#6. Living in the Moment (Monday, October 20, 2025)

What was your best day…of living in the moment?

I know the retrospective view has been a hallmark of all one-hundred-and-twenty-four stories up to this point, but this one only works if I tell every single part of it exactly as I stood at the time. I think you know why.

Origins

I first get introduced to this mysterious bat-and-ball game at six years old, through my father. I pick up on the rules and the rhythm and the aesthetic of this game surprisingly quickly, to the point that Game 7 of the 1997 World Series—where the Marlins walk off the Indians in extra innings (#102)—becomes one of my early defining memories.

Other things about this sport stand out to me. Baseball has no clock: it moves forward not passively, but through direct actions and outcomes that the players on the field must initiate. Each player is forced to perform their role individually, with no hiding behind or being propped up by stronger teammates. And there are so many numbers on the screen, capturing so many different dimensions of the game beyond the score, giving me and my advanced math brain something to latch onto at every moment.

Most notably, the team I’ve been told to like—the Toronto Blue Jays—are perpetual underdogs. I see the teams from New York and Boston end every season ahead of the Blue Jays by a large margin, I know that the sight of my team winning is inherently a rare one. A sight to be treasured. Which causes me to configure each day’s happiness from April to September around the outcome of the Blue Jays game.

An eternity goes by without the Blue Jays breaking through, until I’m twenty-four, when I witness the excitement of 2015 (#97) and Jose Bautista’s bat flip (#15). The run ends in the sixth game of the League Championship Series: only two games away from the World Series goal.

And I’ve lived through enough Blue Jays history to know that it could be decades, if ever, before they get this close again.

2025 Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays start the season off mediocre, as expected. But then in June, they go on a ten-game win streak (which coincides with most of my Dolomites vacation, #96). They continue playing well, powered by frighteningly consistent over-performances across the roster and specifically the resurgence of outfielder George Springer, and end up clinching the American League East division title over the New York Yankees on the last day of the season.

They then defeat their hated, always-superior rivals in a lopsided four games in the Division Series, fueling the belief that this has to be the year.

But then, in the League Championship Series against the also-surprising Seattle Mariners, they drop the first two games at home, but then recover to win the next two in Seattle, before blowing a late lead in Game 5 on Friday night to land one game away from elimination.

I’m heartbroken and fearing this could be it. But still, with this being a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness my beloved sports team maybe go further in the playoffs than it had in my (conscious) lifetime, I know what I need to do. Buy tickets for Game 6. And Game 7, if necessary.

As I take off on the Sunday afternoon train to Toronto, a part of me inside tells me that just being there for this high-stakes game(s) will be enough (#57). But if they do, somehow, pull off the (mini-)miracle and win both games at home—including a climactic Game 7—to clinch the pennant and go to their first World Series in 32 years? No, I don’t even want to dream about it at this point.

Game 6 has a few critical moments early, with rookie phenom starter Trey Yesavage getting out of some early jams with bases-loaded double plays in consecutive innings. But by mid-game, with the Jays continuing to add on to their lead, it just feels like this is destined to go to a deciding game.

And it does. 6-2 final for the Jays. It was time.

Game 7

Game seven is the greatest phrase in sports, arguably ever (#102). Just like in 1997, two teams’ full seven-month seasons have collided at the most critical point, where every run, every play is magnified in importance by a factor of hundreds over any normal game.¹

And tonight, from my seat in the 100-level outfield, I will get to see every one of those plays, for a team that has defined my life in a way that very few other things have. I can’t even truly conceptualize the idea.

The atmosphere of this Monday adds to the disorientation. I’m working from my institution’s Toronto office, on the 30th floor of some skyscraper near the stadium, and it’s not a normal day at work either. My team is between directors, so the other principal Martin and I are de facto in charge. And there are two key projects at their busiest stage—this full-scale data excavation for a cross-institutional investor relations push, and our annual plan that will go into the federal budget two weeks from now.

So, throughout the entire extended work day, baseball literally does not enter my mind.² By six-thirty (ninety minutes before game time), I’ve compiled a substantial update on the data project. So I send an e-mail to the thirty or so relevant people at both my institution and the government, signing off my message with, “I have more thoughts, but right now I’ve got a Game 7 to attend.”

