The Toronto Blue Jays get no respect
The New York Times has a neat interactive map this morning that breaks down baseball fandom by zip code. The results are based on Facebook data, so it's not necessarily a 100 percent accurate depiction. (Are you familiar with the kinds of people who incessantly "like" pages on Facebook? Weirdos, right?)
Still, the map is an insightful representation of each team's reach:
Three teams are missing, and sadly, though not surprisingly, one of them is not the Yankees. No, the crosstown Mets, the A's, and the Blue Jays all get shut out, which has led to plenty of LOLMets ribbing and resigned sighs about the plight of playing ball in Oakland. But picking on Toronto, too, is misguided and unfair.
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"I draw no conclusions about Toronto's fan base, though I suspect we can assume it's pretty minimal too," writes Mother Jones' Kevin Drum. Not so. Sure, they're not as beloved as the storied, big market teams. But Toronto ranked 10th in attendance last year — just behind the Red Sox, and two spots above the Cubs. Even as a ratio of attendance to seating capacity, the Jays held their own.
Ever since the Expos went away, the Jays have been Canada's lone pro baseball outpost. The entire country isn't exactly full of Jays fans, but it is safe to say the team enjoys an expansive fanbase left absent from the Times' map.
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Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.
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