‘Everybody’s welcome to the barrio.’ The Blue Jays bring a Latin flair that makes players and fans feel at home

It’s hard to replicate the energy and enthusiasm ballparks across baseball-crazed Latin America are known for, but watching the Blue Jays can give you a pretty good idea of what it’s like.

At the Rogers Centre this season, hispanic artists like Bad Bunny blare out of the sound system as players walk up to the plate; kids hold signs with large Spanish print reading “Te Amo, Vladdy” and “Vamos Blue Jays!”; fans wear gear and hold flags representing countries like Mexico and Cuba; and players parade around loosely, dancing and hugging and laughing in between bat flips and fist pumps.

Considering the makeup of the Blue Jays roster, it makes sense. Seven current Blue Jays were born in Latin America, including José Berrios (Puerto Rico), Alejandro Kirk (Mexico), Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (Cuba), Santiago Espinal (Dominican Republic), Teoscar Hernández (Dominican Republic), Yimi Garcia (Dominican Republic) and Raimel Tapia (Dominican Republic). Plus, several others have Latin American roots, including Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Dominican Republic), George Springer (Puerto Rico and Panama) and Alek Manoah (Cuba).

From the family atmosphere they’ve fostered to the ways they express themselves and the energy they play with, there is undoubtedly a Latin flair to this Blue Jays team.

“I feel like it’s pretty unique. Even though there’s a lot of Latin players in the big leagues, to be able to have at least two or three groups of guys who are from the same country as each other, it’s basically like you’re with your brothers, playing in the backyard,” Blue Jays second baseman Santiago Espinal says of the team. “Not a lot of people get to experience that.”

“It feels like you’re back home,” Alejandro Kirk, who signed with the Blue Jays out of Tijuana, Mexico in 2016, adds through the team’s translator. “And yeah, one of the reasons I feel that way is the flavour that we play with, the enthusiasm, always having fun, all the Latin culture that I feel here reminds me of when I was playing back home.”

Watching Guerrero Jr. run up and down the dugout embracing his teammates, Springer salsa dancing in the corner, and Gurriel Jr. pretending to shoot a movie of the whole scene, it’s hard to envision a time when the Blue Jays lineup wasn’t headlined by Latin players. Yet it wasn’t long ago that the organization left the region entirely.

Despite being one of the first professional ball clubs to set up shop in Latin America by making use of the region’s first ever baseball academy in the Dominican Republic back in the 1970s — paving the way for storied Latin American Blue Jays such as Tony Fernandez, George Bell, Roberto Alomar, Juan Guzman, Carlos Delgado and Alex Rios, who helped transform the team from lowly expansion club to international phenomenon — the Blue Jays withdrew from the Latin American market entirely in the early 2000s. Due to a lack of financial resources from ownership, then general manager J.P. Ricciardi focused on cost-controlled draft picks instead, leading to one of the worst eras in Blue Jays history and part of a 21-year playoff drought.

Ricciardi was fired in 2009 and the new management team quickly re-established themselves in the talent-rich Latin American region, building academies and fostering relationships with up-and-coming Latin players. In 2013, the Blue Jays set a record by starting six Dominican Republic natives, including José Bautista and Edwin Encarnación.

A couple of years later, in 2015, the organization’s return to their Latin American roots came to a head: While Bautista and Encarnacion led the team back to the playoffs in Toronto, the Blue Jays were busy landing the No. 1 international prospect in baseball: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — son of former Montreal Expo Vladimir Guerrero — who they signed for $3.9 million (U.S.) at age 16.

Now, Guerrero Jr. is the face of the Blue Jays and a representative of Latin Canadians, who come out in droves to support him and the team.

“I have to say the passion for the game is pretty much the same here,” Guerrero Jr. says through the team’s translator of the fans in Toronto compared to the Dominican Republic, where he grew up after being born in Montreal. “The fans here are great … they’re very respectful.”

Perhaps that’s because the fans are some of the same people from back home.

Latin Americans began immigrating to Canada in the early 1970s largely due to Canada’s “open door” immigration policy and later came as refugees fleeing conflicts at home. In recent years, Canada has seen a particularly large wave of migrants coming from the Americas, with more than 152,500 arrivals coming between 2011 and 2016, the third largest group behind only Asia and the Middle East and Africa, according to a 2016 census.

Now, the approximate 1,114,310 Latin Americans living in Canada make up a significant portion of the population and have a real influence on the culture. That’s especially true in the greater Toronto area, where more than 32 per cent of the Latin Canadian population live, the approximate 360,185 of them making up 6.1 per cent of the city’s population.

Take Michael Batista, for instance. The 26-year-old Dominican Republic native grew up playing competitive baseball in the same ballparks as Guerrero Jr. before moving to Toronto at age 10 with his family in search of a better life. But he still remembers Guerrero’s infectious smile and has looked up to him his entire life, even if the Jays star is a few years younger than him.

“We don’t really have many role models back home to cheer for. So, having one of our own be not just really good but be the face of a franchise, especially at such a young age, it’s huge for us,” Batista, who is working to become a baseball agent, says.

While Carlos Mayorca doesn’t have quite as direct of a connection to Guerrero, the 25-year-old Venezuelan-Canadian says that watching Latin Canadian Blue Jays makes him feel represented in Toronto, especially because they embrace who they are and aren’t afraid to be themselves publicly, injecting a Latin flair into the ball club.

Mayorca, who left Venezuela for Toronto at age 18 due to economic insecurity and dangerous conditions, says it’s one of the characteristics that defines Latin people everywhere they go.

“We try to never forget our culture and we try to let people see the real us,” he says. “It’s something that’s beautiful and that, through the game of baseball, it definitely helps forge the connection with the team [and the fans].”

In part because the players are showcasing their engaging personalities — and in part because the Blue Jays are good again — that connection is as strong as ever. When the first round of MLB all-star voting was released in June of this year, Kirk and Guerrero both placed first in the American League in their positions, with 1,057,008 and 947,045 votes, respectively. Ultimately, six different Blue Jays were named all-stars despite the team sitting in the third wild card spot at 50-43. Plus, this is the Blue Jays’ best-attended season since 2017, with averages of 32,584 people per game and rising as the playoffs approach.

Mayorca is one of those fans regularly in attendance. He loves the experience of watching a Blue Jays game in part because the atmosphere reminds him of watching a ball game back in Venezuela. But what makes being a Jays fan truly special for Mayorca is the same thing that makes Toronto so special: that people from all backgrounds can come together and bond through a shared interest.

“When you’re a foreigner and you immigrate to another country, it’s always hard to create strong relationships or to find ideal people that you share passions with,” Mayorca says. “But with the Blue Jays, you sort of deepen your relationships because you share a passion — I do believe that the Canadian fanbase is truly passionate about the Blue Jays and the fact that we share this passion, we talk about baseball, we do fantasy baseball leagues together across the office and across friends — it has just brought us all together.”

Nowhere is that meshing of backgrounds better represented than with the Blue Jays’ home run jacket, which was introduced in 2021 as the team returned to Toronto after a tumultuous season and a half of being displaced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The jacket is put on a player after they hit a homer. On the back are miniature flags representing every Blue Jays’ native country, with the words “La Gente del Barrio” written across the bottom, which roughly translates to “the people of the neighbourhood.” It’s a motto that has recently been painted prominently inside the Blue Jays’ dugout, too.

“It’s kind of about representing all the people who live here in Toronto who come from all kinds of different countries,” Guerrero says. “Everybody’s welcome to the barrio.”

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