In an instant, I rush the ten or so blocks down to Rogers Centre. And the mania for Game 7 feels oddly subdued. It’s like this is just another baseball game being played. And, in a way, it is. The field, the hot dogs (which I grab two of), the player intros, the monolithic mass of fans… they’re still the same. All that’s changed is the hidden, inner knowledge—in the minds of both teams and the fifty thousand in the stands—that these next nine innings will matter more than any other game in the past three decades of Blue Jays history.

There’s not too much to say about the first six and a half innings. With home runs by their superstars Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez, the Mariners take a 3-1 lead. And for several innings, the Blue Jays offense can’t generate anything. It’s feeling like one of those games that just ends with a whimper. And as heartbreaking as such an ending would be, part of me has already physically—if not mentally—accepted that as the outcome.

Then the Bottom of the 7th comes. A walk and a single and sacrifice, and suddenly the Jays are one hit away from tying it. All of that offensive anemia could be erased by one swing of the bat, but it has to be the next one. If they don’t score with this golden opportunity here, we all know they wouldn’t be getting another chance.

The first few pitches of George Springer’s at-bat have long escaped me. Because all I can recall is the ball coming off Springer’s bat not looking like anything special immediately, feeling like it’ll at least be a sacrifice fly to bring the game within one run, and then… in one split-second that has both been permanently seared and blanked out from my memory, seeing that small white sphere drop right at the edge behind the railing, amid a crowd of fans, fifteen rows of seats in front of me.

It’s a moment that I see. And hear (through the immediate pounding of uncontrolled Zombie Nation chants across the stadium, that I’ve unconsciously joined in). And feel (through the literal shaking amid the section of fans around me and the stadium). But I can’t recognize this as the reality; I can’t live in it, quite yet. All hell has broken loose in the Rogers Centre, but the fact that the Jays have suddenly flipped that deficit into a one-run lead and are now six outs away from going to the World Series hasn’t really materialized in my mind.

Over the next inning and a half, it gradually does. And as the Top of the 9th comes, with the Jays still clinging onto their one-run lead and closer Jeff Hoffman coming out, my heart and brain have reached their climax. This is it. Just three outs away, but one wrong pitch could erase it all. I feel a numbness begin inside me, and by the time Hoffman obtains the first out, I literally cannot move.

Literally. I can’t even cheer or clap or do anything, because the sheer overload of my nervous system has constricted all of my movement. I can only half-kneel on the seat in front of me³, helpless and unable to feel any human sensation, as Hoffman gets the second out.

At this point, I can’t get any more numb. It’s now just a simple state of total emotional takeover and physical immobilization, which will be resolved one way or another in this span of at-bats by Julio Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh, the two home-run hitters today.

It gets to a full count. And then Hoffman throws a slider that is ball four; but Rodriguez swings. And misses. And the Toronto Blue Jays are going to the World Series.

I scream that phrase and nothing else, repeatedly, for the next five minutes, as the bodily lockdown gets released and I collapse into the arms of the man standing next to me, as him and the hundreds in my section and the fifty thousand in the stadium and the millions across the country let out a reaction of the purest jubilation. A reaction that will go on for hours afterward, as we join the celebration behind home plate and then eventually out in the streets until the latest hours of the night.⁴

The Toronto Blue Jays are going to the World Series. A statement I had longed to hear for nearly thirty years. And now, finally, it was reality.

N.B. What happened during this World Series? We’ll leave that to an even higher-ranked entry on the other list.

1. They literally have a self-explanatory measure for it, Championship Win Probability Added (cWPA), and the key play in this upcoming game will create the highest swings in cWPA out of any game in American League playoff history.
2. Except for each time a co-worker on one of the ten video calls that day notices my new background and automatically infers and vocalizes the reason for it.
3. I’m sure the fans around would’ve noticed and been seriously concerned, if it wasn’t for the other much more important thing in front of them drawing everyone’s attention.
4. I’ll note here that I somehow got in at seven-thirty the next morning and had another extremely productive day; I had no choice, as it was the day we had to make those final key decisions for our annual plan.