TORONTO – Baseball may rely on data analytics the most of North America’s professional sports, but the Toronto Blue Jays are trying to make a case for the intangibles of the game.

Toronto earned two consecutive come-from-behind victories over the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday and Thursday, erasing deficits of seven runs and two runs respectively. The two victories over their American League East rivals helped the Blue Jays move ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays for third in the division and stay within range of second-place Boston.

But, for manager John Schneider, it could mean more as Toronto has lost seven of its past 10 games.

“Whether people believe it or not, I think momentum is a real thing in this game, and there’s definitely emotion that goes into it.” Schneider said after the Blue Jays beat the Red Sox 4-2 on Thursday night after topping the visitors 7-6 in 10 innings. “So 2-0 is a lot easier to come back from than 6-0, I think that’s kind of what the guys were thinking.

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“It takes one swing, you know? It takes one swing to get things turned around like it did yesterday, like it did today, and hopefully it kind of balances itself out. But I think momentum is a real thing.”

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s three-run home run in the eighth inning was the one swing that turned things around on Thursday.

Guerrero came to the plate with two on and one out and the Blue Jays trailing 2-1. He saw seven pitches from Boston reliever Justin Slaten, launching an 85.8 m.p.h. curveball into the left-field stands for the Blue Jays’ first lead of the game. His fourth home run of the season scored Nathan Lukes and Bo Bichette.

“I’ve always said, we never give up. We know we never give up,” said Guerrero through traslator Hector Lebron. “Regardless of the score, we could be down 18-3, 18-4 whatever it is, we’re gonna still go out there and compete.”

Asked if there’s a difference between thinking a comeback is possible and making a comeback happen, Guerrero said that it all starts with the right attitude.

“Remember, if you don’t think that way, it won’t happen,” said Guerrero. “So you’ve got to think it first to make it happen.”

A five-game losing streak April 19-23 followed by a three-game skid April 27 and April 29 dropped Toronto down the divisional standings as the Blue Jays’ offence stagnated.

Toronto had gone 11 games without scoring more than four runs in a single outing until Anthony Santander’s three-run homer on Wednesday tied that game 6-6 and Alejandro Kirk’s RBI single in the 10th inning gave the Blue Jays a 7-6 win.

Even after the back-to-back wins, Toronto’s 108 runs are the fifth lowest in Major League Baseball, only better than the Los Angeles Angels (106), Kansas City (105), Texas (103), and Colorado (96).

“We’re going to go through another tough stretch or two over the course of the year and you’ve got to kind of weather the storm,” said Schneider. “You’ve got to keep at it.

“That’s what I’m most proud about what this group is doing right now. They weathered it. It’s two good wins, and you’ve got to move on to Cleveland.”

Chris Bassitt (2-2) will take the mound as the Blue Jays (15-16) continue their six-game homestand on Friday, hosting the Cleveland Guardians (18-13). Logan Allen (1-2) will get the start for Cleveland.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2025.

With the federal election over, the spotlight is back on the NHL playoffs with thousands of fans gathering Thursday night at the Canadian Tire Centre to display their Canadian pride and cheer on teams in the “Battle of Ontario.”

Hockey has been part of Canadian identity for decades, but right now, the sport may once again provide a symbol of unity and sovereignty for many Canadians in the shadow of the Trump administration.

Add to that the fact that two Canadian teams — the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs — are facing off in the playoffs for the first time in 21 years, with a do-or-die game Thursday night, and fans who spoke to Global News outside the Canadian Tire Centre said they’re seeing more pride.

“Hockey represents our nationality, it’s everywhere, it’s what we do,” said Maureen Dubé, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, to Global News.

“I think there’s more pride because of what’s going on in the U.S. I think that we’re prouder and we’re louder and we’re more united together.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump has levied repeated rounds of damaging tariffs on Canada since March, and repeatedly said he wants to make Canada the 51st state — a push roundly rejected by Canadian leaders and voters.

For fans, the sport represents Canadian identity, national unity and source of social cohesion and belonging, according to recent surveys.

Seventy-four per cent of respondents felt hockey holds a deep significance to Canadian national identity, according to a 2022 Environics Survey.

Another 62 per cent of Canadians reported they felt a connection to hockey when playing, watching or just being involved in the sport, according to a 2021 Angus Reid survey.

“Everybody grows up with a team, something they can put their heart behind – get together as a community behind that common cause,” said Phil Bilon, an Ottawa Senators fan who spoke to Global News.

