Being better teammates when everything is great and when everything sucks the worst.
“Life is a series of bounces. Some will go your way. Some will not.
What makes you a man is what you do after the bounces go your way.
What makes you a man is what you do when the bounces don’t go your way.”
I wrote that for a piece regarding a very different historical moment in Toronto/Canadian Sports: Marc Gasol of the 2019 Toronto Raptors demonstrating what being a better teammate to others can look like in victory.
The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays offered us more than an inspiring last-to-first improbable run that fell just one bounce, one inch (or centimeter, or pitch, or hit) short of glory. They also offered us models of manhood and being better teammates to one another in moments of crushing defeat as well as collective success.
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The 2025 World Series featured the defending champions: the storied, star-studded Los Angeles Dodgers. A group of all-stars who were supposed to be here. Almost every baseball expert and talking head expected their inevitable repeat as champions.
Inevitability, however, ended up clashing with the Improbable this year.
Toronto men’s professional sports teams had not lost a major championship series (NHL, NBA, MLB) since the 1960’s. The problem has been getting into a championship series. This season’s Toronto ballclub – who finished dead last in the tough A.L. East division a year prior – quietly created something magical while tucked away up north, ignored by American baseball media until they no longer could.
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THE POWER OF BELIEVING AND INVESTING IN YOUR TEAM AND TEAMMATES
Ernie Clement is a loveable, bouncy Blue Jays player who walked to the stadium just like the fans of the team, sometimes interacting with them along the way. He was another of those players which Toronto seemingly had plenty of: dudes who’d been in the game for a while and seen as ‘just a guy’.
He became adored by Jays fans, affectionately referred to as one of the ‘Roommates‘: A small group of Jays players who lived together during spring training and then the regular season.
That bonding and brotherly care soon became infectious across their workplace: the locker room and on the field. In a game of egos and larger-than-life performers, something genuine and warm was forming… deepened friendships.
More men and young men can learn to deepen our friendships, to cultivate and nurture them, Not just by knowing and hanging with a dude for years, but by opening up together, trying together, failing together, and growing together. Supporting one another and nurturing spaces between us where we aren’t afraid to express care, trust and passion for one another. A playing field to grow as men and young men, as human beings.
The club was a collection of odds and ends. A few great veteran performers who were written off as ‘washed up’. A number of journeymen and not-so-young players who were running out of time to make it work before they’d have to give up the dream. A brotherly duo of young franchise players about to hit their prime playing years as well as free agency in Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Both sons of great players who – under intense scrutiny and heightened expectations – each had yet to perform in the postseason.
During this 2025 season however, under manager and long-time Blue Jay John Schneider (who also came up with Bo and Vlad in the Jays development system as their minor league manager) those players found someone who believed in them.
Managers and team front offices can choose to just suddenly move on from players, and not invest in the long-game of building their confidence and trust, Schneider instead stubbornly invested a steady believe and faith in the ability of his guys. Former Blue Jay Kevin Pillar said Schneider’s biggest message to his players was to: “just be you, I’m gonna find the right situation for you to be you, and just be you.”
The permission to be yourself around the group – at work and in life. The ability to trust in yourself and perform. To believe in one another as teammates and co-workers because someone trusts and believes in you.
What a difference it makes when someone has your back.
One player who was an example of the potential to bloom within this kind of workplace culture was Clement. The journeyman middle fielder was finally given a chance to play consistently here in Toronto. Clement took the opportunity, the invested faith in the player he could be, and ran with it all the way to becoming the player with the most hits in one postseason in the history of the game.
The bonding they all helped create off the field translated into success on the field.
True Magic.
The Power of Friendship. True teammates where we work, study, live, pray, and play. Only if more men and boys valued this kind of strength.
In the opening round against the ‘evil empire’ New York Yankees (who most experts predicted would beats Toronto) one of the Yankees TV talking heads said about Ernie: “nobody’s ever heard of this guy.”. Clement just kept swinging. This guy became The Guy.
The Jays held the most comeback victories of any team this season, A testament to their resiliency and belief they were never defeated, never out, as long as they pulled together as men, as a team. In service of one another and the collective vision, they hit and played unselfishly and it because infectious.
Players like Clement played with an infectious gratitude and joy.
THE POWER OF BEING A BETTER MAN
In my work, I talk to men and young men about how we all have an impact on our workplace culture, campus culture, and locker room or clubhouse culture. We shape it in what we say or do, what we don’t say and don’t do.
