You can have one of the best records in the league or you can be slumping right before the post-season, and none of that matters when the month of October hits. Such is baseball. And such is life.

What does help, though, is being bold. The Blue Jays got lucky on Sunday night with Odor’s throwing error. But Donaldson was also willing to take a chance and make a run for home plate. It paid off in a big way. His instincts were right.

I found the above image on social media without a source. If I’m pissing anyone off by posting it here, let me know and I’ll take it down. I just love how it captures the exact moment – with the ball still in the air – when Donaldson proclaims victory.

Baseball will always be a special sport for me. I have never been a big hockey fan and the Raptors didn’t exist until the mid-90s. So as a kid growing up in Toronto, I played baseball and watched the Jays.

So here’s to more October baseball. The playoffs are always such a fun time in the city. It has a way of cutting through our differences and uniting us all around a common dream. That doesn’t always happen.

On Sunday afternoon I went to see the Blue Jays. It was the last home game of the season before the postseason and the only game I’ve gone to see this season. (Thank you Chris for the ticket.)

And what a last game it was. 

We won 5-4, but we hustled for the win. We squeaked it out at the end with a pinch runner that stole 2nd base (and then tied the game in the bottom of the 8th) and with Josh Donaldon’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs. I’m pretty sure the Jays were hungover from celebrating their first playoff berth in 22 years – that’s why it was so close. It certainly made for a gripping finish though.

After the game everybody was jazzed up and spilling out onto Bremner Blvd in front of the Rogers Centre. I’m not sure if it was premeditated or not, but the entire street was closed to cars. And it reminded me of something that I’ve thought for years: that Bremner Blvd should be made into a kinds of sports and entertainment corridor connecting the Rogers Centre in the west with the Air Canada Centre and Maple Leaf Square in the east.

Bremner is not a long street. But it connects the place where Canada’s only (MLB) baseball team plays and where Canada’s only (NBA) basketball team plays. Right now it’s a fairly nondescript street. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It could be something really special.