Looking Back at Two Franchises That Carried Their Cities on Their Backs
When you sit down and actually trace the history of the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers, what you're really looking at is two organizations that survived near-death experiences and came out on top for completely different reasons. The Blue Jays were built on a wave of expansion energy and a city hungry for something. The Dodgers came from decades of quiet excellence, repeated pennants, and a fanbase that has seen everything. The rivalry isn't a daily thing. These teams don't play each other every year. But when they do meet, it carries weight because both franchises have world championships hanging over them and both have timelines where everything fell apart. Toronto got an expansion team in 1977 and almost lost it before it started. The first few seasons were brutal. Attendance was low. The media treated the team like a joke. I remember reading old box scores from the early eighties where stadium capacity was barely half full on a Tuesday night in July, which was unusual for MLB even then.
Then things shifted. The trade for Dave Winfield, the addition of George Bell, and the coaching of Cito Gaston created a core that won back-to-back World Series in 1992 and 1993. That second title was significant because it made the Blue Jays the first non-US based team to win the championship. It sounded like a press release gimmick when they announced it, but it was real and it mattered to a Canadian fanbase that had been told their team was a novelty.
What Happened After The Peak
The nineties collapse wasn't sudden. It was a series of bad decisions stacked on top of each other. The team traded away its core pieces, the payroll shrank, and Toronto went into a extended rebuild that lasted most of the two thousand era. Fans remembered the championships. New fans had nothing to anchor to. That disconnect is why the Blue Jays fanbase feels different from other NL or AL East crowds. I had a conversation with someone who grew up in Hamilton during the late nineties and early two thousands who said his family stopped watching baseball altogether because there was no reason to keep watching. That's not unusual for expansion markets that lose momentum. Most fail silently. Toronto survived because the city kept growing and the ownership group eventually committed to spending again.
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The Dodgers Side Of The Equation
The Dodgers story is different. They've been relevant almost constantly since the Brooklyn days. The move to Los Angeles in 1958 was a gamble that paid off immediately because the market was wide open. There was no major league baseball in Southern California and the Dodgers carved it out. The modern Dodgers era started taking shape in the early two thousands with the addition of players like Vladimir Guerrero and the eventual arrival of Clayton Kershaw. The organizational depth became the talking point. While other teams were chasing free agents, the Dodgers were developing pitchers and infielders who actually stuck. The 2020 World Series win ended a forty-four year championship drought for the franchise. That number matters because it shows how long even a rich organization can go without the ultimate prize. I tracked the Dodgers postseason runs from 2017 through 2020 and the variance was insane. They lost in the division series, they lost in the League Championship, and then they won it all. That kind of roller coaster is exhausting to follow.
Where These Two Franchises Actually Cross Paths
The Blue Jays and Dodgers don't have a historic rivalry. They have intermittent playoff meetings and occasional regular season series that feel bigger than they should. The most notable recent connection was the 2022 ALDS when the Blue Jays faced the Dodgers in the postseason and lost in five games. That series had everything: Shohei Ohtani pitching, the Blue Jays playing aggressive defense, and a Dodgers team that showed why they are always considered the standard. What people miss when they look at these two teams is how differently they manage roster construction. The Dodgers operate with a philosophy that prioritizes pitching depth above almost everything else. They will trade a starting outfielder for a mid-rotation arm if the numbers work. The Blue Jays have historically leaned the other direction, building through power hitting and then surrounding it with pitching when possible.
Practical Problems When Analyzing These Two Teams Together
One issue I run into when comparing these franchises is the difference in how their histories get recorded. The Dodgers have nearly a century of continuous coverage. The Blue Jays have periods where local newspapers barely covered games and the digital archive is spotty. If you're trying to compile accurate attendance numbers or detailed game logs from the 1980s, you will hit dead ends with Toronto that don't exist for LA. The workaround I use is cross-referencing the MLB official stats database with newspaper archives from the Toronto Star and the Los Angeles Times. It takes longer than it should, but it catches errors that standalone sources miss. For example, I once found a discrepancy in an outfielder's total assists from a 1989 game where three different sources listed three different numbers. The truth was somewhere in the middle and only confirmed by checking the original box score photo.
Common Mistakes People Make With This Topic
The biggest mistake is treating these two franchises as interchangeable successes. They aren't. The Dodgers have won more titles, played in more pennant races, and maintained higher overall winning percentages across decades. The Blue Jays have a shorter but still meaningful history that includes a unique cultural impact in Canada. Another mistake is assuming the Blue Jays' recent competitiveness means they have solved their organizational problems. They have not. The farm system has ups and downs. Player development has been inconsistent. The front office makes good moves sometimes and poor ones other times, just like every other team.
What Actually Determines Success For Either Franchise
Pitching wins championships for both teams. The Dodgers proved that repeatedly. The Blue Jays proved it in 1992 and 1993 with a rotation that included Duane Ward, Pat Hentgen, and Juan Guzman. When either team gets healthy starting pitching, they become dangerous. When they don't, they become another team fighting for a wild card spot. The salary flexibility issue is real for both organizations, just in different ways. The Dodgers can absorb large contracts because of their revenue streams. The Blue Jays have to be more careful because their revenue base is smaller and tied to the Canadian dollar exchange rate, which adds another variable that most outsiders don't consider when comparing the two franchises.
The Bottom Line
If you are looking for a dramatic rivalry narrative, these two teams don't give you one. What they give you is two organizations that represent different models of building and sustaining success in Major League Baseball. The Dodgers are the model of continuous investment and depth. The Blue Jays are the model of regional pride surviving against structural disadvantages. Both have tragedy in their timelines. Both have triumph. That is enough to make following their history worthwhile without forcing a rivalry that doesn't exist.
