Why this small coastal town in Florida has caught Toronto Blue Jays fever

Lindsay Morrison speaks with Maureen Freaney, mayor of Dunedin, Fla, the city which is home to the Blue Jays’ spring training camp and their Single-A affiliate.

More than 2,000 kilometres away from Toronto, a small coastal town’s excitement for the Blue Jays in the World Series has reached a fever pitch.

Much like how some snowbirds escape to Florida for the winter, the Blue Jays travel to Dunedin, Fla., every spring for their training at TD Ballpark ahead of the regular season—something they have done since 1977.

Janette Donoghue, of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, tells CTV News Toronto that her grandfather was one of the few people that pushed for the Jays to train out of Florida, merely because he was a “die-hard baseball fan.”

“They’ve been here as long as I’ve been here, and I’ve been here 40 years,” Dunedin Mayor Maureen ‘Moe’ Freaney tells CTV News Toronto.

“They’re just so embedded in everything; they do a lot for our community.”

Freaney says the Blue Jays have done a lot for their local high school teams, even offering the major league ballpark for them to use for home games.

“They’re family, they’re part of us… I can’t say it better than to say they’re part of the fabric of us,” Freaney adds.

Walking through the city this October, Freaney says you can see how the team is woven into the city’s landscape, with “Let’s Go Blue Jays” and “I Want It All” banners hung across city hall.

Resident Stuart Meyer is hoping to take the fandom to another level, converting those who put the Tampa Bay Rays—the team closest to Dunedin—over the Toronto Blue Jays when they play against each other.

“I’m hoping to turn the corner that we have the Jays-Rays fans (say) that we support the Rays, but we’re primarily Blue Jay fans,” he said.

Meyer, who became a full-fledged Jays fan soon after moving to Dunedin in 2021, said he lamented on how he would watch their games on a projection screen in his office.

So he decided to launch a Facebook group—the Dunedin-Based Toronto Blue Jays Fans—to connect local fans so they could catch the games together.

Meyer founded the group when the Blue Jays moved into the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees. More than 400 people have joined the group within three weeks, which is significant considering Dunedin boasts a rough population of 35,000.

The city hosted community watch parties for the ALDS and the American League Championship Series at a park downtown, and for the first two World Series games, the watch parties moved to the TD Ballpark—where close to 1,500 fans attended each night, a spokesperson for the ballpark confirmed.

Throngs of fans sporting Blue Jays baseball caps and jerseys would park up in lawn chairs or lay out picnic blankets out on the field, watching the team play up on the field’s Jumbotron. There was popcorn and hotdogs, and even the arena’s bar opened up to serve drinks to the fans—the watch party had all of the makings of what one would get at the game, even down to bringing out a singer to perform the national anthems.

“I tried to time it to when the anthems were going up in Toronto,” Katie Ducharme told CTV News Toronto.

Ducharme has been singing at Blue Jays spring training games since 2014, adding that she has been flying up to Rogers Centre once nearly every summer since 2017, just to perform the Canada and U.S. anthems.

“It’s been really special and the Blue Jays, they just make me feel part of their family,” she said.

Even a couple of Canadians attended one of the watch parties.

“They were so upset because they weren’t in Toronto for this, but they said this is like the second best thing,” added Donoghue.

A watch party ritual has been born

Baseball fans and game rituals are almost synonymous with peanut butter and jelly because of how prevalent they are in the sport’s culture.

• READ MORE: These are the superstitions and rituals some die-hard Blue Jays fans believe will help the team win

Meyer said another superstitious ritual has been borne out of the postseason watch parties, manifesting in a very Floridian way.

During one of the games, Freaney brought four beach balls for fans to play with.

“But then Moe took this beach ball—what became the ‘JayBall’—and put it in front of the screen,” Meyer recounted.

“It wasn’t too breezy, so it’d be set in just such a way and if things weren’t going well, we would go and shift it just a little bit. All baseball fans are super superstitious, so we would shift it and every time we shifted it, good things would happen.”

Once an ordinary beach ball has turned to a near humanoid JayBall, with a face plastered onto its brightly-coloured vinyl with a Blue Jays logo as a nose. The ball has even made the rounds throughout Dunedin, Meyer said, adding he has been tasked with keeping JayBall secure between games.

“So he’s kind of become the unofficial mascot of Dunedin-based Blue Jays fans,” Meyer said.

Dunedin will continue to host watch parties at Pioneer Park for the remainder of the World Series, cheering the Jays on every step of the way.

Freaney says seeing both the American and Canadian flags side-by-side during these watch parties reminds her of the “great bond” between the two countries.

“Part of the thing I love the most about the Toronto Blue Jays is that we are two different countries,” Freaney said.

“It’s such a great family partnership, amazing, really loyal partnership that’s gone for now, going to be 50 years. The only spring training place, a home that the Blue Jays have ever know. It’s a bond, it’s just a great bond.”