Clock is Ticking as Blue Jays Scramble For a Home Park

Published on July 22nd, 2020 11:47 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


Major League Baseball is set to resume on Thursday night.

As of this moment, however, the Toronto Blue Jays remain without a home, roughly one week out from their planned home debut.

As the league's lone Canadian team, the Blue Jays were always going to be in a sticky situation. How would they cross the border to play games in the United States, and how would teams travel from the United States to play in Canada?

The Blue Jays were hoping to get some assistance from the Canadian government in the form of an exemption, so that they could travel to the United States without having to quarantine for two weeks every time that they return. In addition, they wanted the same for teams travelling to play in Canada.

The Canadian government turned the Blue Jays down, saying that they wouldn't allow teams to travel back and forth into Canada, for fear that they may bring the Coronavirus with them.

This left the Blue Jays scrambling for a park to play in this year.

The team thought that they had a deal worked out with the Pittsburgh Pirates to use their home park. Things seemed to match perfectly, as the Blue Jays and Pirates barely had any overlapping home games.

The Blue Jays were dealt another blow on Wednesday after government officials in the state of Pennsylvania turned their request down as well, citing the increased risk of having more players travel in and out of the state.

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The Blue Jays have to find a park to play in over the next week. According to reports, there are four options that the club is currently considering:

1) Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore (assuming that government officials OK the request)

2) The Blue Jays' spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida

3) The Blue Jays' AAA facility in Buffalo, New York

The fourth and final option would see the Blue Jays playing as the home team in the park of the team that they are playing. This would result in a 60-game road trip for the club, which would put them at a massive disadvantage.

The Jays have expressed their desire to play in a real Major League ballpark this year, which would seemingly put option #1 as the front-runner.

In addition, Florida is a hot spot for the Coronavirus, so you can see why the team wouldn't want to play there as well.

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This is really an exceptional situation, and the clock is ticking for the Blue Jays to find a solution.