A few weeks ago we decided to go see a Jays game as the first of my “see all the professional teams in Toronto” plan. I had been in the library that’s close to here, waiting for Kathleen to check her email (we hadn’t actually had internet access yet) and I saw that day’s edition of the Star, and among other things saw that the Jays were playing that night. I asked Kathleen if she wanted to go to a game bought some tickets and a few hours later we were leaving to see the game.

As a side note here, regarding buying tickets for these events, Ticketmaster has such a horrible website with almost no usability, and random extra charges added on they alone kinda make me want to rethink this sports thing, as I’ll have to use them to get tickets to pretty much every game I want to try and see.

On arriving at the Skydome (I’ve already said in this post that I dislike Rogers, so is it a surprise to see me call the place by its old name instead of its current one?) we had to walk across to the box office to pick up our tickets and saw something that made little sense to me. Did you know that you can order cable or internet at the Skydome? Rogers actually has one of their Rogers Plus stores inside the building. I really want to know if they’ve ever sold an internet package at that location.

At least 5 times on our walk from Union Station to the Skydome we were approached by scalpers offering to sell us tickets to the game we were off to see. I find this really quite odd, as the stands were quite empty, and although I know they don’t even bother trying to sell tickets for most of the seats there were still hundreds if not thousands of seats available. Why buys scalped tickets to something that’s not even close to being sold out? Do they sell the tickets cheaper, and if so is that cheaper price worth the chance that they’re not legit tickets?

After a very small complication picking up our tickets (I had ordered them and given my new address, the person at the box office asked to see my drivers licence, which was under the old one, and got confused) we went into the building. I feel like I could get in trouble for saying this, but if you ever want to take something into the building that you’re not supposed to take it, give it to a female. Security pats down men but not women, I guess they follow the TSA method of security, make it look like they’re doing something, when really they’re not.

We hadn’t left ourselves enough time to eat before going to the game, so we decided to try and get food there. It was probably a mistake, but then again the food is part of the experience, There’s probably not many of these sporting events in the city where a hot dog and a pretzel cost more than the price of the ticket but that just goes to show how little you can get tickets for (and some of how expensive the food is). It turns out they have some promotions where you can get a ticket and all you can eat hot dogs, popcorn, nachos, pop and maybe other things too, and although I don’t remember the price anymore, it seems like it could actually be a good deal, especially with how long baseball games are. I think if they’re still doing this next year I’m going to have to try that.

I was kind of surprised, although after thinking about it, not really, that Kathleen said she’d never been to an MLB baseball game before. I had been to so many when I was younger, my schools would plan trips every year where they got some buses and families could buy tickets to go to a game at a group rate. Her growing up twice as far away from Toronto as me probably makes a bit of a difference on that, and I feel like it’s safe to say that sports are a much bigger deal in my family than hers.

Like the hockey games we’ve gone to in the past, I spent most of the evening explaining the rules of the game to Kathleen and pointing out various other little facts about the game, and location. It reminds me of the one story I kinda like to tell about Grade 8 gym. We got to the time of year where the gym teacher decided we were going to play baseball. There were really only two people in the class who knew more of the rules of the game to be able to play it, and I was one of them. I’m not sure if it’s something to be proud of or disappointed in others that the nerdy kid who spent his lunch hours playing Magic: the Gathering, or Sim City in the computer lab also apparently knew (some) sports better than everyone else. Back to the Jays game though, most of my interesting tidbits were so out of date, I also had to say “I’m pretty sure this isn’t true anymore but there was a time when…” They messed me up quite a bit when just as their “Let’s Go Blue Jays” song was finishing I was going to say how (and I know this isn’t true anymore) the Jays were the only team in MLB that played their own song during the 7th inning stretch whereas everyone else played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” they started to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

The article I had read in the Star which alerted me to the fact that this game was even happening had spent some time talking about how the Jays were the team in the leagues who had the most home-runs so far in the season, and that they were so far ahead there was really no hope of them being caught. That didn’t prepare me for how many home runs were hit this game there were a lot, even a few hit by Texas. Maybe it’s just that the last time I paid any attention to baseball the players didn’t use steroids as much (or more likely, the steroids weren’t as good back then) but I was quite surprised by the amount of them. They ended up winning the game, and quite convincingly too (although there was a point in time in the middle of the game it was close) and we began our trek home.

