On Baseball and Belonging
By Luis Javier Montero November 2025
On November 15, 2017, when Peru defeated New Zealand 2–0 and qualified for the 2018 World Cup, I remember my father—also a founding member of the Canada-Peru Chamber of Commerce—grabbing my arm and saying:
“Enjoy this moment; you never know when it will come again.”
As you may recall, Peru fought bravely but didn’t make it out of the group stage, leaving Russia with heads held high.
I thought about that moment recently when the Toronto Blue Jays made an improbable run to the World Series, only to fall to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7—a heartbreaking loss for a team defined by unity, joy, and a genuine love of the game.
If I had to choose a single moment that sparked my lifelong love of baseball, it would probably be a day in May 1988, when I received an envelope from Tony Fernández, the Blue Jays’ star shortstop.
A few weeks earlier, while tossing a ball with friends, we discovered that Fernández was moving into a house on our street—Edgevalley Drive in Etobicoke. In a burst of youthful inspiration, I decided to write him a letter—not only to tell him that one of his biggest fans lived a few doors down, but also to ask if he would autograph a baseball card for me.
Fernández was a man of few words who let his graceful defense and precise hitting speak for him. As an aspiring shortstop myself, I watched him on TV with total fascination as he slid across the infield, fielded grounders, and threw to first with effortless precision.
Imagine my joy when I received an envelope addressed to me from Fernández, containing a signed card. While my friends in Peru idolized soccer stars, Fernández instantly became my sports hero.
Baseball also helped me connect to my new surroundings. I made friends playing catch on the streets of Etobicoke during the summer, and when it was too cold to play outside, we traded baseball cards indoors (I secretly kept my autographed card safe from any trade).
Soon, I became an avid collector, saving my weekly allowance to buy as many Topps card packs as I could from the local Mac’s store. I studied the stats on the back of every card: batting average, home runs, runs batted in—they became part of my growing Canadian vocabulary.
As my love for baseball deepened, so did my knowledge of its history. Much to my father’s dismay, I could easily name the all-time leader in Grand Slams (Lou Gehrig, 23), but not the finalists of the 1990 World Cup (West Germany defeated Argentina 1–0, as I later learned).
Perhaps to encourage my enthusiasm, my father began taking me to Blue Jays games—first at Exhibition Stadium and later at the SkyDome—to watch my hero Fernández. For my 11th birthday, after much pleading, I got a radio so I could listen to games that stretched beyond my 9 p.m. bedtime.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were the Blue Jays’ golden era, crowned with back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993. Following every step of that team, I became part of Toronto’s collective euphoria; I went from being the new immigrant kid at Humber Valley School to another proud Blue Jays fan. I embraced both anonymity and belonging.
Listening to games on The Fan 680 AM also sharpened my English. Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth—the Blue Jays’ radio voices—became my accidental English tutors, giving language to my passion for the sport.
My university years at McGill didn’t dampen my love for baseball or the Blue Jays, and I made sure to attend a game whenever I visited Toronto, even after Fernández had retired. But after living in cities like London, Geneva, and Paris—where baseball is, at best, a curiosity—I gradually lost touch with the game.
Now, living in New York, a city steeped in baseball history, I’ve reconnected with the Blue Jays and with a sport that shaped my childhood.
With five long months ahead before the next baseball season begins, I’m reminded of this quote by Roger Angell:
“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and commercially exploited as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and condescension with which the non-fan regards the sports fan are understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of that calculation, it seems to me, is the compulsion to care—deeply, passionately, truly care—a capacity or emotion that has almost vanished from our lives.”