What Canadian Pride Looks Like for a Dodgers Fan After a Grueling World Series Win Against the Toronto Blue Jays

Canadians love their sports, and with only one MLB franchise, the Toronto Blue Jays have become Canada’s team. Baseball fanatics and casual patriots alike flooded the streets, the sports bars, and Rogers Centre this October to celebrate their team’s first advance to the World Series since their 1993 win against the Philadelphia Phillies. To viewers north of the border, the breakthrough in their 32-year string of losses was not just a success in baseball, but a statement of Canadian unity and perseverance against American teams in an ongoing cultural, national, and even political fight between the two countries. Despite the majority of us feeling this way, what does it mean for a proud Canadian cheering for the Dodgers this year?

The MLB, similar to many other sporting leagues, doesn’t prioritize nationality - especially since Canada’s dominating sport is hockey, with other sports such as soccer and basketball also taking a lead in our countries’ rising sports. Baseball has historically been an American sport, so while we have one Canadian-based team, the talent-pool is overwhelmingly American and Latin-American. By selecting and prioritizing Canadian players, that talent-pool shrinks immensely. The only Canadian-born player on the Blue Jays is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a Dominican-Canadian whose family lineage comes from the former of the two nations his hyphenated nationality describes him as. On the south side of the border, the Los Angeles Dodgers also have one player who holds Canadian citizenship, Freddie Freeman, who also plays internationally for the Canadian national team. Both of Freeman’s parents were born in Ontario. No matter which team you cheer for, they’re all a bunch of foreigners, so what does Canadian pride have to do with it?

Both Canadian players have life stories worthy of biopics, and their talent alone makes them players any nation could be proud of. Their statistics in baseball are incredible, and to me each of them have their own respective reasons to make me proud to share a hyphenated “-Canadian” nationality with them. What I’m not proud of as a Canadian Dodgers fan is the criticism and poor sportsmanship from our country’s fans. Since Game 6 of the 2025 World Series, the Jays fans have called the series “rigged” and claimed that the contrast between the Dodgers and the Jays is a difference between a team that is bought and a team that is built. The Game 7 win for LA furthered this rhetoric.

The Dodgers team has an estimated value between 5.5 billion and 7.7 billion American dollars depending on the source, while the Blue Jays sit at just around 2.1 billion. The Dodgers have signed some incredible players over the past few years including greats such as Shohei Ohtani. They recognize skill, and aren’t afraid to spend whatever money it takes to be the greatest team in the league. The Jays signed Guerrero Jr. for a 400 million dollar 14-year contract, similar to Ohtani’s 700 million dollar 10-year contract, both teams spending a proportional amount on these talented players. The hard but obvious truth for Jays fans is that of the two teams, the Dodgers simply came out on top this year, and it was not in a landslide. With an 18 inning game 3 and the final game brought to the 11th inning, both teams carried their weight, and that’s something that both team’s fans should be proud of.

The Canadian pride of a Los Angeles Dodgers fan in Canada is much quieter, but it still exists. I think a Canadian-American like Freddie Freeman playing for my favorite team is something I’m incredibly proud of; but it’s his talent and sportsmanship that make me cheer for him. My Canadian pride includes a staple of our culture, a love for multiculturalism. That is something that both teams have, but as I hear Jays fans referring to the Dodgers as “Japanese Dodgers” or the “Tokyo Dodgers”, I am solidified in my opinions that multiculturalism in sports and in the western world is something to be happy about. After all, without our World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto and his glorious pitches, I would have to be a bitter Dodgers fan, something I wouldn’t dare to call myself no matter which country I’m from.