Today’s computers have impressive ability to measure even the most minute computations. But not even the most accurate calculators could not measure the time between a Toronto Blue Jay fan realizing that maybe, just maybe, their team was a contender and the wholesale complaining about how they are blowing the chance of a lifetime to win a third World Series.

It’s true that sometime in late June/ early July the Blue Jays— with key regulars on the injured list— went on a wholly unexpected tear. They won 19 of 24 games, ending with taking three games from MLB’s best team, the Tigers, in Detroit. They didn’t just beat opponents, they pounded them.

At the end of that burst they led the AL East and seemed to have a postseason berth sewn up. Which naturally sent Jays Nation in search of a comfy blanket as the season draws to a close. It’s difficult to assimilate the whiplash effect made by this totally unforeseen burst. Here was our outlook for Toronto back in March:

“While it’s true that the sun can’t shine on the same team every day, Jays fans believe it would be nice if the great orb would find their club as it did back in the 1992/93 World Series days. Instead of the reflected glory of past stars winning for other teams. Patience is thin. And time is ticking. 

While the Jays dithered, the price for players like Guerrero and Bichette soared. Using Juan Soto’s Mets $765 M deal as a yardstick Guerrero turned down a Jays offer of just under $600 M, saying he was done talking during the season. If Shapiro/ Atkins had anticipated the market Guerrero would have cost a lot less in 2023-24. 

Shortstop Bichette— a gifted player who battled injuries in 2024—is likewise up for a new deal. He has started strong in 2025 and would command a handsome return in a trade. He says the Jays are waiting to see what happens with Guerrero first.  Having sold the pair for years to their loyal fans, having to trade them will be a massive PR blow. And while Jays’ national audience can be an advantage, having a whole country pissed with you is devastating.”

Since that was written the Jays did give Guerrero a 14-year, $500 million deal, locking up their star for his baseball life. If that was supposed to inspire the team it was a loser. By May 8 they were 16-20. Newcomer slugger Anthony Santander wasn’t hitting his weight, injuries were wracking the team and manager John Schneider seemed day-to-day.

They then hovered near .500 till the start of June. Even the Jays’ paid broadcast team was having a tough time putting a happy face on ever catching the Yankees for first. In desperation Schneider began giving at-bats to prospects like Addison Barger and Jonatan Clase. Journeymen like Nathan Lukes, Ernie Clement and Davis Schneider also thrived in platoon situations.

Another journeyman Eric Lauer solidified the fourth starter spot while Max Scherzer convalesced. In the bullpen unheralded lefties Brendan Little and Mason Fluharty gave Schneider valuable late-game innings. Catcher Alejandro Kirk, handed a new contract, gave the pitching staff a reliable asset.

In short, the patch job is not only holding it’s made the team stronger. As of this writing the Jays have a 91.9 percent chance of making the postseason, five percent of winning the World Series. Which would create euphoria elsewhere.

Not in Toronto. All this prosperity suddenly created a whirlwind of doubt as Toronto GM Ross Atkins went into the trade-deadline crunch last week. There were big names reportedly on the market as a half-dozen teams scrambled to add reinforcements for the stretch. Eugenio Suarez, Alex Corea, Mason Miller, Jhoan Duran, Ryan Helsley and David Bendar were the baubles of the market.

The Jays got none of them— in part because they don’t have a deep farm system to use for trade bait. They picked up useful bullpen arms in Seranthony Dominguez and Tommy Nance. They rolled the dice on former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber who hasn’t pitched in two seasons. And they picked up versatile Ty France.

But not the big names. Meanwhile the Yankees. Mariners and Astros were overhauling their rosters in anticipation of the AL postseason. Seattle grabbed Suarez, Josh Naylor and Caleb Ferguson. New York recruited three new arms for its bullpen while the Astros obtained superstar SS Corea along with Jesus Sanchez and Ramon Urias.

To further rattle the troops the Jays just lost two of three at home to the KC Royals, the first series lost since losing two of three to the mediocre Chicago White Sox in mid-June. They lead the Yankees by three games with 49 games left, hardly a comfortable margin considering that only a handful of Jays have any postseason experience.

So expect plenty of angst the rest of the way. Because that’s the way it’s done in Toronto’s Panic Park.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

“Slowly at first. Then all of a sudden.”— Ernest Hemingway’s oft-used phrase describing going broke. 

With the election of Mark Carney and the decaying Trudeau Liberal gang, Canada’s descent into irrelevance has slid from gradual to picking up speed at an alarming pace. The persistent claims of “steady as she goes” from the administration’s paid scribblers has trouble matching with the reality of a nation unmoored by Justin Trudeau drifting from its berth in the harbour.

