"Is Toronto-Montreal even a rivalry?"
Assorted thoughts on bubbles
I’m back. And, I could say that part of my absence was a lack of ideas. But, it’s not. I mostly forgot about this, somehow. Then, I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do with this space. And, then, I found the Reddit post that subjects this email, that headlines this article.
Is Toronto-Montreal even a rivalry?
The post referred to hockey, and it was dated January 11, 2018. It’s mostly the fans, it said. It’s hyped by the media, it said. I understand the history, it said.
I guess I don’t know what rivals are. What is a rivalry?
In the time since I wrote my last Highway 401 newsletter, which is about three months ago by now, sports came back from their coronavirus-induced hiatus. Maybe I originally envisioned this as filling the gap while sports were gone, and I didn’t even know it. The twelfth-seeded Canadiens upset the Penguins and qualified for the playoffs; the Maple Leafs lost to the Blue Jackets and did not. (Other Canadian teams are also back, too, of course. The Raptors lost to the Celtics in the playoffs, the Blue Jays qualified for the playoffs then were promptly swept, and I think the three MLS teams are back in action, too.)
But hockey, which I had waited a long time to write about, is the instigator of this week’s email, because it happened so close to me. A lot of it happened twenty minutes down the road, at the Scotiabank Arena. But, even how close it is, how the hockey players were all gathered in a downtown Toronto bubble, it felt so far away. I didn't care about it one bit. It was happening in my city.
Much has been written about the fake crowd noise, the lack of fans, the ongoing pandemic, the way the owners wanted their revenue stream back. Even when they try to sell fans on unity, sports as salve for our problems, we hit bumps in the road. It’s a lot of work keeping a bubble together.
There were only a handful of moments in the NBA’s bubble in Orlando that felt normal to me. My stress levels reached astronomical levels during the end of the Raptors-Celtics series, which was, of course, a return to normalcy for my playoff viewing experiences. An OG Anunoby buzzer-beating three felt a little like it lifted a weight off me, that I could watch sports again. Despite it being “a road game,” I still couldn’t help but picture what it would be like with fans.
The Major League Baseball season was the weirdest to me. A couple of terrifying team outbreaks; a desire to soldier on; a whole host of baseball games that didn’t feel the same. I had no real desire to turn a game on any given night the way I usually did. Then, Justin Turner tested positive for COVID and was out on the field for World Series celebrations nonetheless. I have thoughts on that, but those are for another day.
I always found sports soothing. That, for a while, I could turn the Raptors game on after dinner and watch them swing passes around. That I could hear the skates of the usually-underperforming Toronto Maple Leafs glide on ice. That I could hear the pop of the catcher’s mitt, the crack of the bat.
I missed it when they went on hiatus, but I also didn’t want it back so soon. As Jane McManus said: Sports are like a bonus to a functioning society. They should be, at least, but they often aren’t used that way.
Rivalry, too, should be like an extension to that bonus to the functioning society. The reason sports came back: “Unity.”
League after league, players’ association after players’ association, somewhere along the way it was figured out that the way to sell sports back to us was as the uniting factor we all needed. The calming presence I liked? Everyone could have it again! We need those moments! Right?
But, of course, things are still divided. COVID-19 cases are on the rise again, back to numbers from early on in the pandemic, and frontline workers’ wage increases have gone away. Breonna Taylor has not received the justice she deserves. There’s a lot riding on “What if we returned to normal?”
I don’t like the Boston Celtics, but I had a lot of trouble hating them the way I normally would. I actually like watching Jaylen Brown play basketball! This newsletter mostly goes to family members who will be shocked or surprised (actually, some of you may not be.)
Sports rivalry just doesn’t feel important to me right now*.
(*Okay, maybe, there were enough people in my house to remind me how much I did not like the Houston Astros’ cheating.)
But, anyway, let’s work to fix other stuff and then we can get back to fighting opposing fans about how much we hate their sports team. Enjoy the games we’ve got, but know there are bigger issues at hand. That, when these sports seasons end, there’s a bigger fight to be had. (They’re over now, mostly.) There’s a bigger fight happening now and sports are really only a distraction from it, for many.
This space going forward will be used, when I use it, for distraction stories. I didn’t do current events before here, and I won’t do them now. I love weird and crazy bits of Canadian sports history. I’ll be bringing others who love the same to write their favourite stories up too. But, I will try to highlight a cause worth supporting for each newsletter. Something worth donating money or time or attention to. If we’re going to think about sports now, we can and should hold space in our brains for two thoughts.
Support: Black Lives Matter — Canada
Read: Poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips on the silence of baseball stadiums this season