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What a happy, blissful day it was for Toronto Blue Jays fans on Oct. 29, 2025.
A crucial Game 5 with the World Series knotted at 2-2 started in the best possible fashion. Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit back-to-back home runs in the top of the first inning to give the Jays an early lead. The runs kept flowing as Trey Yesavage threw a seven inning, 12-strikeout gem and the Jays won 6-1 to take a 3-2 series lead with two chances to win at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
"Vibes were high, very nostalgic, very Canadian, very wholesome," Blue Jays lifer Eri Kida remembered. "I feel like the country was going through a lot in 2025 politically and economically and the Jays really added to that sense of Canada pride.
"People were wearing '92-'93 shirts. I was wearing a Jays shirt to work literally every day in October."
An escalating trade war with the U.S. with unprecedented tariffs and Canadians increasingly avoiding travel south of the border added to the political tension. A defending champion Dodgers team that was increasingly viewed as baseball's new "evil empire" and had beaten the Blue Jays in a bidding war for Shohei Ohtani added to the drama.
The Blue Jays' Cinderella run carried them from last place in the American League East in 2024 to first in 2025. Come the postseason, a band of lovable underdogs captured the city's imagination, beating the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners. By the World Series, the Blue Jays were on the precipice of all-time greatness, looking to secure the franchise's first MLB championship since 1993. What followed and the manner of the defeats in Games 6 and 7 still defies logic 365 days later.
"At that point, I don't even think it crossed my mind that we were gonna lose," said diehard fan Kamran Jessani, who has loved the team for over three decades and was at the Rogers Centre for the final two games. "The team had so much connectivity… you kinda just felt that they had it."
A year ago this weekend — on Friday, Oct. 31 and Saturday, Nov. 1 — the Blue Jays let two chances at a World Series title slip away. Here's how the most devastating weekend in franchise history unfolded, and what fans remember most after a full calendar turn.
It was a clash of the titans in Game 6, with Kevin Gausman taking on Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who pitched a one-run, complete game masterpiece in Game 2. Yamamoto won again, but not without drama.
This time on Friday night, Oct. 31, Yamamoto went six innings, giving the Blue Jays hope despite trailing 3-1. After huffing and puffing in the seventh and eighth, the Jays looked set to blow the house down in the ninth. Catcher Alejandro Kirk was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning and Myles Straw came in to pinch run. Addison Barger, having a postseason for the ages (including hitting a grand slam in Game 1), then crushed a pitch from Roki Sasaki to the centre field wall and the unthinkable happened.
For the first time at the Rogers Centre, the ball wedged itself on the flush between the padding and the turf at the base of the wall. Credit where it's due, left fielder Kike Hernandez immediately recognized the situation and, knowing the rule, signalled for a dead ball and ground rule double. Centre fielder Justin Dean initially looked as though he was going to retrieve the ball, but when turning to look at what was in front of him, saw Hernandez and immediately got on the same page. As the two outfielders raised their hands and made no attempt to play the wedged ball, the umpires were left with no choice but to follow the rule book and call a ground rule double.
"Been here a long time and haven't seen a ball get lodged ever," manager John Schneider, who's been a part of the organization for 25 years, said of the bizarre play after the game. "Just caught a tough break there. [Barger] put a really good swing on that pitch... Just kind of didn't bounce our way there."
What looked like a run on the board and Barger at second base — possibly even third — with nobody out was now runners at second and third with no outs. It was still a great position to be in with starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow coming in for Sasaki to pitch to Ernie Clement, so the Blue Jays only have themselves to blame from there.
Clement swung at the first pitch and popped out to Canadian first baseman Freddie Freeman. Then, Andres Gimenez lined a ball to short left field where Hernandez made a running catch. Showing a complete lack of awareness, Barger had run halfway to third and couldn't get back to second in time as Hernandez's throw was perfectly picked by second baseman Miguel Rojas for the unlikely, shocking double play.
