(In paragraph 7 corrects to show Maple Leaf was expanded on team logo in 1996, not added to it)
By Ed White
WINNIPEG (Reuters) -Canadians hope baseball can bring them some joy on Friday night to counteract economic gloom as the Toronto Blue Jays take to their home field to start the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled U.S.-Canada trade talks.
The success so far this year of Canada’s only Major League Baseball team has spurred hope for millions of Canadians who feel beaten and bruised from months of political struggle with their next-door neighbour and long-term ally the U.S.
“They definitely are Canada’s team,” said lifelong fan Kirsty Crawford, who was wearing a Jays jersey while picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons in downtown Winnipeg, 2,240 kilometres (1,390 miles) west of Toronto, Friday morning.
“It’s amazing. It’s amazing. There’s people in my office who have never watched a baseball game in their life and they’re watching it.”
For Max Babcock, a Winnipegger proudly wearing a Blue Jays jersey while walking to lunch with his wife, Sarah, seeing the Jays in the series is uplifting in the fraught Canada-U.S. climate.
“It’s an American-dominated game. There’s one Canadian team. It means more,” said Babcock.
Decades ago, the Jays stamped themselves on the Canadian consciousness as a national champion rather than just Toronto’s team. After the team was launched with a small maple leaf in the logo in 1976, the maple leaf was greatly expanded 1996, three years after the team won the world series for the second time in two years. The maple leaf has come and gone from the logo since then, but today is a prominent element.
Canada is a vast country – the planet’s second-largest geographically – but has a population of less than 42 million. Uniting symbols can be hard to come by.
Jenn Norrie, from Calgary in Canada’s west, has been on an international trip, but watched the Jays in the American League Championship Series on her mobile in the middle of the night while in Kenya. She will watch tonight’s game from Amsterdam.
“Start time tonight is 2 a.m.,” said an excited Norrie.
For Charmaine Mendoza, a massage therapist and fitness instructor wearing a Jays cap and scrambling to get to an appointment, tonight’s game is another chance to connect to her grandfather, a big fan of the Jays who died two years ago.
“In honour of him, I’m cheering for the Blue Jays tonight,” said Mendoza.
(Reporting by Ed White; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and David Gregorio)
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