Canadians hope baseball can bring them some joy on Friday night to counteract economic gloom as the Toronto Blue Jays take to their home field to start the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers,

The Blue Jays and the Dodgers play Game 1 of the World Series tonight, and for Canada’s team home-field advantage is as big as the entire country.

Despite holding passports from other nations, many Blue Jays players and coaches have an adopted national pride.

As shared by Sportsnet PR on X, Game 7 against the Mariners was the most-watched Toronto game ever on Sportsnet. An average of 6 million viewers tuned in to see their team win the pennant. The highest it reached was 11.8 million Canadian viewers.

Canada’s only major league team will have an entire country behind it during the World Series and has a chance of claiming the championship of America’s pastime at a time when U.S.-Canada relations remain near historic lows.

Canadians at The Athletic told us that communities nationwide are setting aside hockey rivalries and old Expos wounds to back the Jays.

His father, Baseball Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero Sr., was the 2004 AL MVP and a nine-time Major League All-Star who played 16 years in MLB with the Montreal Expos (1996-2003), Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels (2004-2009), Texas Rangers (2010) and the Baltimore Orioles (2011).