who delivered our experience of them, from the bottom of my heart – thank you.