A Blue Jays fans since middle school, Adeel Ahmad vowed he would be at Rogers Centre if his team ever made the World Series again. So, he flew from Korea to Toronto and back to Korea for Game 1.

November 6, 2025

Coming Full Circle At The 2025 World Series

By Adeel Ahmad

Blue Jays Fan

Being an immigrant is like walking into a movie after it has already started. I moved to Toronto from Pakistan as a child in 1994 and started watching baseball not long after.

I quickly became a fan, spurred on by all the talk from announcers and classmates of the back-to-back World Series championships the Jays had just won. But no matter how much I watched the highlights, I had never seen the World Series in Toronto.

The first full season I ever watched was the 1995 season, where the Blue Jays tied with the Minnesota Twins for the worst record in baseball. The 1996 team was a bit better and by the late 90s, the Blue Jays were perennial also-rans for the wild card, never getting closer than the 1998 season where they finished four games out of a playoff spot.

I devoured everything I could about the Jays, in the days before Wikipedia or Baseball Reference. Reading Richard Griffin and Dave Perkins in the Toronto Star is how I learned the word mediocre. Still, I figured that a playoff run was around the corner for a team that had made the playoffs five times in nine years between 1985 and 1993. Few people around me were fans by this point, regardless of their age, a fact reinforced by sparse attendance at the Skydome.

I went to my first ball game in 1999, a 9-2 win over the Montreal Expos where I sat in the 500-level seats behind home plate with my brother and marveled at the empty fifth deck seats across from me in the outfield, wondering what would it have been like to see the very last rows of the 500s filled during a World Series game, to see this hockey-crazed city obsessed with baseball.

I never got the chance to find out, not as a child anyway. I started going to games regularly as a high school student living in Mississauga, taking the 37 Islington bus and then the subway downtown.

Going to games got much easier when I was at the University of Toronto, thanks in part to Toonie Tuesday when 500-level seats were just $2, but the Jays never got anywhere near the playoffs.

After 15 years of being a loyal fan, my attention drifted. I graduated university and moved around the world again, this time to teach English in South Korea.

The time difference and my social circles soon meant I was more of a football fan than a baseball fan, cheering for the Denver Broncos because their orange jerseys had caught my eye as a child. I still went to Jays games here and there, tuning in for the 2015 and 2016 playoff runs despite the 13-hour time difference, but I was now a fairweather fan.

The Blue Jays and, baseball, weren’t on my mind during the pandemic. But in September 2021, I saw the highlights of a wild 11-10 comeback win over the Oakland Athletics. I liked what I saw. This team wasn’t the meek, hapless team of my childhood. They hit home runs, had fun and I saw myself in the diversity of this team.

As a bonus, this team just seemed incapable of losing, winning 10 of 11 games after that win over the Athletics. The insanely talented 2021 Blue Jays fell just short of the playoffs, but I was hooked again. I hadn’t been to Canada for a few years due to the pandemic, but I came back to the Rogers Centre, this time with my wife, and watched Kevin Gausman beat the Astros in 2022.

I came back again for my first-ever playoff game, sitting behind the light fixtures in the 500s, in the heartbreaking 10-9 loss to the Seattle Mariners that ended the Jays’ season.

The next couple of years were disappointing for the Jays, but I still went to a few games each year as my work now took me back to Canada frequently. I dug out the old jersey I had bought in the late 90s and wore for picture day in middle school but had since forgotten at my parents’ house. I wore it to games and got compliments here and there from fans.

Coming into 2025, I was only looking forward to the Alejandro Kirk bobble arm giveaway in April as Kirk’s blistering line drives and toughness as a catcher had made him my favourite player. I splurged on tickets behind the Jays’ dugout and watched as Kirk brought the Jays back from a 6-0 deficit to win 7-6 over the Red Sox in extra innings.

But then the Jays got hot, going on a 38-15 run in June and July. By August, I was pretty sure that they would go to the playoffs and by the time I dropped by the dome for a game in early September, I couldn’t help but notice that the Jays were likely going to be the first or second seed in the AL playoffs.

It was around this time that I quietly told my wife that if they made the World Series, about a 25% possibility, I was going to go no matter what. As the last week of the regular season began, I needed a lot of things to go right if I was going to be able to go to a World Series.

First of all, I needed them to hold off the Yankees to win the division, and the Jays won the last four games of the season. With my work schedule, I was only going to be able to go to Game 1 of the World Series, which meant both the Brewers or Phillies had to lose in order for game 1 to be in Toronto.

This all seemed moot as the Jays fell behind 2-0 to the Mariners in the American League Championship Series. But it all came together. The Jays beat the Yankees and then came back against the Mariners while the Dodgers did me the service of knocking out both the Brewers and the Phillies.

I spent the next 72 hours compulsively looking at resale tickets, waiting for prices to drop below $1,000. I caved 36 hours before the game and bought for $1,009 to go along with $2,000 for the flight. I flew out to Toronto on the morning of Friday, October 24 and my 13-hour flight from Seoul, landed in Toronto where it was still Friday morning.

After a few hours at my parents’ for lunch and taking in the fall leaves, I took the subway to the game at 6 p.m. and arrived an hour before the game. The dome was mostly full as I got to my seat in section 538, row 22. I had a prime view of the left field foul pole and could see Kirk warming up far below, but not Tres Yesavage throwing to him.

I loved the diversity of the crowd, a mixture of skin colours, languages and backgrounds united in trying to out scream the canned music. My enduring memory from this game is the bottom of the sixth. Early on, it had felt that the game and the series would get away from us, but Daulton Varsho’s home run in the fourth gave the crowd reassurance. The sixth inning was one of those Blue Jay innings we had watched all year.

I stood pretty much the entire time. Addison Barger’s home run was a moment of catharsis. Up 9-2 over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this team was for real. I didn’t cheer for the last two runs in this nine-run inning.

I stood with my hands on the railing in front of me, smiling in disbelief and looking around at the people next to me. I soaked in the last three innings, relishing the easy win over the Dodgers.

People all around me asked complete strangers to take pictures of them, their children, their partners, something far from common in this part of the stadium. After the final out, I high-fived people as they walked down and took pictures for them.

The game ended before midnight and it was after 1 a.m. on Saturday when I got home. I left for the airport less than six hours later, spending almost exactly 24 hours in Toronto before flying home. In all, I spent more time in the air than I did on the ground.

Writing this the day after the Blue Jays’ loss in Game 7, I finally have enough distance from this trip to be able to describe what it meant to me. Growing up in the mid-90s, when going to a single Jays game was a big deal, I watched a lot of losing teams and empty seats.

I have lived almost my entire life in the shadow of the 1992-93 World Series titles, claiming them as vicarious wins while wondering what it would be like to see a World Series with my own eyes. There was no such win this year, but now I know what it’s like and by flying halfway around the world to see it, I realize I also marked the end of my childhood.

I’m sure more die-hard, hard-nosed fans than me might feel differently, but I am a fan of the Blue Jays in the literal sense. I don’t watch baseball so much to understand and discuss who is a better player or team as I do to simply cheer for the Blue Jays.

Over time, I’m sure I will wonder what would have been like if we could have gotten those last two outs in the ninth. For now and for years to come, I will always remember the 2025 World Series, when the Blue Jays improbably won the division, when they improbably won the AL pennant and when I was there to see the first World Series game in Toronto after more than 30 years.

Ahmad: From Korea to Toronto and home, to see his Blue Jays in Game 1 of World Series