While trying to find my seats at the Rogers Center for the Philadelphia Phillies – Toronto Blue Jays game I attended last month, I met a retired couple from Mississauga, Ontario whose season tickets were nearby our seats. Quite friendly, they started sharing all of their knowledge of their beloved ballpark to me.
I took the opportunity to ask them their thoughts about the Phillies starting pitcher that day, former Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay. I gestured around the park. “Do you think he’s going to get some boos?”
“Absolutely not!” exclaimed the woman. “Roy is still ours. Roy didn’t want to leave. It was our stupid owners who wouldn’t pay him what he’s worth.”
She leaned into me and took a quieter tone, as if what she was about to tell me would make her lose her seats. “Look at us. We’ve had these season tickets for how many years? A long time. Our fellow fans come to this stadium in droves, even if they’re losing. It might not sell out, but that’s because it’s enormous. But we’re still drawing a significant amount of people, and we all buy food and shirts…how could they not pay the one player we liked? They had the money.”
She stepped back, and her husband chimed in. “We applauded him for the minute we saw him yesterday, and we’re going to give him a standing ovation when he comes to the mound today,” he said decisively.
My new Mississauga friends were correct. When Halladay walked to the mound for the bottom of the first, the sold-out crowd (many of whom were wearing their old Halladay Blue Jays jerseys and shirts) rose and roared. It gave me such a shiver up my spine that I accidentally hit pause on my video camera, missing a few seconds of the action.
Halladay pitched a complete game, and the Phillies beat the Blue Jays 5-3 that day, though current Blue Jays star Jose Bautista hit a beautiful home run off of Halladay. I tried to take a photo of every Bautista at bat against Halladay, because if any future children I have are mega baseball fans, they are sure to treasure it. (And just you watch, if I ever have kids, they’ll hate sports. It would be my luck.)
After the game, the day’s starting pitcher for the Blue Jays, Carlos Villanueva ripped Toronto fans in comments to the media, saying:
“I know he did a lot for this team and this city but we have a new ace here and his name is Ricky Romero.”
Seeing Villanueva’s quote that night on TSN, I cringed. The Toronto fans had cheered for their own team too, giving Bautista a standing ovation for his home run. Who was Villanueva to tell fans who they should and shouldn’t cheer for? Was he just being a poor sport because his team lost? Or did he have a point and should have fans toned down their adoration?
This incident may have occurred a month ago today, but as long as there are trades and free agency in professional sports, it will still be relevant. When a beloved player leaves via trade or free agency, is it okay to still cheer for that player? Or do you have to pledge your allegiance to one or the other?
I can personally talk to this as a Pirates fan. Lots of fans are decent and have no problems, but after the Aramis Ramirez trade back in 2003, it took a long time (up until last season) for Aramis to not get booed whenever he came to town. Which is absolutely absurd, since he literally did nothing to deserve it.
I think it’s part of that larger desire of fans to find some morality lesson in a simple game. When players fail to live up to our optimistic expectations, we crap on them verbally and emotionally like their performance says anything about them as a person. In that same vein, when a player leaves town we take it as some personal statement about their distaste for us our our city – when in truth that’s the case in about 1% of instances at best.
Comments like Villanueva’s…I guess I get it. This is your current team, we’re actually playing well, cheer for the home team. Perhaps he sees it as odd since a guy like Roger Clemens never got cheered when he returned to Boston or Toronto – which of course ignores that both Halladay and Clemens were genius pitchers, but only Clemens was a douche who weaseled his way out of town.
Not sure where I was going with that, but yeah.