COMMENTARY: Couch-surfing Barger and Blue Jays show world they can’t be underestimated
Blue Jays outfielder Addison Barger slept on the sofa of the man who took his spot in the opening game of the World Series on Friday night.
As Davis Schneider told reporters, Barger needed a last-minute place to stay. Schneider, who lives in a hotel suite overlooking the Rogers Centre outfield, offered his teammate his pullout couch. It turned out it was the least he could do: Schneider, a right-handed hitter, was swapped into the lineup to face L.A. Dodgers starter Blake Snell, who is particularly effective against lefties like Barger.
For the first half of the game, Schneider had an uneventful three at-bats, and then came a plot twist in the household dynamics. Barger ended up pinch-hitting for his roommate in the sixth inning. The Jays were ahead 5-2, bases loaded. The lead was comfortable, but with the defending World Series champs in town, nothing could be taken for granted.
Barger promptly crushed a pitch from relief pitcher Anthony Banda, another lefty, into the right-field seats for a home run that scored the fourth through seventh runs of the inning. It was the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history.
The Jays have some big stars, but Barger represents the other element that has been key to their success: a bunch of guys who scratched and clawed their way on to a major-league roster, and who wouldn’t buy a home in Toronto because they didn’t know how often they would be there. Barger wasn’t on the Jays’ Opening Day roster, and now here he was striking a World Series death blow.
That blow, which gave the Blue Jays a 9-2 lead, suddenly made all the pre-game chatter about how the Dodgers were huge favourites sound overheated.
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If the Jays had spent the better part of the past week hearing about the Dodgers and their ridiculous payroll and their roster of superstars, here they were buckling the knees of their opponent. It was Rocky Balboa landing the blow that cut open Ivan Drago in the fourth Rocky film. With apologies to Duke, Rocky’s trainer: “The Dodgers aren’t machines! They’re just men!”
The night began in a city that was crackling with anticipation. A stroll around the downtown core was like a walk through the memory lane of three decades of Jays jerseys: there was a Joe Carter, Troy Tulowitzki, R.A. Dickey and a Roberto Alomar. Cito Gaston threw the ceremonial first pitch to John Schneider, the only two Blue Jays managers to have ever made it to the World Series. Drake was in the house, and an entire stadium hoped desperately that his presence wouldn’t jinx the game.
Those fears were settled quickly. Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old rookie who has now pitched more playoff games (4) than regular-season games (3) in his major-league career, started in the most spectacular way possible, striking out Shohei Ohtani, merely the greatest baseball player on the planet.
But Yesavage laboured after that, giving up a run in each of the second and third innings as Toronto was unable to muster anything off the intimidating Snell.
This was basically the script that spelled doom for the Jays: a dominant performance from one of the Dodgers’ many aces, and a Toronto starter who wasn’t quite at his best.
And then it all changed. Daulton Varsho smoked a Snell offering over the centre-field wall to tie the game at 2-2. It was the first home run that Snell had surrendered to a left-handed batter in the whole of 2025. More than that, it suggested that, just maybe, the Dodgers, who had lost exactly one game since Sept. 23, would not simply brush the Blue Jays aside like a minor inconvenience on the way to back-to-back World Series championships.
The essence of this Blue Jays team in 2025 has been one where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. On some level, that sounds kind of goofy: wouldn’t you rather have the team that is loaded with All-Stars? But then Game 1 happens, and the Jays, true to form, get contributions from all over their lineup. Two hits from each of George Springer, Ernie Clement and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. Three hits, including a two-run homer, from Alejandro Kirk, the fire-hydrant of a catcher who couldn’t be more different from Ohtani in shape and style, but who can sometimes hit just like him.
By the end of the night, Jays fans were gleefully chanting at Ohtani that they didn’t need him. (He homered to trim the Toronto lead by two runs; maybe don’t poke that bear.)
And, of course, that bomb from Barger, who spent the night on a pullout couch.
TORONTO – One of the highlights of Toronto skipper John Schneider’s first day at the World Series — aside from the 11-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers — was getting a chance to connect with former Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston.
“He’s always been great to me,” Schneider said before Game 2 on Saturday. “He just said, ‘I love what you’re doing, I love the way your team plays and you should be very proud of what you’ve done.’
“And I said, ‘That means a lot coming from you.’”
Gaston, who threw the ceremonial first pitch to Schneider before Game 1, guided the Blue Jays to World Series titles in 1992 and ’93.
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After throwing the pitch, the 81-year-old Gaston asked Schneider to autograph the ball for him since he planned to put it on his mantle.
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“I did and I made him a promise that I need to get one from him,” Schneider said with a smile.
DOGGED APPROACH
Blue Jays catcher Tyler Heineman said his team is well aware the defending-champion Dodgers entered the World Series as heavy favourites.
Los Angeles dropped only one playoff game entering the Fall Classic and boasts a lineup that includes sluggers Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and others.
At the start of the series, the Dodgers were listed as a -220 favourite on BetMGM to win the series while the Blue Jays were at +180.
