[isaidso]

Originally Posted by JHikka

The Jays aren't really a home market of 37M when you take into account the proximity of other teams to other Canadians (Seattle/BC, Minnesota/MB, Boston/East Coast...not even including the complete black hole that is Quebec for the Jays). Why would someone in BC be a Jays fan when they have Seattle nearby on a timezone that works better for them? It's not as if Canadians are afraid to support NFL teams despite there being no presence for the league in Canada whatsoever in the team category. The Jays are a great bandwagon team for Canada as a whole (except Quebec) but that's about it. They're a nifty thing to do for Canadian tourists visiting Toronto in the summer, that's for sure.

The Blue Jays are a Toronto team that happen to be the only Canadian team in the MLB. Pretty much ends there IMO.

That may be the case where you live but it certainly wasn't while I was growing up in Halifax. The Jays were very much followed like it was our own team. If one was ignorant of geography you'd never know that Toronto was 2000 km away. It wasn't some nifty thing to do when visiting Toronto either. It was more like a great day to finally see your team live after watching 500 Blue Jays games on television.

Perhaps baseball just isn't part of the culture where you are in Ottawa. I don't think basketball is either. I certainly noticed the cultural gulf between Ottawa and Halifax when attending the Final 8 in Ottawa. It was immediately evident that basketball wasn't part of Ottawa culture. The arena was half empty (Ottawa fans only outnumbered Nova Scotians by about 2:1) and most of the Ottawa crowd looked like they'd never been to a game before.