"I was pretty surprised he got to it," Barger said after the Dodgers' dramatic 3-1 win to force Game 7. "Off the bat, I thought it was going to go [right] over the shortstop's head. I didn't think it was going to travel that far.
"It was kind of a bad read."
Hello, Game 7.
The wait between Games 6 and 7 wasn't too arduous, in retrospect. Yes, there was the shocking end to Game 6 but the Blue Jays were behind for almost the entire game and only had themselves to blame after the bizarre circumstances of the ball getting stuck in the wall.
More importantly, the Blue Jays led the league with a franchise-record 49 comeback wins in the regular season. They showed tremendous resilience to overturn an 0-2 series deficit in the ALCS against the Seattle Mariners, including coming back from 3-1 down in Game 7 courtesy George Springer's all-time classic moment with a three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh.
Against the Dodgers, the Blue Jays once again showed their ability to bounce back by responding to a demoralizing 18-inning, 6-5 defeat in Game 3 with consecutive wins in Games 4 and 5.
"I was absolutely confident we were going to win," Kida said. "Usually, I'm hesitant, I wanna set the bar low when it comes to sports and us having a chance. But, after Game 6, I had never been more confident in my life about us winning."
Jays fans waited 32 years for this moment, what was another 24 hours?
If there's one moment Blue Jays fans wish they could go back to and relive over and over, it's likely the bottom of the third inning of Game 7 on Saturday, Nov. 1. That's when Bo Bichette cranked a no-doubter off Shohei Ohtani into the upper deck in centre field, giving Max Scherzer and the Jays a 3-0 lead.
Rogers Centre had erupted into absolute bedlam. Friendships grew closer, strangers hugged, beers were spilled. And how about that moment for Bichette. Coming back from injury just in time for the World Series, still hobbled enough that he could only play second base instead of his customary shortstop, and crushing a pitch from all-time great Shohei Ohtani in Game 7.
All seemed right in Canada. The World Series looked to be headed north of the border for the first time in 32 years.
But bit by bit it all went south from there.
The champs were desperate, trying to create some momentum or at least arrest what the Blue Jays had going.
Trailing 3-1 in the bottom of the fourth, Justin Wrobleski threw inside on Andres Gimenez twice before hitting him on the hand the third time. As Gimenez and Wrobleski jawed at each other, the benches cleared, and the tension increased as some frustration was released on the Dodgers side.
Was that what they needed to begin turning the tide?
After the two sides exchanged solitary runs in the sixth, rookie sensation Trey Yesavage entered the ball game and took care of business in the seventh. After getting Mookie Betts to ground out to start off the eighth, Max Muncy got a sinker that didn't sink and sent the ball into orbit.
Jeff Hoffman entered the game for the final out of the eighth inning and did the job. Heading into the top of the ninth, Ohtani loomed as the big problem with Hernandez and Rojas due up ahead of him.
Blue Jays fans were generally nervous with Hoffman on the mound, since he'd given up a league-leading 13 home runs in the ninth inning. Having had a great playoff run to this point, the hope was that he could manage it for one more inning.
What no one saw coming, though, was the No. 9 hitter Rojas getting a hold of a hanging slider on a 3-2 count and sending it into the left field seats. They didn't even need Ohtani to tie the game.
Hoffman eventually got out of the inning, but the damage was done with the score now at 4-4, and the Jays looking for one more moment of magic in the bottom of the 9th.
If Bichette's home run is the moment Jays fans would never change and re-live over and over, Isiah Kiner-Falefa's attempt to score from third base is the one they wish they could get a do-over on.
Guerrero Jr. flied out to centre to lead off the ninth. To everyone in Canada's shock and bemusement, Yamamoto then came in to pitch despite having pitched six innings the day before. He walked Bichette and Barger, then hit Kirk with a pitch. Kiner-Falefa came in to run for Bichette. The bases were loaded with just one out and Yamamoto clearly didn't have his best stuff on no rest.
