The oral history of OK Blue Jays

Written by Ben Kaplan

In 1977, the Toronto Blue Jays officially became the ninth expansion team to join Major League Baseball. The team didn’t thrive.

Needing a hit, in 1982, Paul Beeston, then the general manager of the Jays, thought his brand needed a theme song. Beeston called songwriter and ad guy Jack Lenz to work his magic — which would later become OK Blue Jays. 

The song was released in 1983 and received a boom in sales when the Jays went to the World Series in 1992 and 1993. The team is now in the World Series again, for the first time in 32 years.

Read on for a conversation between the songwriters and producers of OK Blue Jays and how the enduring rallying song came together.  

The starting lineup:

Lenz: Paul [Beeston] had a very big cigar. It seemed like he’d be better suited for the New York Yankees than the Toronto Blue Jays, except he had reasonable expectations. He said, "‘Look, we’re an expansion team, we can’t promise too much — if you want to say, 'We’re OK,’ that’s good.’"

Hampshire: The Blue Jays were floundering. They weren’t generating too much attention. We knew what we were there for: they were trying to generate some interest.

Kosinec: OK Blue Jays was an advertising line that they gave us, so we took it and turned it into a call-and-recall kind of chant. When we heard it, it sounded really stupid and goofy — it was perfect — just like sitting there and watching a ball game on a summer afternoon.  

Lenz: We thought it was great because "OK" rhymes with Blue Jays. 

Kosinec: It has sort of that heavy 2/4 feel, which was a '80s thing. But it’s a tongue-and-cheek genre. Randy Newman did it more than anybody, and it feels like a throwback to the '30s and '40s.

Hampshire: I live and breathe