... angry at Toronto "sports fans"

I was in Chicago in 2002 for some training. It was April and the baseball season was young. I was on my own and decided to take in a ball game. The only game in town was the Hated White Sox vs Moderately Loved Indians, so I hopped on the red line down to the Sox-35th stop and got my ticket.

The game was over pretty quickly. The Indians had nothing and then had even less after Maglio Ordonez hit a grand slam. No matter how you measure it, it was a bad game. But here it was, a cool April night and in one of the worst open-air ball parks in the majors and people stayed. They watched the scoreboards to see how the Hated Cubies were doing, and also cheering when the Sainted Tigers won their first game of the season. I got involved in a conversation some other people were having about who was better: Magic's Lakers or Jordan's Bulls (and for Chicago, an alarming amount of people were all about the Lakers). It was a fun night.

In 2005 I was in New York City with Dawn and we went to see a Hated Yankees game. They were playing the Sainted Tigers in a pounding drizzle and beating them handily. Again, it was a miserable game and again, people where there cheering on the Hated Yankees and getting involved in the game. I even got to see Fred Schuman on the subway on the way home.

Tonight I was watching the Beloved Jays play the Hated Red Sox. The field was packed, but I knew it was packed with Red Sox fans, and not just locals who cheered on the Hated Sox. I had seen families in Sox gear all day long.

This happens any time a team like Boston or New York comes to town. Some are people who can't get tickets to their own home games and have an easier time of it here. Some are people who follow their team. All of them are people who love their team. These people LOVE their team. They LOVE them. And not just when they're winning. They love them in the rain, they love them in blowouts. They get involved. They get angry. They quarrel, but they never get to the point of despair. In the end they love them.

Tonight something snapped. I thought of all the teams in Toronto, all those people at the Rogers Centre, all those people at US Cellular in April, and Yankee Stadium in the rain and it dawned on me:

Toronto does not deserve its teams.

This city loves its Leafs, but it's a sad love. The fans know they back a mediocre team, but instead of getting angry they just create heroes out of these players: In any other city Tie Domi, Darcy Tucker, Vesa Toskala, Thomas Kaberle would be riding the bench waiting for the 6th line to come up. Here, they don't pay for a meal.

Go to Jays game in the spring and early summer, and you'll see as many Leafs jerseys and hats as you will baseball gear. And if the Leafs happen to be in the playoffs, more people will be watching or listening to the hockey game in the concourse than the ball game right in front of them. Go there later in the year and you'll see a mix of people rooting the other team and "Jays fans" who aren't even paying attention to the game past a certain point unless the Jays are winning. The Angels have the Rally Monkey to get its fans going. Here the team has to start the rally before the fans get involved.

In every sport but hockey it's not so much that the city loves a winner, but it will only abide by a winner. When the Jays were winning you couldn't get a ticket, and the city was nuts about its team. The new park, the way the team was run, this was supposed to be new model franchise. But once the luster fell off, everyone stopped going. "Oh, it's too expensive, and the SkyDome isn't that nice." Funny, U.S. Cellular is considered one of the worst fields in the majors and is not a cheap night out, but they had a good crowd. It's not the architecture, people.

It's time to face facts: Toronto only cares about its Leafs, and really it would be best if all other teams just gave up and left. And I don't mean out of spite: I mean this in the way I would tell someone who feels they were being taken for granted in a relationship. Go now, while you still have a chance somewhere else. All of you.

Argos? You had celebrity owners, Rocket Ishmail, and a big Grey Cup. The place was packed. People worried that the CFL would lose its traditional Western roots. The next year they booed Ishmail out of this city to the point where he lost it and never recovered as a player. "What have you done for ME lately," was pretty much the mood of the city, and even a little bit of "we're too sophisticated for football. The team has never really recovered either. Sure they've had a couple of good season, but they're not a draw even on a Friay night when they're the only game in town.

Rock? They won the National Lacrosse League championship their first few years in Toronto. It was a hot ticket, and oh so Canadian. Now? I bet you didn't even know they were playing. As soon as things got tough, they became an answer to a trivia question.

Raptors? On and off, saved by the fact that high draft picks after poor years pay off pretty quickly in the NBA. But people couldn't chase out Stoudamire and Vince Carter (both rookies of the year) fast enough as soon as they showed a little bit of humanity.

Don't look so smug, TFC. Toronto LOVES the shiny, and there's a shiny new park and everyone can pretend they're in Europe. But the worst thing that can happen to you? Having a good year. Because a couple of years after that you'll have a bad year, and then the year after you'll be able to see the designs on your seats during game time. "Oh no, we have a good base and a great park." Mmm hmm...did you get that song from the Jays in 92-93, because the tune sure sounds familiar to me.

Now you'll say "But Toronto's a hockey town." Really? So you couldn't get tickets to the Leafs. Did you go to a Marlies game? No, you didn't. Did you go to OHL games? No, you didn't. "We need another team in the area because we're such a hockey town, unlike Phoenix." Phoenix recently had 6,000 people watch a high school hockey tournament. Dallas, another sun belt city where hockey shouldn't thrive, has more ice rinks per capita than any other city in North America. Chew on those numbers. You've got a big kids hockey league: a bunch of people pretending to be Maple Leafs.

I'm going to call a spade a spade: Toronto is not a sports city. Toronto is a Leafs city. I think it's time that every other sport at every level realized that there will never be a market here for them unless they bring it themselves.

Until that time, I say they leave Torontonians to play with their Leaf dollies in the sandbox on their own.