When asked in an interview what was the moment that defined his career, Clement said: “Well, I think I think baseball is a game of so much failure and the first thing that pops up is getting released by Oakland …a good wakeup call… that was that was the universe kind of telling me: ‘hey, you’re not doing something right. You need to make a change …better at at being a baseball player, being a better human being.’”
How can we as men show up for ourselves and each other in a caring, compassionate, accountable and open-hearted way? Those lessons can turn inform how we show up for the women and gender-expansive people in our lives that we love, those we know, and those we don’t know. These guys demonstrated being the kind of teammates I speak about being in my workshops, trainings and talks with young men and male athletes. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. embodied much of the helpful ideas of manhood I try to instill amongst guys.
Since 2016 Blue Jays fans like myself have dreamed on the promise of this young kid, having seen video footage of him, smashing baseballs. We all fondly remembered older footage of him in Montreal as a precious little infant on the field with his famous father.
Not only did we finally see the extraordinary promise fulfilled this postseason of the player Vladdy could be on the field – think Neo in The Matrix finally realizing he is ‘The One’ – he also stepped further into maturity as a man. We saw Vladdy bloom into a loving and present father to his daughter, and as a leader for his teammates both on and off the field. He told his teammates if they were nervous during the biggest game they’d ever played in, just look at me.
Another powerful example of being a positive model of a healthier, helpful idea of masculinity was his choosing to embrace Canadian Women’s Hockey icon Marie-Philip Poulin and wear her game-worn hockey jersey into the stadium for Game 7 of the World Series. Poulin was known as ‘Captain Clutch’ for executing some of the most clutch gold-winning performances for Team Canada regardless of gender. She scored the game-winning goal in the gold medal games in three out of four of the Olympics in which she competed.
How can we be courageous enough as men and young men to stand up for women and girls in sport and in life? Just look at him.
What a difference it makes when someone has your back.
What a simple yet powerful example Vlad set for other men – and more importantly young men and boys. To not only value women, but to literally put that on his back when all eyes would watch him walk into the most important game of his life.
Fans of all genders, people of Toronto and across Canada wanted this win so bad. The now-well known atmosphere created within the domed Rogers Centre rivalled American college football stadium for its chest-rattling noise. Toronto needed this, and it had been a hard year for Canada,
Meanwhile – as my pal Kay Brown, a Dodgers fam reminded me – the city of Los Angeles had a very rough year with the horrific fires that destroyed the homes of both the rich and the poor as well as beloved areas in various communities. Then there was targeted collective home invasion of the city by ICE – cruelly transformed into a high-powered war machine, a personal terror squad of a mad fascist would-be-King.
Sadly, the Dodgers principal owner Mark Walter – CEO of Guggenheim – is an investor in private prisons, including ICE detention facilities, and tech used to surveil and track immigrants. LA has one of the highest Latinx populations in the U.S. Walter empowered the targeting and harassment of the very communities that make up much of the Dodgers fan base. So as Los Angeles communities fought for their freedom, humanity and lives, some could find joy, empowerment, and solace in cheering on the same team their privileged neighbors were also cheering on.
Someone had to win, someone had to lose. Winning, however, doesn’t have to come at the expense of your humanity or the humanity of others,
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THE POWER OF GETTING BACK UP
The Toronto Blue Jays prepared for the biggest fight in over 30 years for the franchise: a dance in the World Series ring with the LA Dodgers. Over the course of the year I quietly said to my friends who were Dodgers fans: “Jays-Dodgers World Series?” I think none of them believed it. I did, When it actually came to be, most of them told me: “We are gonna crush you”. The overwhelming narrative after all was David versus Goliath.
Which, as Clement pointed out, was an odd choice of words…
Numerous times the Blue Jays found themselves in the dream-scenario children play out alone in the silence of their backyards or together in wide open fields. Whispering that well-worn imaginary play-by-play call to themselves like a prayer that they would come through if put in a situation that mattered the absolute most:
“Bottom of the 9th. Game 7 of the World Series. Tied Game and the Bases are Loaded. Here comes (insert your name) to the plate.”
This moment – standing on the edge of glory – arrived for the Blue Jays and their fans. Their brotherhood forged the Blue Jays into a group of resilient overachievers who fought their way to the World Series to wrestle not only the Dodgers, but suddenly having to face off with The Baseball Gods of Fate who decided to join the game in the late moments. They were seemingly determined to stop the Jays in the last inning of both Game 6 and Game 7’s from winning. Multiple improbable moments unfolded at the most critical moments as something unbelievable happened and happened again. If just one of those plays were to happen in a series it would be talked about in disbelief. Each one stayed the execution for the Dodgers in the last hour, again and again and again.