“We know we’re severe underdogs but that doesn’t matter to us,” Heineman said. “We were severe underdogs at the beginning of this season. We weren’t even supposed to be in the playoffs, yet alone the World Series.
“To the group inside (the clubhouse), that doesn’t hold any weight to us. We know what a special group we have.”
Before Game 2, the sportsbook had L.A. down to a -120 favourite to win the series while the Jays were at +100.
BACK TO BACK
The Dodgers are aiming to become the first team to win consecutive World Series crowns since the New York Yankees won three titles between 1998 and 2000.
Major League Baseball’s current 24-year streak without a repeat champion is the longest of its kind in the history of the so-called Big Four sports (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL).
The Dodgers are the first defending champions to return to the Fall Classic since the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
TORONTO – John Tavares scored his 499th career goal on a breakaway at 1:28 of overtime as the Toronto Maple Leafs snapped a three-game slide with a 4-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.
Nick Robertson, Matias Maccelli and Dakota Joshua provided the rest of the offence for Toronto (4-4-1). Cayden Primeau made 23 saves in place of the rested Anthony Stolarz. Tavares added an assist, Matthews Knies had two of his own.
Tage Thompson scored twice and Bowen Byram had a single for Buffalo (4-4-1). Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 18 shots for the Sabres, who entered having won four of their last five.
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Thompson and Robertson traded goals in the first period. Maccelli and Byram did the same in the second before Thompson and Joshua repeated the feat in the third to set up the OT dramatics.
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The Sabres picked up a 5-3 victory over the Leafs on Friday in Buffalo to snap a five-game slide against Toronto.
The Leafs were minus star winger William Nylander, who was listed as a game-time decision, because of a lower-body injury.
TAKEAWAYS
Leafs: No. 1 defencemen Morgan Rielly was also a game-time decision, but was healthy enough to play after taking warm-up. Nylander sat out for the first time in 267 regular-season contests dating back to April 2022.
Sabres: Luukkonen made his first start of the season after missing the first eight games with a lower-body injury. Alex Lyon picked up Friday’s victory.
KEY MOMENT
After the visitors went up 3-2 in the third on a Thompson power-play goal, Joshua tied the score with under seven minutes to go in regulation.
KEY STAT
Tavares sits one goal shy becoming the 49th player in NHL history to reach 500 for his career.
UP NEXT
Sabres: Host the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday.
Leafs: Host the Calgary Flames on Tuesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
TORONTO – More than three decades after hitting the biggest home run in Blue Jays history, Joe Carter is still feeling the love from Toronto.
Carter threw out the opening pitch to all-star shortstop Bo Bichette ahead of Game 2 of the World Series as the Blue Jays hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday. Carter received a rousing ovation from the packed Rogers Centre, especially after donning Toronto’s home run jacket and jogging through the home dugout.
“I’ve had the emotions for 32 years. I come back here so often,” said Carter, who famously hit a three-run homer to win the 1993 World Series. “I get that wherever I go here in Toronto, which is great. They just appreciate what I did.
“I didn’t do it myself. I just happened to come up in that situation because I was the next guy in line.”
Carter played for the 1992 and 1993 Blue Jays when they won back-to-back World Series. The five-time all-star finished his career with a .259 batting average, 396 home runs, and 1,445 runs batted in over 16 years in Major League Baseball with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, Toronto, the Baltimore Orioles, and the San Francisco Giants.
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He knows, however, that it’s his climactic home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series that he’s best remembered for.
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“It’s going to be a ruckus crowd. It’s going to be loud,” said Carter in a pre-game news conference about an hour before throwing the opening pitch. “I wish I could go back and be (acrobatic St. Louis Cardinals shortstop) Ozzie Smith right now because I said I would kind of run out there and do a backflip with the round-off, you know, a tuck.
“But at 65, no, it’s going to be a walk out there. But it’s going to be fun.”
Carter was also at Rogers Centre for Toronto’s 11-4 victory over Los Angeles in Game 1 on Friday. After the game Carter joined Blue Jays manager John Schneider and his staff in the coaches’ room of Toronto’s clubhouse.
Schneider said it was a treat picking Carter’s brain and that of former Toronto manager Cito Gaston, who threw out the opening pitch before Game 1.
“For one, you forget how big these guys are, like, they’re physical presences,” said Schneider. “I think that swing, obviously the most recognized swing in our franchise.
“So to have him be a part of it is just as cool as having Cito here yesterday and getting to share a few minutes with him and exchange some thoughts.”
Carter said there were quite a few similarities between Toronto’s championship teams of the early 1990s and this year’s club.
“One thing that we had in ’92 and ’93 it was the cohesiveness of the team playing together. Even though we had great players, everybody pulled for one another,” said Carter. “We had the great chemistry in the clubhouse, on the field, and every day it was somebody different. It wasn’t just one guy you could focus on.
“What this 2025 Blue Jays team has is you’ve got from one through nine, everybody coming through.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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