The Toronto Blue Jays rarely make the rounds on late-night television, but when you’re one win away from capturing a World Series, people take notice. As all eyes turn to Toronto for the sixth and possibly seventh game of the Fall Classic, even talk show hosts are taking notice and giving the Blue Jays their due.
On Thursday evening, Jimmy Kimmel led off his Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue with a quip about the World Series. With their hometown Los Angeles Dodgers not far away, it seemed like Kimmel and the LA crowd were in dismay, staring down a 3-2 deficit in the series.
Despite the political tensions between Canada and America, Kimmel offered some good-natured ribbing for Canadian baseball fans. The Blue Jays shoutout is right off the top of the show, which is noteworthy in its own right. How often have the Blue Jays taken precedence in a late-night monologue over Donald Trump?
For those who prefer to read rather than watch, Kimmel said:
We kind of had the wind knocked out of us by the Blue Jays this week. On Monday and into Tuesday, the Dodgers won an 18-inning all-time classic. It felt like everything was going their way.
Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Blue Jays come back and win two in a row, which means the series goes back to Toronto, where they’ll be one win away from their first World Series title since 1993.
When Canadian teams win, it can get crazy. They flip over cars, then they apologize for flipping the cars. Then they have the cars washed and brought back to their rightful owners.
The Toronto Raptors won the last professional sports title in Canada in 2019, but the celebrations were relatively good-natured six years ago. Aside from the plant guy holding a fern hostage, the city was mostly intact during that championship celebration.
The Blue Jays have two chances to make history here, with Game 6 tonight and potentially Game 7 on Saturday evening. But if the Blue Jays win it all, you can bet that hosts like Kimmel and others will likely mention Canada’s team during their monologues next week.
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