Blue Jays

Monday is the day of decision across the country. Will Canadians flock to the polling stations or watch the Toronto Blue Jays battle back from a 2-0 deficit against the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series?

These are not mutually exclusive options. Could there be a link between exercising your democratic rights and cheering on the team?

“The question of whether the good feelings and community spirit generated by sports victories spill over into the political arena has long been speculated on,” notes Professor Bruce Kidd, vice-president and principal of University of Toronto Scarborough.

The Progressive Conservatives had hoped the combination of Team Canada’s victory in the 1987 Canada Cup hockey tournament and worldwide approval of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary would give Canadians confidence that Canada had nothing to fear from international competition, says Kidd. It was a feeling with relevance to the federal election of November 1988, fought substantially on the issue of free trade, which the Tories won with a majority.

In 1971, Kidd adds, the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau created Sport Canada as a mechanism to boost support for high-performance athletes. The belief was that victories in international competition give Canadians a better sense of themselves.

“But of course, how do you measure such a effect?” he asks. “It's almost impossible. So I'm reluctant to say anything about the spillover effect of the Jays.”

David Roberts, a lecturer in urban studies at Innis College, is likewise open to the possibility of a Blue Jays election boost but doubtful that any means exist to subject the phenomenon to scientific analysis.

“There are lots of things that drive voter turnout,” he says. “I have read that there have been record numbers of people voting in early polls, even while these polls were on days when the Jays faced elimination.”

It was natural, he adds, for political leaders to embrace the Blue Jays – while paradoxically avoiding games to prevent the perception of having jinxed the team in the event of a loss. This alone establishes a connection.

It also makes clear that the Blue Jays have become Canada’s team, and not just a phenomenon of interest to Torontonians. Fans from all over western Canada descended on Seattle late in the regular season.

Has the animosity often alleged to exist between Toronto and Canadians from other parts of the country been suspended?

“These tensions have roots and manifestations that go beyond a shared hope for the success of the Blue Jays,” Roberts says. “Even though the Jays are intimately connected to the city of Toronto, fans from other parts of the country find it easy to disconnect the two.”

If there has been one downer in the pennant drive, it was surely the episode in the series with the Texas Rangers in which fans threw beer cans on the field of the Rogers Centre after a controversial decision. An image of a mother and infant in distress was widely disseminated.

“Of course this behaviour cannot be condoned,” Roberts says. “But I hope we can place these acts beside the crowds that gathered to celebrate at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas. They took over the streets, but only during red lights, dispersing when traffic needed to pass.

“There are lots of ways in which people chose to celebrate victory after what was a bizarre and at times quite tense game. Most did not involve throwing beer. Hopefully those are more formative of the city’s image.”

Kidd, an Olympian and gold medalist in the 1962 Commonwealth Games, is philosophical about the beer-throwing outburst (which led the Blue Jays organization to announce a review of the policy of selling beer in cans).

“The beer-throwing incident did not reflect well upon the image of Toronto,” he said. “But such incidents are more characteristic of the atmosphere of professional sport than the cities where they occur. I do not think it will do much damage.”

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Toronto Blue Jays’ psychologist on the importance of channeling emotions, maintaining perspective

sgupta — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:19:23 +0000

Toronto Blue Jays’ psychologist on the importance of channeling emotions, maintaining perspective sgupta Fri, 10/16/2015 - 11:19

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The Toronto Blue Jays celebrate the AL East win in Baltimore (photo by Keith Allison via flickr)

Carolyn Morris

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Carolyn Morris

Transforming Toronto: �Թϱ�� experts on Blue Jays buzz

sgupta — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 13:36:41 +0000

Transforming Toronto: �Թϱ�� experts on Blue Jays buzz sgupta Thu, 10/08/2015 - 09:36

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(photo by james_in_to via Flickr)

Arthur Kaptainis

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Arthur Kaptainis

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City & Culture

Will the Blue Jays clinch the World Series title? Q & A with statistics professor Jeffrey Rosenthal

sgupta — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 09:55:22 +0000

Will the Blue Jays clinch the World Series title? Q & A with statistics professor Jeffrey Rosenthal sgupta Thu, 10/08/2015 - 05:55

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(Photo by Keith Allison via Flickr)

Jelena Damjanovic

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Jelena Damjanovic

With the American League East title firmly in their back pocket, the Toronto Blue Jays are now focusing their attention on the World Series title, giving fans a reason to hope and rejoice.

There hasn’t been much reason for either since the Blue Jays last won the World Series in 1993.

But, the Jays’ fortune seems to be turning and �Թϱ�� turns once again to professor Jeffrey Rosenthal for his take on their odds of clinching the World Series title again this year.

Rosenthal is an award-winning professor in the department of statistics renowned for his ability to teach quantitiative reasoning to students who lack confidence in math and the bestselling author of Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities.

What are the odds of the Blue Jays clinching the World Series title again after 22 years?
Well, at this point, to become World Series champions, they have to win three different series along the way. Each of the three series will be against another top-level MLB team. So, naively, you could say the Jays have a 50 per cent chance of winning each series, so their chance of becoming champion is 50 per cent x 50 per cent x 50 per cent, or 1/8, or 12.5 per cent.

Of course, you could try to nuance the probabilities a bit better, based on everything from regular-season records to pitcher rotations to home-field advantage and more, but it’s pretty tricky.

Suppose you wanted to take the regular-season records into account. How might you do that?
To take one possible approach, consider their first series, against the Texas Rangers. Now, the Blue Jays won 93 out of 162 games in the regular season, while the Rangers only won 88. So, you could approximate the probability of the Jays winning any one game against the Rangers as 93/(93+88), which is about 51.4 per cent. Assuming this, the chance of the Jays winning the best-of-five series then turns out (using the “binomial distribution”) to be slightly better, about 52.6 per cent. So, that’s a little bit better than 1/2, but not much.

How would the probabilities play out in subsequent rounds?
Well, in the next round they might face the Kansas City Royals, who won 95 regular-season games – two more than the Jays. This gives an estimate of about 49.5 per cent of the Jays beating the Royals in any one game, which turns out to give them (again using the “binomial distribution”) a probability of 48.8 per cent of winning the best-of-seven series there.

If they win both of those series, then in the World Series their worst case would be to face the St. Louis Cardinals who won 100 regular-season games. If so, then their chance of winning any one game is about 48.2 per cent and their chance of winning the best-of-seven series is about 46.0 per cent.

So according to this analysis, what is the probability that the Jays win the championship?
Putting all of the above together, the Jays’ chance of becoming world series champions is 52.6 per cent x 48.8 per cent x 46.0 per cent, which works out to 11.8 per cent – just slightly less than the naive estimate of 12.5 per cent.

In short, I wish the Jays all the best, but I wouldn’t bet my life savings on them going all the way.