“The friends he surrounded himself with growing up didn’t play baseball, but Ryan Asis drew all the inspiration he needed from the Toronto Blue Jays.

Standing in front of the TV as an eight-year-old, he’d come set like the pitchers, and swing for the fences inside his childhood home.

“I fell in love with it that way,” said Asis (Mississauga, Ont.).

Back then, he was an eight-year-old with a baseball dream, fueled by the golden years of the Blue Jays winning the World Series in 1992 and 1993. If the Jays hadn’t been good, he probably would have retired as a kid in the 90’s, he said, but they were on fire, and became Asis’s motivation.

Thanks to that incredibly talented roster, including manager Cito Gaston, he now has a dream of helping grow the game for other members of his Filipino community. He’ll be taking 40 players with the Philippines Baseball Group to the Blue Jays game against the Baltimore Orioles Wednesday at Rogers Centre as the director of the Canadian chapter.”