The symbols are everywhere— from the collapsing real-estate economy in Canada’s major cities to Carney’s fumbling attempts at a new free-trade agreement with Donald Trump’s America. But if you’re looking for a stand-alone sign of how far traditional Canada is in the rear-view mirror this past week’s censorship of an America Christian singer will do.

Sean Feucht is a leader in the pop-music vanguard of Christian music, a huge segment of the entertainment market. He’s been around a while, but only lately has he achieved name recognition in Canada where being fashionable tops being correct. (Indeed his critics insist that his current controversy is designed to give him more publicity.)

In the insatiable Woke appetite for demonizing anyone they see as Trumpian, Feucht has become a major whipping boy. He describes himself as “Lover of Jesus, Husband, father, recording artist, author, founder of “Let Us Worship” – “Hold The Line” – “Light A Candle” & “Burn 24-7”. Sounds pretty benign.

But for Canada’s secular urban cultists American Baptist culture=Trump=Hitler. Quebec, in particular, gets instant derangement at the threat of Trump dismantling the national dream of a French-speaking nation state— a dream only sustained by Canada’s increasingly unworkable constitution. America would turn it in to Louisiana with poutine. In large part this religious panic is because a large swath of Quebec’s French population was traumatized by its break with the “oppressive” Catholic Church in the 1970s. Too many babies, too little autonomy. This schism has underpinned its social/ legal outlook ever since.

There is little chance of Quebec society accepting Christian religion again until this cohort dies. (Even then it will face the spectre of a large Muslim fact installing its religion in law.) In Quebec, Christian religion— unless it is KD Lang singing Hallelujah— is so toxic that they’d rather be playing Alu Akbar in Place des Armes.

The anti-Christian bias— here’s a sample of Feucht’s “incendiary” songs— is only slightly less toxic in the rest of Canada. Encouraged by CBC’s pithy description of Feucht as a MAGA singer, his public appearance was cancelled in Halifax. CBC, which uses MAGA as a catchall for the 77 million of voted for Trump last year, described him as “a religious singer from the U.S. who has expressed anti-diversity, anti-2SLGBTQ+ and anti-women’s rights views on his platforms.” Translation: He hasn’t condemned Trump to the fires of hell. Ergo, guilty!

In short other hotbeds of DEI across the nation cancelled Feucht, too. That included Montreal where a puffed-up spokesthingy for mayor Valerie Plante intoned, “ “Freedom of expression is one of our fundamental values, but hateful and discriminatory speech is not accepted in Montreal and, as in other Canadian cities, the show will not be tolerated.” Fundamental values= things we decide are true.

So Feucht instead took his act— his songs include There Is A Name, Worthy Of It All and Our God Reigns— to a church where Montreal police stormed the doors and an antifa goon threw a smoke bomb at the singer (no charges as yet). The city instead proclaimed that it would fine all involved for flouting their curated world view.

No one in authority seemed at all bothered that freedom of religion is a cornerstone of Canada’s constitution. Freedom of religion is why Canadian cities are clogged each weekend by Muslim agitators praying in intersections or outside of Christian churches. Only Christians seem unprotected by this rule. The serenity of the Boomer Left must be observed.

Feucht met the media after the ruckus to condemn the treatment, and a CBC-Radio Canada journalist said the quiet part out loud on why Montreal’s elites wanted him shut down.“It’s because you don’t have a permit,” the gormless reporter told Feucht.

“I don’t think you need a permit to worship in a church,” Feucht responded. Indeed you don’t. Either Montreal’s mayor has no idea of the laws governing her society or she feels, like CBC, that there are different categories of citizenship now.

It was a similar mindset that moved police across Canada to arrest ministers who kept Christian churches open during the manufactured panic surrounding Covid-19. It was why Carney’s handlers successfully branded hapless Pierre Poilievere— who’s closer to Pete Buttigieg than Donald Trump— as a mini-version of POTUS 45/ 47.

The same people calling Trump an autocrat or a dictator are blissfully innocent when they shut down speech to protect their precious values. The fact that the scolds closing down Feucht escaped any legal recriminations for this suppression of Christian culture means they will be encouraged to double down on censorship— even as they permit ever-more expressions of Muslim outreach.

Carney’s stated goal of closer ties to atheist EU disinformation is a further indication that Christians are just a bug on the windshield of autocratic Canada. (Ironically the attention given to Feucht has exposed his music and his message to far more than would have known him otherwise.) It’s a further irony that for all the many sins of Christianity in its 2000 years of existence— and they are voluminous— the Canadian censors are actually making the Pope and others religious figures into figures of sympathy, the “little guy” in a battle with ruthless state control.

Not that Valerie Plante and her ilk will notice. Across the nation far-left big-city mayors— elected by vote splitting in many cases— are now protected by anti-hate speech laws that translate criticism into hate. The people who called cops “pigs” in the past generation  are now content to use cops to suppress their perceived enemies.

And the band plays on.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.