“For Canada hockey has been that thing because so many kids grow up playing it, something that unites us all and it all goes back to when we were kids we all grew up with this familiar game.” Aaron Johson, another Ottawa Senators fan added.

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The game’s aggressive and sometimes violent style is what separated hockey from other European sports in the 1890s, allowing Canadians to create a distinct image making hockey perfect for expressing national identity, according to a 2002 paper published in the Journal of American Folklore that studied Canadian identity through sport.

“It sucks to see an American team win [the Stanley Cup] every year. I feel like this is our sport, something that unites us all,” Bilon said.

The “Elbows Up” movement — which riffs off the term popularized by hockey legend Gordie Howe and has become a rallying cry for national unity and defending Canada against Trump’s threats — is one such phenomenon where sports and politics collide.

The movement has been central to the pushback against American taunts and tariffs, becoming a prominent political slogan during the recent federal election.

While the “Battle of Ontario,” along with the playoff series may only be just a game, hockey’s continued popularity transcends the rink.

“It would be great to see a Canadian team bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada where the game was founded,” Devon Shuker, an Ottawa Senators fan said.

“This is our game and this is where it’s going to stay.”

“Every important memory for me, I have a barbell attached to it in some way,” said Love.

These days, the 17-year-old can either be found in her family’s garage, which has been turned into a home weightlifting studio, or at Rise Strength Lab, continuing to work on her technique with coach Crystal Derry.

To this point, that technique has made her one of the most talented teenaged weightlifters anywhere on the planet.

“I don’t become a different person when I step onto the platform,” said Love. “I have my own experiences, I have my own emotions and I get to exist on the platform as myself.”

That joy on the platform is something Derry has seen on a weekly basis from Love, who is pushing towards her first Olympic qualification for Team Canada at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

“We call it the magic of the platform,” said Derry. “She is this magical little unicorn, I don’t know what it is. On the platform really, truly her whole self comes out and it’s really beautiful to witness.”

As a toddler copying the movements of her mom Emma Love in the gym, Etta quickly was able to find her passion in weightlifting.

According to Emma, since then the family has done everything they can to help their daughter pursue that passion and achieve greatness on the world stage.

“She was just fascinated by the movements and witnessing a lot of really strong women,” said Emma. “She started playing with a kid’s barbell first and then when she was 10, she was allowed to pick up the real metal barbell. We got home and she said, ‘Mom, when I hold it I feel alive.'”

Just months after celebrating her 17th birthday, Love became the first Canadian woman to set a world record in weightlifting last September at the Junior World Championships in Leon, Spain.

Completing a clean and jerk of 146 kg, it was a lift that the Saskatoon product had been training years for in breaking the world junior record for the over-87-kg division.

“She set the bar down and her face kind of flooded with tears and a smile,” said Emma. “In that moment, it felt just very frozen and magical.”

The mark of 146 kg was a number which Etta had secretly written down years prior, giving her a goal to trail towards since her training began to take shape over the course of the pandemic.

Slowly, she would allow more people into her world record goal and many supporters were in the room when she made Canadian history in Spain.

“The world record for me because it was something that I had wanted when I was really young, it felt like a promise I had to keep to myself,” said Etta.

“It felt like something that I knew I had to try. It wasn’t that I had to achieve it, but I knew that I had to keep that promise.”

Love not only was able to become the first Canadian woman to break a world record in the sport, but joined Doug Hepburn as the only Canadians to accomplish the feat when he stood alone in the clean and press in the 1950s.

For Derry, it was the culmination of years of work for the teenaged talent and was something they had been constantly building towards.

“I actually had many times visualized her breaking that world record and what that would look and feel like,” said Derry.

“It was so surreal, but at the same time it was like I knew it was going to happen.”

Entering 2025, Love is ranked third in the world in her weight class and is aiming to take that next step from the junior to the senior level.

Despite having a much lighter season compared to the calendar in 2024, Love and her family are sorting through some tough choices with limited funding coming from the national sport organization Weightlifting Canada.

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Already paying a significant portion of Etta’s travels equaling four trips around the world last year alone, they’ve had to cancel their trip to the 2025 Junior World Championships in Peru.

“It was definitely a struggle because there’s not a lot of funding and that definitely continues especially as a junior athlete competing at a senior level,” said Etta.

