In 2010, rabble rouser Jake Mooney started an online project called the Optimisms Project where writers would write about…well, optimism. It was hosted on the now sort of defunct Torontoist.com. For my instalment, I wrote about baseball and the 2010 Blue Jays home opener and ten years later, that opener was scheduled to be today…March 26, 2020. I post the full entry of that 2010 project “Skydome’s the Limit” below in an effort to connect to an opening day that is not going to happen.

What I may have worn to opening day 2020…

Unlike everything else on the internet, the optimisms project seems to be gone for eternity. Here we are now in 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, away from everyone and everything: baseball’s season is postponed, and pessimism is an understatement perhaps for our collective experience and thoughts for the future. Baseball, as always, is never quite the point of baseball.

There’s a naive kid writing here in 2010, who maybe had a vague sense of his future and thought things would be okay for himself and the people he loved. That he had a vague sense that he was achieving or about to achieve some his life goals and that at best, people would be proud of him. I don’t really recognize the voice or the person who wrote this. Sure it’s me (and I was in this writing phase where I was loving footnotes), but it feels like it’s been more than ten years and a bazillion miles away. It’s a piece of writing sitting the cheap seats of an empty stadium, optimistic that others will show up.

Anyway, happy opening day, everyone. Wherever you are, I hope optimism has a place in your bunker. - djb, 2020

SkyDome's the Limit (APRIL 12, 2010)

On April 5th, the Blue Jays began their season. Like a poem, it went largely unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.[1] Today, the Blue Jays play their first home game, and the SkyDome (yes, SkyDome) will be packed for the only time this season, save Yankee games and federal holidays. This high attendance will not be borne of national passion, some en masse crawl from the lagoon of a winter without baseball. The 2010 Blue Jay home opener is an occasion for optimism. It’s the time of year when, having not been proven otherwise, there is still a chance for a winning season. The bad thing hasn’t happened. Perhaps it will never happen.

Opening day optimism is a shared secret. Shhhhh, stay sober in the face of perceived conclusions that the Blue Jays’ playoff hopes are obstructed by behemoths of history and finance; the AL East is the terrain of baseball’s best (Yankees, Red Sox and Devil Rays).[2] A failed optimist lingers on others' successes, on cruel divisional alignments; she transforms to pessimist instantly. Pessimists specialize in loitering at obstacles.

The true optimist acknowledges the strength of entities outside themselves (the optimist is no ostrich) and makes a subtle shift. Like a good pickoff move, you miss the deft transition of the true optimist as he expounds the benefits of a youthful[3] team. In sport lingo, not being as good as you’d like because you don’t have the right tools at the moment has a forward thinking term: rebuilding year.

The most acidic fan can tolerate a rough season if it’s in the service of something being built. Start building. The behemoth is the benchmark. Unless you're Vernon Wells, no one will boo.

Notes

1. An optimist believes you don’t linger on this obstacle.

2. Think of the behemoth as the three writers you love, will never be, and that’s…okay.

3. Mooney’s Dictionary defines “youthful team” as one with players under 30.

Outside Skydome on Opening Day, 2020 (Photo courtesy of Anita Nagra)

David James Brock

An Opening Day Post...from 2010