Blue Jays outfielder Addison Barger slept on the sofa of the man who took his spot in the opening game of the World Series on Friday night.
As Davis Schneider told reporters, Barger needed a last-minute place to stay. Schneider, who lives in a hotel suite overlooking the Rogers Centre outfield, offered his teammate his pullout couch. It turned out it was the least he could do: Schneider, a right-handed hitter, was swapped into the lineup to face L.A. Dodgers starter Blake Snell, who is particularly effective against lefties like Barger.
For the first half of the game, Schneider had an uneventful three at-bats, and then came a plot twist in the household dynamics. Barger ended up pinch-hitting for his roommate in the sixth inning. The Jays were ahead 5-2, bases loaded. The lead was comfortable, but with the defending World Series champs in town, nothing could be taken for granted.
Barger promptly crushed a pitch from relief pitcher Anthony Banda, another lefty, into the right-field seats for a home run that scored the fourth through seventh runs of the inning. It was the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history.
The Jays have some big stars, but Barger represents the other element that has been key to their success: a bunch of guys who scratched and clawed their way on to a major-league roster, and who wouldn’t buy a home in Toronto because they didn’t know how often they would be there. Barger wasn’t on the Jays’ Opening Day roster, and now here he was striking a World Series death blow.
That rocket, which gave the Blue Jays a 9-2 lead, suddenly made all the pre-game chatter about how the Dodgers were huge favourites sound overheated.
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If the Jays had spent the better part of the past week hearing about the Dodgers and their ridiculous payroll and their roster of superstars, here they were buckling the knees of their opponent. It was Rocky Balboa landing the blow that cut open Ivan Drago in the fourth Rocky film. With apologies to Duke, Rocky’s trainer: “The Dodgers aren’t machines! They’re just men!”
The night began in a city that was crackling with anticipation. A stroll around the downtown core was like a walk through the memory lane of three decades of Jays jerseys: there was a Joe Carter, Troy Tulowitzki, R.A. Dickey and a Roberto Alomar. Cito Gaston threw the ceremonial first pitch to John Schneider, the only two Blue Jays managers to have ever made it to the World Series. Drake was in the house, and an entire stadium hoped desperately that his presence wouldn’t jinx the game.
Those fears were settled quickly. Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old rookie who has now pitched more playoff games (4) than regular-season games (3) in his major-league career, started in the most spectacular way possible, striking out Shohei Ohtani, merely the greatest baseball player on the planet.
But Yesavage laboured after that, giving up a run in each of the second and third innings as Toronto was unable to muster anything off the intimidating Snell.
This was basically the script that spelled doom for the Jays: a dominant performance from one of the Dodgers’ many aces, and a Toronto starter who wasn’t quite at his best.
And then it all changed. Daulton Varsho smoked a Snell offering over the centre-field wall to tie the game at 2-2. It was the first home run that Snell had surrendered to a left-handed batter in the whole of 2025. More than that, it suggested that, just maybe, the Dodgers, who had lost exactly one game since Sept. 23, would not simply brush the Blue Jays aside like a minor inconvenience on the way to back-to-back World Series championships.
The essence of this Blue Jays team in 2025 has been one where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. On some level, that sounds kind of goofy: wouldn’t you rather have the team that is loaded with All-Stars? But then Game 1 happens, and the Jays, true to form, get contributions from all over their lineup. Two hits from each of George Springer, Ernie Clement and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. Three hits, including a two-run homer, from Alejandro Kirk, the fire-hydrant of a catcher who couldn’t be more different from Ohtani in shape and style, but who can sometimes hit just like him.
By the end of the night, Jays fans were gleefully chanting at Ohtani that they didn’t need him. (He homered to trim the Toronto lead by two runs; maybe don’t poke that bear.)
And, of course, that bomb from Barger, who spent the night on a pullout couch.