“I guess the thing that it takes away is that celebration, when I don’t get to compete that’s where I put in the work. That’s where I get to see what I’ve been working towards.”

According to Emma, those decisions have always belonged to her daughter regarding which competitions are vital to her jump to the senior level.

However, she said it doesn’t make those conversations any easier.

“I think this last one was hard because there was a very good chance of her winning junior worlds and I think she wanted that,” said Emma.

“The way she described it to me was that maybe her ego wanted that, but she knew that her bigger goals didn’t need it.”

While Love isn’t competing at Junior Worlds in Peru, she is gearing up for a competition which has even more personal significance for her.

After years of booking flights and accommodations in countries across the world, Love will be competing for gold at the 2025 Canadian Junior Weightlifting Championships in her hometown in June.

She’ll only need to drive less than five minutes away from her family home to the nearby Nutana Curling Club.

“Some of my biggest memories in lifting have been in other countries and have been travelling,” said Etta.

“I think it’s very meaningful to me that I get to have my next bigger competition at home and it gets to be where I have friends, family and loved ones here. That’s very special to me that I get to be here because it’s where I began.”

The possibility of wearing the maple leaf in Los Angeles is a thought which Love thinks about every time she sets up her barbell and steps onto a weightlifting platform these days.

The opportunity seems far away in 2028, but it’s getting closer by the day.

“I get to love weightlifting not because I have to, but because I want to,” said Etta. “I think that’s really motivating me for the Olympics and whatever else.”

A baseball fan is in critical condition after falling 6.4 metres from the Clemente Wall in right field at PNC Park during Wednesday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs.

Right after Andrew McCutchen hit a two-run double in the seventh inning, putting the Pirates ahead 4-3, players began waving frantically for medical personnel and pointing to the man who had fallen onto the warning track.

Another fan had jumped from a lower section of the outfield wall to help the person who fell. It was not immediately clear if the person knew the man who fell or if they were a bystander.

The fan was tended to for approximately five minutes by members of the Pirates and Cubs training staffs, as well as PNC personnel, before being placed on a stretcher and removed from the field on a cart.

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Pittsburgh Public Safety said the man was taken to the hospital in critical condition and that police were investigating.

The game was delayed for about 10 minutes before resuming in the bottom of the seventh inning. Many players were seen taking a knee.

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Pirates manager Derek Shelton and Cubs manager Craig Counsell both alerted the umpire crew of the situation immediately after the play.

“Even though it’s 350 feet away or whatever it is, I mean, the fact of how it went down and then laying motionless while the play is going on, I mean, Craig saw it, I saw it. We both got out there,” Shelton told reporters after the game. “I think the umpires saw it because of the way it kicked. It’s extremely unfortunate. That’s an understatement.”

“I didn’t see anything happen, but I saw (Counsell’s) face when he came out on the field, and I could tell that it was a very scary moment,” Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “All we could do was just pray for a good, strong recovery for him and his family. I have never been part of something like that before and I hope I am never part of something like that again.”

Swanson added that the moment was a “humble reminder of the gratitude we should all have to play this game.”

“Folks obviously come out to support us, and they are a big reason why we are able to do what we do. It’s obviously tough. At a time like that you want (the fans) to know you love them,” he added.

McCutchen was seen holding a cross that hung from his neck while the fan was taken off the field.

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“Truly hate what happened tonight,” McCutchen posted on X late Wednesday night. “Cant help but think about that guy, his family and friends. I pray tonight for him. Let us think about his loved ones and hug our families a little tighter tonight. I hope he pulls thru. May God Bless you all. Good night.”

In a statement, the Pirates said their “thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.”

This isn’t the first time a fan has been injured after taking a steep fall at a baseball stadium.

In 2015, Atlanta Braves season ticket holder Gregory K. Murrey flipped over guardrails from the upper deck at Turner Field and plunged to his death. He was pronounced dead at Grady Memorial Hospital shortly after being removed from the field on a backboard.

That was four years after Shannon Stone, a firefighter attending a game with his six-year-old son, fell about 6.1 metres after reaching out for a foul ball tossed into the stands at the Texas Rangers’ former stadium in 2011. He was conscious following the fall but was bleeding from his head and his arms appeared to be broken. He died after being taken to the hospital.

Both incidents prompted scrutiny over the height of guardrails at stadiums. The Rangers raised theirs, while the Braves settled a lawsuit with Murrey’s family.

— With files from The Associated Press