A special night at Labatt Park

Columnist Jason Winders on Friday night’s Majors win, the game’s ability to bring a city together, and a franchise that finally earned its due.

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

We all know that this is a kids’ game. Played by grownups with jobs, and children, and priorities outside the white lines that all take precedence over what is, after all, just a game. But they play anyway.

Not for fame.

Not for fortune.

But for moments of joy.

Holding a trophy aloft under the uneven lights of your historic homefield in the October chill. Surrounded by teammates. By friends, and family, and fans. By the old ghosts of Coulda, Shoulda, and What Might Have Been.

It is on special nights like this, in moments you can sense coming for weeks, and only hours after heartbreak, that we are reminded just how beautiful, how meaningful a game can be.

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This was the largest crowd in years, one of admittedly questionable pandemic bylaw allowance featuring so many new faces that the bandwagon made two runs to the front gate. Even the local media, missing mostly since Opening Day, took in the moment, and while the local paper couldn’t stay up late enough to land the story on the front page, their presence added to the pageantry.

London does love a winner, as I have been told.

New faces brought mixed reactions, often responding as they thought they should, performatively angry at perceived missed (yet often correct) calls by umpires against the home team. When the game looked bleak in the early innings, with the Maple Leafs chalking up single tallies inning after inning, and the Majors flailing at the plate, crowd talk turned to dinner, weekend plans, and the weather.

A crowd half that size should have been twice as loud in the final innings, standing instead of sitting, cheering every out closer to a title instead of inexplicably waiting in lengthy line for concessions with only a handful of outs to go.

For those recent adopters, the game was just a game.

But for others, this was a moment they had waited for their entire lives. Not an understatement when it’s been almost half a century since your team last tasted victory. Among that crowd were hundreds and hundreds of familiar faces who had been there all along, game by game, season by season, diehards for whom Friday was more than a night out, but the reason they became a fan, the reason they bring their parents, or their kid, or pack their glove, or celebrate their wedding anniversary or birthday at the park.

For them, Friday night was a moment to share in glory with their boys of summer – and what a summer. The team successfully navigated pandemic protocols after a lost year, during a season where the city and the franchise rediscovered and celebrated its baseball history, honoured and lost its legends.

For those attending for the first time, it was a fun evening. Welcome. We hope to see you next year.

For those who understood the weight of the night, it was perfection. Congratulations to all. Know that I saw the tears in your eyes.

Look at Roop Chanderdat. Overcome by emotion after the game, doubled over in exhaustion and exhilaration and relief. He has wanted this so badly, been so close, only to fall short. To see him as he lifted that trophy, surrounded by his handpicked team, all cheers and flying bubbly – go on and tell me that this is just a game.

How fitting that Mr. October was also Mr. July, Mr. August, and Mr. September. Byron Reichstein had the kind of dream season posting numbers reserved for playgrounds and PlayStations. And then the series MVP turned the final game in the home nine’s favour with a blast deep into the city’s skyline in the third inning. Post-game chants of ‘MVP’ will echo for years in the young man’s heart.

And don’t forget Cleveland Brownlee – like you could. The Big Man was a spry kid again running around that field with trophy held up high, smile as broad as the Thames, hugging fans, posing for selfies. There was no storybook final at-bat, but what an ending to his season – and possibly more. In that moment, you had to wonder if the old man’s May-December romance with the game finally came to an end in October. But that’s a question for another day.

For too long, this baseball team in a hockey town has watched others have their moments.

They have watched the Knights collect sellouts and championships as the darlings of fans and media alike. They saw the Lightning cut down the nets, and that league has no schedule and that team no players as of this moment. They have seen Olympians and world champions bring home gold, and Mustangs gallop to victory. They have even had to watch other baseball teams, fly-by-nights with shady nicknames and short histories, call Labatt Park home.

It was not easy being the team in Title Town without a title since the last time a Trudeau held office.

But that has ended.

Up and down the roster, this team has been special all year, on the mound, at the plate, in the community. They have played with a spirit and much-needed joy to remind us that it is not only possible, but totally OK, to feel this way again.

We have all lost so much in the last year, regular lives have been shuffled, families shattered, jobs lost, our worlds turned upside down by never-ending moments of sadness and frustration and anger and prayers for how we wish things could go back to the way they once were. A city that has always had trouble getting out of its own way has seen some of its darkest days.

But time marches on, and in these last few months, we have found heroes large and small, people who have helped us through and offered up moments of caring and joy so true that we carry memories of them in our hearts to unlock their light in a dark moment.

As the sun rises today, a pandemic still exists, lost family and friends will not return, our city still struggles with its same ills and shortcomings. We are not magically healed or awakened from a bad dream because a single game was won. But for many, last night will be that moment of joy they will return to as a reminder that the world is not all darkness.

I am resisting the urge to ask, ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?,’ an oft-mocked line from a 10-year-old movie based on a 20-year-old book. But for a team that has broken fan’s hearts for nearly half a century, at a moment in time when we could all use a tailwind to keep moving forward, it was beautiful to see one night when the Forrest City was allowed to fall in love with a team, with a game, once again.