Blue Jays begin what they and fans hope is the ultimate redemption arc after last year's Game 7 heartbreaker

John Schneider shook his head, laughing at the absurdity of it all, and then gave an honest answer. Was the Blue Jays manager still waking up in the middle of the night, jarred out of a deep sleep, replaying all the myriad moves he could have made during last year’s epic but excruciating loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the World Series. 

"Baseball guys, we suck, you know?” Schneider said, smiling. “We're so weird. If I'm watching guys hitting in BP [batting practice], I think why couldn't you do that [in a game]? So, yeah, it’s still happening but it's way less than it was. My wife hated me. She was screaming at me, ‘Go to sleep!’ 

“But I think until you get back there, until you win one, it's part of you, right? What I've realized is it's not going to define us. It's not gonna define me, Vlad [Vladimir Guerrero Jr.] or anyone here. 

“What will define us is how we handled ourselves, how we played, and what that does for us going forward. That should be the definition of what we take out of 2025. Was it fun? Hell, yeah. Did it suck? Hell, yeah. But how we handled it and what we got out of it is going to define us going forward.”

This season will be a celebration of the 50th year of existence for the Blue Jays but the mood among Canadians who follow the team is far from nostalgic. The expectations for 2026 are enormous — and so is the interest based on data. Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was the most-watched Rogers broadcast in history, averaging 10.9 million viewers. Sportsnet said the game peaked at 14 million viewers around midnight ET. Those are extraordinary communal numbers and you can hardly find anything in Canada short of the Olympic Games that brings so many Canadians together.

What fans of the