Kiner-Falefa, though, took a small eight-foot lead off third base. It meant a worse starting point when Daulton Varsho grounded the ball to Rojas at second base, who stumbled briefly, before firing the ball with all he could to the catcher Will Smith. This being a force play, Kiner-Falefa could have ran through home plate without a slide. If he was going to slide, he was probably best served going gung-ho and sliding head first. He went feet first with a very short jump off point.
Remember the Vladdy Superman slide against the Yankees? That would've won it for sure. Instead, Kiner-Falefa was a foot short.
The Blue Jays coaching staff effectively admitted they got it wrong in having Kiner-Falefa take a small lead off third base when he represented the winning run with Varsho at the plate. They were worried about the risk of him getting doubled off on a liner by Varsho to third base, but the odds of that with a hitter who's primarily a pull-hitter were extremely low.
"If I could do it over, I definitely would have got a couple of steps out," Kiner-Falefa said in the offseason. "But you've got to do what the organization wants and that's kind of been the thing there. With runners in that situation, they'd always keep the runner close."
He got hold of a curve ball down and away and the ball went skying deep to left-centre field. Andy Pages had just entered the game and was chasing it down as quickly as he could, as was Kike Hernandez from left field. Both had eyes on the ball and none on each other, and Pages ran right through Hernandez as he caught the ball.
Hernandez later admitted he was devastated, thinking the collision had cost them the catch and the game, before realizing Pages had held on.
The heroic play also meant Game 7 was now heading to extra innings.
The Blue Jays felt like the team of destiny but all of these moments that went against them now felt like they were doomed to pay the price.
Will Smith hit a solo shot off Shane Bieber with two outs in the top of the 11 th and now the Blue Jays were going to have to come back for the first time on the night. After blowing one chance after another to win it all, the air of inevitability about the Dodgers was setting in with the Rogers Centre in silence.
Being the plucky bunch they are, though, the Blue Jays picked themselves back up and Guerrero Jr. doubled to left field to lead off the bottom of the 11 th . Kiner-Falefa hit a sacrifice bunt to advance Guerrero Jr. to third, and Barger walked on four pitches.
Kirk had plenty of clutch moments for the Jays. He had a monster final day of the regular season with two home runs to help the Blue Jays clinch the American League East. He needed to get the ball in the air but his bat broke as he made contact and it was instead a grounder to short for a World Series ending double-play.
As over 40,000 cleared out of the Rogers Centre on that Saturday night, you could hear a pin drop. It was a steep drop from the high fives, hugs, hooting, and hollering that followed games for most of this playoff run.
"I had tears in my eyes and all I could think of was, the last time they won I was six years old," Jessani said thinking back to sitting in his seat staring blankly as the Dodgers celebrated back-to-back titles. "How old am I gonna be when we even have a chance again? All I felt was the reality this might not happen again in my lifetime."
The Blue Jays went from last place in the A.L. East in 2024 to this magical run in 2025 and reality has hit even harder with a return to last place in 2026.
This year was supposed to be about making things right. Bichette and a few others had departed in free agency, but the arrivals of Dylan Cease and Kazuma Okamoto felt enough to propel this team forward.
Instead, fans bid emotional goodbyes to Springer and Scherzer on the final day of this regular season, and are still wrapping their heads around an absurdly poor season from Guerrero Jr. as the Blue Jays finished 79-83.
What mustn't get lost in the sadness is how much positivity that run provided and the new fans added along the way.
"My kids fell in love with baseball, it was so fun to see them get excited and watch the games with us," Kida said of her three kids. "That 18-inning watch party at Rogers Centre has to be a core memory for them… We actually got our kids playing baseball and softball now.
"For parents with young kids who don't know exactly what they want and you try out different activities and kids don't stick with them. They seem like they really enjoy baseball."
Jessani, who recently had his third child but primarily got to take in the experience with his oldest, Kayden, has been able to look back on the bonding moments between them fondly.
"I got to take him to Game 1, he had the time of his life," Jessani said. "He's now a die-hard baseball fan. To get Varsho throwing him a ball, Barger's pinch-hit grand slam landing right next to us, that memory… It was so worth every second. That run gave us everything but the trophy."
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