Rogers Centre, Toronto (My favorite Toronto Blue Jay)

 

The Toronto Blue Jays have had some great players in their 48-year history. Eight players are in the Hall of Fame who played for the Blue Jays (along with two managers), most notably pitcher Roy Halladay. Then there’s Joe Carter, who hit a walk-off home run to close out the 1993 World Series. And Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is exciting to watch (though not as exciting as his father was, in my opinion). On the façade of the upper deck, they have many of their greats listed (the picture shows about half of them).

But my favorite is Brad Glenn. If you look up the link, you’ll find that his MLB career was less than two weeks long, and included a grand total of one base hit. But I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for him, because I knew he had dreams of making it to the majors years before he actually got there.

For many years, I taught a “general education” science course at the University of Arizona entitled “Humanity and the Universe: Origin and Destiny.” I always liked the title, because I never did figure out any topic in science that I couldn’t cover if I wanted to, but I made it a broad survey of science from a planetary science perspective. Some would describe that type of course as an “intro” to science, but I always thought of it as an “extro” – my students were taking it because it was a requirement, and it was one of the last two or three science courses the vast majority of them would ever take. So I tried, not necessarily successfully, to convey the idea that science is a process, rather than a set of facts.

One of my favorite assignments was one that I described as applying the scientific method to a magic trick. Class met three times per week, and each day, near the start of class, one of my teaching assistants would leave the room, someone in the class would select an object to be “it,” and then the TA would return. I’d ask questions about various objects, and the TA would dutifully tell me that wasn’t the object until we got to the right object, when they would “magically” give the right answer. Obviously, it’s not magic, it’s a trick, and over the years I figured out many, many ways to do it. One year, it might be that I’d ask about an object in a particular part of the room on the question before the right one. Another year, I’d say, “ummm” in the question unless it was the question for the right object (turns out, “ummm” is so common that no one in an Honors class got that one right). Yet another year, the right question would be the question that was the sum of the digits of the day’s date (if the date was 2/4, it would be the 6^th question).

It was a wonderful assignment, because the students couldn’t cheat and look it up on the web, or even in a fraternity file of successful assignments. What they had to do was take notes every day, about all sorts of random stuff, and look for patterns. Incidentally, while it drove the “A” students nuts, baseball and softball players often did quite well, because they were used to thinking about “indicator signs” from third-base coaches to batters, from catchers to pitchers, etc, where there’s some sign that indicates that the next sign is the one that contains the information they’re looking for.

In any case, they had to take notes in a cheap “blue book”, and I’d grade them mostly on how good their strategy was, not on whether they got the right answer. We’d run the project for about six weeks, but in the middle, I’d have them turn in their blue books one weekend, and I’d look through them and give advice on how to improve their strategy.

One year, I was looking through the blue books, and on the inside front cover of one of the blue books, the student’s name was written about a dozen times, each one different from the others. I was really puzzled, until I realized whose blue book it was. It was Brad Glenn.

At the time Brad was batting third (i.e., one of the best hitters) for the Arizona baseball team, and ended up second in school history in career home runs. Arizona has a long and deep baseball tradition, with four national championships, and where any season without a national ranking is a disappointment. Many of the players go on to MLB careers (the Diamondbacks had two on the roster in 2024), so if you’re one of the best players, your chances of playing professionally are very, very good, and if you play professionally, you’re obviously dreaming of making it to the majors.

I concluded that he was practicing autographs! I didn’t say anything about it, but I wish I’d made a photocopy of that page and kept it. I’m sure he signed a few autographs in those weeks he was in the big leagues, and probably quite a few more in the five years in the minor leagues leading up to that, and the year in the minors after that. I wonder if his autograph looked like one of the ones I saw. He had 656 hits in the minors, and only one in the majors, but he did make it to the majors, and he did get a hit there, even if it was only one. I was thrilled when I saw he’d gotten called up, because I knew him when…

The game: Toronto Blue Jays 8, Arizona Diamondbacks 1

The Blue Jays' Bo Bichette, who hit a home run in the 9th inning of the game the night before, hit the second pitch thrown by Diamondbacks' starter Eduardo Rodríguez for a home run. The game was effectively over at that point, although it was still only a one-run game for a more innings. The Jays' starter, Eric Lauer, was unhittable, and although Rodríguez pitched well after that (allowing a lot of base runners, but only one more run), those auditioning for relief pitcher roles didn't look so good.

It rained much of the day in Toronto, and there was about a 25% chance of rain throughout the evening, so the retractable roof was closed. That leads to two comments:

First, it was a much nicer looking stadium the night before, with a clear sky and the CN Tower, than it was with the roof closed.

Second, I'd much rather give up the aesthetics of an open-air stadium for an evening if it meets playing the game at the scheduled time, rather than waiting hours to start (as happened to us at Atlanta and El Paso), having a rain delay in the middle of the game (as happened at Atlanta and Denver), or cancelling the game altogether (as happened at Round Rock). Tonight in Syracuse, the forecast is pretty wet (I think it may be the same storm), and there aren't any AAA stadiums with retractable roofs, so we'll see what happens.