The World Series became a World Series of Unfortunate Events for the Blue Jays and their fans, and yet the Jays kept getting back up.
Those resilient Blue Jays finally couldn’t answer the bell one last time however, as Fox announcer Joe Davis said on his clinching call after the last play: “To beat the champ, you gotta knock ’em out!!” NBA Los Angeles Lakers co-owner and legend Magic Johnson – not a stranger to Game 7’s himself – said: “we were both throwing haymakers, left and right. It reminds me of the great (Muhammad) Ali-(Joe) Frazier fights, when they were going back and forth for 15 rounds — because Toronto kept coming.”
In the end Toronto ran out of their own seemingly endless season-long supply of Magic. The Baseball Gods of Fate chose Dynasty over Destiny.
THE POWER OF BEING A GOOD TEAMMATE WORKING THROUGH STRESS AND GRIEF TOGETHER.
Hours later: Clement stood to talk with media – as most of the team did, still lingering in the locker room, having showered and changed. Players on the losing side usually sort through and heavy emotions in private before opening their sacred workspace to reporters, suppressing the heaviness, armed with quick comments and cliché statements. This team actually let the press into the space mid-mourning and grieving. They sat in their lockers and staring into ceilings and walls that projected what could have been. Long hugs and grieving together. Ernie, however, was still in his dirt-covered game uniform, his eye black still on. Not wanting to go, not wanting to say goodbye to his teammates.
Here is that now infamous video of Ernie after losing Game 7 of the World Series.
It wasn’t just the players who felt the void once the season ended. Old and new fans across the land we call Canada, and admirers worldwide didn’t want to say goodbye. They adored the way they played the game, and the way played for one another.
With a population of over 41 Million people, at one point 18.5 Million Canadians watched all or some of that Game 7 of the World Series. While they lost arguably the greatest World Series of all time – most watched in decades – they won the hearts and respect of people worldwide. A group of has-beens, never-will-be’s, and should-have-been’s fought like true champions and demonstrated the power of male friendship.
The power of – rather than being self-centered athletes – being better teammates.
Even Mad Max Scherzer – cherished as one of Baseball’s all-time warriors known for expressing unrivaled intensity and anger when it was his day to pitch – experienced and expressed to the press a different set of emotions: open sadness through tears.
Watching the Jays make the improbable climb from last place and climb the mountain and take the Mighty Dodgers as close as 2 outs away from unprecedented victory was like watching all nine hours of the Lord of the Rings trilogy just to see Sauron, Saruman and the Nazgûl defeat Frodo, the hobbits and Aragorn. They were one win, one swing, one pitch, one bounce away. The Toronto sports fan base has had decades of disappointment and stinging defeat, this one topped them all.
How do we move forward through grief? We can face it alone, or be better teammates and sort through it as a team together. I was so moved by fans sharing their collective grief online. This one image was most haunting:
This is a helpful series of Instagram slides from VOX Mental Health for Blue Jays fans on navigating grief. Lessons that can be applied in many of our everyday moments and endeavors.
Baseball is a game of failure. Hitters who succeed three times out of ten are considered amazing. Not many professions where that success rate means you’ll be around for long. Getting through the ups and downs of life requires the emotional ‘muscle’ (emotional growth, literacy, and agility) as well as support systems around you to get you through.
Many young fans were watching too. It was a moment for boys to learn lessons on how to move forward after crushing disappointment and defeat. Here’s a great clip from a child therapist on how processing disappointment and losing openly and together is so key for young boys to grasp.
Again, modelling for men and boys not just what we do when we win, but also when the bounces don’t go our way.
Sportsnet’s Blue Jays in-game reporter Hazel Mae described Clement as one of the most positive people she’s ever seen in the game, whether he goes hitless or hits a home run. I think of Vladdy dancing in the dugout whether he was doing well or struggling. Hearing stories of – after stinging defeats – the Jays doing what they always do win or lose: go right into the locker room and rather than sit alone in silence, would put some music on and started playing cards together. It’s not because they didn’t care enough, it’s the opposite. They cared a LOT. They knew the best way to deal with defeat or a loss is to be in community, sit together and talk about it, but also turn the page and keep moving forward. That’s the workplace culture they created.
They learned how to truly be a team together, to be better teammates.
