By Alex Kurtz, Sports editor
Tuesday night was a normal night for most baseball fans, as most of us were eagerly waiting for opening day to come in just a few short days. One game though proceeded to transcend the baseball world.
In their final game of spring training the Toronto Blue Jays were tied at zero with the St. Louis Cardinals in the bottom of the ninth with two outs.
While this is usually a pretty tense situation during the regular season or postseason, this is a spring training game that has no relative factors for anything towards the season. This however, was different then the usual.
The first factor was that the game was in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Montreal has not had a MLB franchise for years, and the fans there are more passionate than some current teams in the league.
The next was the fact that former Montreal Expos star Vladimir Guerrero’s son: Vlad Guerrero Jr., was on the Blue Jays’ roster for the game wearing his dad’s old number 27. Fans turned out in droves after the Blue Jays announced that he would be playing during the Montreal trip for Toronto.
With all this in mind, fast forward back to the game against the Cardinals. Guerrero Jr. is at bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. His dad, the Expos legend, is sitting almost right behind home plate recording his son during his at-bat.
On a 1-0 pitch, Guerrero Jr. smashed an inside fastball into left-center field with a swing that was a near carbon-copy of his father for a walk-off solo home run that gave everyone that watched it goosebumps.
I remember when I was younger watching Vladimir Guerrero smash fastballs into the stands during his time with the Angels and eventually my Rangers towards the end of his legendary career, but most young baseball fans missed out on the opportunity to see the future Hall of Famer destroy opposing pitchers on the daily.
For one second, one brief second though, young baseball fans got to see a Vlad Guerrero , wearing his fathers’ old number 27 absolutely smash a ball in the stadium his father started a legendary career in to win a game for a Canadian team. While Guerrero Jr. was not in an Expos uniform, it was about as close as it could be for a city still mourning the loss of their beloved franchise that moved away in 2004 to Washington D.C.
Guerrero Jr. was also the first Quebec-born player to hit a home run in Olympic Stadium and gave Expos fans the little sliver of baseball hope that they had been disparately craving for the past 15 years.
This is why baseball is one of the best sports in the world. Moments like these show how strong a bond can be between a city and their team.
