A Baseball Hangover
Reflecting on a Blue Jays season full of triumphs and a personal year of lingering transphobia.
It was two shots that killed me. The first was in the bottom of the ninth with one out when Miguel Rojas tied the game with a solo home run. The second was in the 11th when Will Smith hit one of his own. Bang, bang, and I’m finished.
This Toronto Blue Jays season was good. Better than I expected. They were terrible last season and went into this one with clouds hanging over them, particularly if Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was going to skip somewhere else in free agency, or if the Jays would have to trade him for ten cents on the dollar. Like what happened with Vince Carter, with Roy Halladay, with Vernon Wells, with Tracy McGrady, with so many others I’ve seen in my 39 years on this planet.
But they didn’t. They signed him long-term and throughout the latter half of the summer, the Jays played well. Like, really well. They won the division on the last day of the season, locked in home field advantage, and got a first round bye. They beat the Yankees, then the Seattle Mariners, and then took the Los Angeles Dodgers to seven games and more, if you think about the sheer number of extra innings played in this series. By any logical interpretation this should have been a really exciting and fun season, even if it ended in heartbreak.
So why am I so somber over all this?
Baseball is a comfort for me. It’s not exactly a fandom in that I live and die with the team, but it’s more than just something I watch if my friends are. It helps me get through the day to day. Between April and September, if I have a bad day at work or if my depression is too much, there’s probably a game that night. If the Jays lay an egg or the game sucks, there’s always another one coming up. It’s a long season and there’s a lot of games. There is always something to come back to, something to look forward to, something I can watch or listen to and forget about the day to day.
That’s how this year started. I listened to the last few games of the season on my phone and enjoyed them. I went to Pride Night and had a good time. I listened to daily podcasts and read several beat writers to keep up on the news. People like Andrew Stoeten kept me feeling good about this - it’s far too easy to get lost in Toronto’s doom-and-gloom saturated sports media by people who only really watch hockey, so a writer like Stoeten’s relentless optimism and baseball savvy is a balm.
And yet this fall was different. I listened to the divisional series and enjoyed talking about the team at work. But as the championship series ground on I began telling myself to appreciate the ride and be thankful for it rather than watching or listening to the games. The games themselves stressed me out. By the time the ALCS went to a seventh game I couldn’t watch anymore; I had to turn my phone off and fall asleep to CBC Radio. I woke up with a pleasant surprise, but that didn’t change how I felt: something was going wrong with how I appreciated and enjoyed this game.
By the time the World Series started I was getting too stressed out to pay attention even after the fact. I stopped listening to podcasts and the radio, instead getting my recaps almost exclusively from writers. It just didn’t feel fun anymore when this sport made my guts feel like they were being twisted around. All in all, I think I watched maybe four or five innings combined this entire series. I just couldn’t take any more. I don’t know why.
This hasn’t been my best year. I ended a long term relationship and watched a President come into power on the back of transphobia. I’ve been yelled at in the street in the past six months more times than I was in the year before. Customers at work now argue with me when I push back on them calling me sir. It’s become a cliche to say, but there really has been a vibe shift; when the Jays lost on Pride Night, the comments section of their instagram page was filled with people telling the Jays to stop this annual event and blaming it for their loss.
Soon, the Los Angeles Dodgers will visit the White House and shake hands with the man who got elected by engaging in transphobia and empowering people like Elon Musk, Chaiya Raichik, and others who go out of their way to villainize trans people like me. They will pose for photos with him and exchange smiles. They will be happy to do so.
And if Toronto had managed to get Rojas or Smith out, it would be them in that place instead. The people who I turn to as a way to get away from the real world for two hours each night would be smiling and posing with the man who is making the real world so hard for me and many others like me. And I think this looming fact is part of why I felt so bad as the Jays season crested in late October.
I do not know Jeff Hoffman, Bo Bichette, Addison Barger, or anyone on the Jays. I have never spoken to anyone who has ever been part of this team on how they feel about trans people. Maybe they don’t have any opinion, maybe they’re supportive. I don’t know. But I worry. I’m a worrier. It’s part of the anxiety disorder I have. But try as I might, I can’t shake the idea of them posing for a photo with someone who hates my existence. And that just makes me sad.
Baseball will be back soon: opening day is just over 140 days away. For once I’m glad it’s so far away. I need some time to decompress and think about this season, about my fandom as a trans woman, and why I love this sport that sometimes feels like it doesn’t love me back.