It was weird walking down the ramp leaving the stadium, because any game I’ve ever been to in the past it’s been really crowded and slow moving, whereas we didn’t see anyone else (although could hear a couple other people). I was also kind of surprised how many random people we passed by walking back to Union, and then on the subway asked how the game went, I figured for the most part people don’t really care enough about baseball to even know there was a game. Then again, if you’re at Union Station and you see a crowd (albeit a small one) walking from the skywalk with some of them wearing Jays paraphernalia I guess it’s a pretty safe assumption a game just ended.

Was a fun night, but I think either the Leafs or the Marlies are next, and I think that’s going to be far more exciting (although also far more likely for the home team to lose). That said I can easily see myself going to more Jays games while we’re living in the city, and I can’t imagine affording to go to multiple leafs games even if prices seem to be going down because they’ve been sucking so much.

I suspect anyone reading this already knows the fact, but the decision to move here was so my wife, Kathleen, could take part in the University of Toronto’s accelerated nursing program.  The plan seems to be to only stay in the city for as long as the program takes, and then to move away, probably back to the Kitchener-Waterloo area, when it’s over.  Since we’re both viewing this as a sort of temporary residence I’ve decided that in these two years we’re here to try and do a large number of Toronto activities, most notably, I’ve set the goal of trying to see every professional sports team that plays in the city with the possible exception of the Raptors (because I don’t think I can make myself care).  One team is already checked off, but that story is for another post.

On one of our first afternoons here we decided that instead of spending the whole day unpacking (something we should really finish sometime) we’d go off to the mall, but also use this as an opportunity to try out the TTC’s various methods of transportation.  Yorkdale was an obvious choice partly because it’s not actually that far, and gave us an opportunity to take the subway, but also because I was fairly certain they had an Arby’s in the food court (Last I checked there was only one restaurant in all of Kitchener and Waterloo, and it was so far away from everything, so I try to get to them when I can).  We set out early in the afternoon on a walk to the subway station during a terrible heat wave, and it turns out the subway is further away from here than I had thought (I knew where the next station north was, but it turns out instead of just going south from there the train goes south-east and we needed to walk much more).  By the time we finally got to the train we were already exhausted and we were only a fraction of the way to our destination.

The walk around the mall was kinda boring, but it turns out I was right about the Arby’s and so it was worth it all along, as the 2nd largest mall in the city, and 5th largest in the country I have to say I am unimpressed, although I’ve been there before so I don’t know what I expected.  Other than the token bookstore, video game store and movie theatre the rest of it is just filled with clothing and cell phones with some food here and there.  I can’t imagine how all these clothing and cell phone stores can be profitable while surrounded by competition but apparently there is money to be made by having 5 different providers with stores, as well as several stores willing to sell you a phone and set you up with a provider that has their own store nearby (I don’t remember but if you told me that Rogers had multiple stores in the mall I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not counting Fido here, but normal Rogers stores, just on opposite sides of the mall so you don’t need to go all the way over there to get yourself a new phone.

I’ve been to many malls less than half the size according to wikipedia that had a better variety of stores, it may be big and fancy but it certainly doesn’t have much for me (except delicious roast beef sandwiches) and it seems there’s other places closer with the same services in a more compact way, but how can you know that when you’ve lived in the city less than a day and don’t have internet access?  In the end, we got everything we were looking for that afternoon (as well as air conditioning during horrible heat) and made our trip home this time taking the street car back from the subway making the trip much more enjoyable.