How Trump’s antagonism of Canada is affecting this year’s World Series

Toronto — Louis Acosta, a Dodgers fan from Santa Clarita, flew to Toronto on Friday to support his home town team for their fifth World Series appearance in the last 9 years. During Game 1 at the Rogers Centre, he proudly wore his Dodgers shirt and cap amid the opening ceremonies.

Prior to the game, Acosta visited a bar inside the stadium where a Blue Jays fan offered to buy him a beer after noticing his L.A. team gear. “It was weird,” Acosta said laughing. “The guy didn’t mind that I was a Dodgers fan as long as I hadn’t voted for Donald Trump.”

It might seem odd that the World Series and politics are so entwined this year. Baseball games are often where people go to escape arguments about the polarized state of our country and enjoy rooting for their favorite players and teams. But this season, Canadians are baseball mad, fanatical about supporting the Blue Jays, Canada’s only Major League Baseball team. They are also politically angry for reasons that are clear.

Since President Trump was inaugurated in January, he’s gone out of his way to antagonize Canadians, suggesting that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state, referring to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “Governor” and, most importantly for Canada’s economic well-being, imposing steep tariffs on Canadian products coming into the U.S.

On Saturday, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on Canada, imposed simply because he didn’t like a television ad. The commercial, paid for by the province of Ontario to air during the World Series, features President Reagan’s anti-tariff rhetoric from a 1987 radio address. And as the U.S. is Canada’s biggest export market, the economic sanctions on Canada are starting to bite.

While there’s a complex mix of personalities in all countries, Canadians are generally considered to be friendly and thoughtful, and not prone to outbursts of nationalistic anger. At sporting events you rarely see groups of Canadians shouting “We’re number one!”

At Game 1 on Friday night, which the Blue Jays handily won 11 to 4, Toronto fan Riley Keast explained how he saw the difference between Canadians and Americans.

“Historically Canadians have had what you might call a soft-patriotism, where there is not a lot of flag waving and aggressiveness about it,” said Keast, who works downtown in Toronto’s financial industry. “With the Trump tariffs it all changed and now you see Canada’s strong patriotism.”

A walk through Toronto’s neighborhoods reveals signs of Canadians’ pride, and their willingness to fight back against what many see as an unnecessary humiliation. Signs on grocery stores windows read “Proudly Canadian” and inside the store there are notes that indicate which products are made inside its borders. At liquor stores run by the Ontario Liquor Control Board, a government agency, there are shelves of “USA Alternatives,” where American wines — including California varietals — used to be sold.

One mother at the game, who had her and her daughter’s faces painted with the Blue Jays logo, joked that she’s “not losing any sleep over Donald Trump.” When I stopped to talk to a construction worker who was wearing a Blue Jays’ hoodie, he declared proudly, “This is not a series between Toronto and Los Angeles, this is Canada against the United States.”

Obviously, he didn’t think Canadians would soon be in combat with their American counterparts, but his comments weren’t entirely hyperbolic either. There is an historical context to the current tension. Alan Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of history from the University of Virginia, told me that Trump is not the first American president to talk about the possibility of annexing Canada. In fact, in the 19th century the idea was fairly commonplace.

“When the United States and Britain and Canada were allies after World War I and World War II, and we needed each other during the Cold War, this idea of annexation vanished,” Taylor said. “So why Trump has decided to embrace this in such an insulting way towards the people of Canada as if they don’t value their own sovereignty shows his utter ignorance of Canada. To be blunt, he’s unstable.”

In the meantime, Blue Jays hats and jerseys were ubiquitous throughout Toronto during the team’s first World Series home games since 1993. Women had fingernails painted with the logo, and a festive atmosphere prevailed across Canada’s largest city and throughout the country.

During the games, no one booed when the American or Canadian national anthems were played, contrary to how U.S. fans booed “O Canada” during the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, and at various sporting events since. The rudest that Blue Jays fans got was chanting “We don’t need you” when Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani was up to bat, a reference to Ohtani choosing L.A. over Toronto when he signed as a free agent in 2023. Technically, the chant isn’t accurate, as the Blue Jays managed only four hits during their Game 2 loss.

This week, back in Los Angeles for Games 3, 4 and 5, the Dodgers are playing not just against Toronto, but against “Canada’s team.” And interestingly, both first basemen have Canadian roots. One is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the Blue Jays Gold Glover who was born in 1999 while his father starred for the now-defunct Montreal Expos (who moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005). The other is Dodgers 2024 World Series MVP Freddie Freeman, who was born in Southern California but has dual citizenship, as his parents were raised in Canada. Freeman even played for Canada in the World Baseball Classic in 2017 and 2023 to honor his mother, who died in 2000.

Dodgers fan Louis Acosta said that if he makes it to this week’s games in Chavez Ravine, he’s going to be just as generous to the Canadians in town to cheer on the Blue Jays as their fans were to him in Toronto. “If I see someone with a Blue Jays hat, I’m going to reach out my hand and say, ‘Welcome to Los Angeles. Can I buy you a beer?’”

Kelly Candaele produced the documentary “A League of Their Own,” about his mother’s years playing in the All-American Girl’s Professional Baseball League. He was born in Vancouver, Canada.