ON THE MARK.

THE ORIGINAL OPENING DAY.

  It's Opening Day, and today we're doing our TV show "Sportsline" live from the Rogers Centre (5 p.m. CHCH-TV), where the Jays and Indians will contest the season opener.   This will be the 37th Opening Day for the Bluejays, and it's a far cry from the very first one in 1977.    I'm sure you've seen the film:  A snow-covered Exhibition Stadium.  Someone using catcher's shin guards as ski's and baseball bats as ski poles.  Bob McCown announcing the starting lineups over the P.A.   Anne Murray warbling the National Anthem.  Bill Singer throwing a first-pitch called strike to Ralph Garr.    I was there, not as a reporter, but as a fan who managed to get tickets 26 rows above first base.  Actually, I think it was my friend Rick Fruitman who got the tickets from his father, but that doesn't matter now.    I had been waiting for this moment since I first saw a baseball game.   I had begged my father and my grandfather and my uncle to take me to old Maple Leaf Stadium when I was a little kid to watch the Leafs play the Buffalo Bisons or the Syracuse Chiefs.   But the team couldn't draw flies and eventually ended up in Louisville, Kentucky.   After that, there wasn't much for us diehard baseball fans.  Christie Pits on Sunday afternoons, or, if we were lucky, Montreal Expos games on CBC.
       When the Bluejays finally arrived on April 7, 1977 (A Thursday afternoon), I couldn't contain my excitement.  I had hardly slept the night before.  I drove in from Kitchener, where I was going to college, but couldn't find a parking spot anywhere near the stadium.  It was chaos.   The game was supposed to start, I believe, at 3 oclock, but it took so long for the crowd to get through the turnstiles and to their seats, that it was delayed for some time.   Besides, you couldn't buy a beer in that ballpark for another 6 years, so many folks, taking their cue from Argo's games, brought in flasks, wineskins and anything else that would keep them warm.   There were no patdowns by security on that day, so I managed to get in with a flask filled with brandy.   Fruitman, as I recall, had rolled a couple of joints.   If anyone were to ask (which they didn't) we were smoking American cigarettes.
      In the second inning, with the snow falling and the temperatures hovering around freezing, the guy sitting behind us decided to take off his shirt.   He was very drunk, and feeling no cold.   Chicago's Chet Lemon stepped to the plate.  A righthanded hitter, Lemon couldn't quite get around on a Singer fastball and hit a screaming liner into the seats that was heading RIGHT FOR ME!     I ducked just in time, but the shirtless jerk sitting behind me could not react in a similar fashion and the ball hit him square in the chest.   And what do you think happened then?  Instead of seeing if the old guy was OK, we all dove for THE BALL.   Can you believe it?    Some kid ended up getting it, but instead of offering it to the shirtless guy, he kept it for himself while the old guy was gasping for air.   After that, the game was a blur.  Two homeruns by Doug Ault and then for his third at bat he grounded into a double play (I still have the scorecard.  6-4-3).   The Jays made three errors, stole a couple of bases and won 9-5.  the entire city of Toronto fall in love with them.
     Fruitman and I left the game and staggered around for a while, giddy with the result and looking forward to having more fun.   Somehow we ended up at the old El Mocambo (under the neon palms at Spadina and College) to have a few (more) drinks and bask in the glory of the Bluejays victory.  About a month earlier, the Rolling Stones had played there (and played around with Margaret Trudeau, it seems), so the "Elmo" was a cool place to go.   As it happens, the Maple Leafs were playing game two of their best-of-three playoff series with the Pittsburgh Penguins (they lost 6-4) that night, so the place was absolutely buzzing.       Who knew that the Jays would become champions before the Maple Leafs?  Only 8 years separated their birth and their first playoff berth.  At the age of 15, the Jays won their first World Series championship.  But that first year was serendipitous.    Our expectations of those Bluejays were not nearly as lofty as they are today.   The Jays finished 54-107 that first season, dead last in the American League East.   It didn't matter.  We were just happy to have them.  This year it DOES matter.  No more excuses.  We have the horses.  Expectations are sky-high.   Play Ball!