She’s a sportscaster and a trailblazer. But Hazel Mae’s career has been no walk in the ballpark

Toronto Blue Jays sportscaster Hazel Mae doesn’t get a walk-up song, but if she did, she says she knows exactly which one she’d pick:  the viral hit, Golden, from KPop Demon Hunters. 

The choice feels fitting. Mae is marking a golden moment in her 25-year career, during which she’s become a beloved fixture for Blue Jays fans, known for bringing players and their stories from the field to life.

In December, Mae received the Jack Graney Award from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, a lifetime achievement honour for sports journalists — only the second woman ever to do so. And next month, she’ll get the Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism at the Canadian Screen Awards, recognizing her body of work.

“I never, ever really wrapped my head around [the idea] that ‘Hey, maybe one day I’ll be in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame,’” the longtime Sportsnet reporter told The Sunday Magazine’s Piya Chattopadhyay. “Women in general, we don’t stop and kind of pat ourselves on the back when we should. [And] 2025 was an incredible year for the ball club, for my colleagues and I, and I thought: ‘You know what? Let’s just drink it in.’”

Last year, millions more got to know Mae as audiences across Canada and the U.S. tuned in for the Jays’ World Series run. 

But her career path was no walk in the ballpark. It was shaped by sacrifice, starting with her late father, the trailblazer says, who left his own career as a lawyer in the Philippines to immigrate to Canada in 1973.

“He did not know the language, [he] just knew that it would provide a better life for his children and his wife,” Mae said. “Canada … didn’t recognize his law degree …  and so he worked for SickKids hospital.”

It was there that her father caught the