Bo Bichette came back from a devasting knee injury, still hurt, and accepted playing a different position than his much-coveted shortstop spot. A key star player saying he’d play a role part in order to help the team win. Humility. Teamwork.
Hazel Mae talked about Ernie Clement walking over and checking in on her in the middle of a World Series game when she had her face in her hands due to the tension of it all. In the middle of the most critical time of his career – Clement modelled what it’s like to be present, to be a better teammate to everyone around you. That’s the kind of kindness we can share with people around us, even in the middle of a moment that matters the most, kindness matters too.
Building the emotional muscle to navigate life’s highs and lows in a healthier way as a man is key. We can spot one another in building that kind of muscle. Having and being a good teammate to those around you is a big part of success in living. Who will be there to celebrate with you when bounces go your way is one thing. Who you have around you for when the bounces don’t go your way matters more. Who you are when things go or don’t go your way matters just as much.
THE POWER OF TRUE LOVE
The Blue Jays showed what positive masculinities, true love for your brothers and teammates, and being resilient is all about for men and boys everywhere. Fell short but inspired millions, and made many new baseball fans across the land.
We fell in love with these loving men, these true teammates.
Crushed but never down for the count, because all this team ever did was ignore the doubters, show up for the fight, get punched in the face and get back up. Never. Give. Up.
‘cause that how winning is done.
Blue Jays President and CEO Mark Shapiro shared these words with fans across the land: “You saw their toughness, their resilience, their character, and above all, their love for one another. No group could better represent what it means to be a teammate. It wasn’t just how they played; it is who they are as human beings. Their unity and selflessness brought people together across our country. In a time when we all needed it, our Blue Jays inspired us, lifted us, and united us – all through the game we love.“
The hurt will last forever, the love for the game and community they kindled and re-kindled with so many will live on as well.
Keegan Matheson wrote this about a particularly moving public moment in that locker room:
“They moved softly across the room, hugging one another, thanking one another, exchanging that quiet moment of eye contact that either says “I love you” or “I’ll see you soon.” …Chris Bassitt, set to be a free agent at 36, stood at his locker and turned slowly, sensing the cameras waiting behind him, but his manager cut in to stop him. Before the questions started, John Schneider said he needed one more moment with his pitcher.
Schneider and Bassitt grabbed one another and didn’t let go, Schneider burying his face into Bassitt’s shoulder and Bassitt burying his into the shoulder of his manager. They spoke so only they could hear, Bassitt’s big right hand smacking Schneider’s back once, twice, three times. He grabbed a fistful of Schneider’s shirt. He didn’t want to let go. “I hope I have another chance with this group. I love this group. I love these guys,” Bassitt said, his eyes welling up. “You just never know, but I would love to have another shot with this group. Even Bassitt couldn’t hold back the emotion. He had to stop and look up to the ceiling, wiping his eyes. Bassitt is stubborn, often stoic on the field, but suddenly all of this emotion came pouring out of him.
“It’s hard to replicate true love,” Bassitt said. “You can try to replicate this and a lot of people will try, but it’s not really possible. This group is really, really special.”
True Love.
Bassitt – who along with his wife donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Jays Care Foundation supporting young fans from coast to coast – described his relationship with his teammates as ‘True Love’.
What a beautiful thing to have a healthy, loving, caring and supportive brotherhood amongst men. To nurture and cultivate friendships as men. To love and to be loved. To love a beautiful game, even when that game sometimes doesn’t love you back.
A testament to the workplace, the team culture, and community they created together not only as players but also staff as well as family and their loved ones was this post by Kara Bieber, wife of Jays pitcher Shane Bieber.
With the season over and holding the option in his pre-existing contract to leave and try for a new contract elsewhere for millions of more dollars, the Biebers decided to stay (no doubt a long -term deal will likely follow as other pieces fall into place for 2026).
Imagine that, a working and playing environment created together that people of all genders (the players’ partners and wives included) love working in, being part of, wanting to stay in.
Being a teammate to others extends beyond all divides, even sports fandom:
There’s nothing to be ashamed of in defeat. There is crying in baseball. Men can openly express their love for each other and for the warm space they create together
…especially in defeat. There’s victory in that.
Jeff is a speaker and writer who has talked to audiences across North America/Turtle Island
since 2008. Jeff speaks on men helping end gender-based violence, and moving from
harmful to helpful ideas of manhood. Jeff talks with adults, young people and male athletes
on how we can be better teammates where we work, live, study, worship, and play.
… a little bonus for Jays fans:
(Thanks to you too, Gord)
Higher Unlearning 