OT: Toronto Blue Jays to Play Home Games in Buffalo

[Ehran]

I'm sure people on the US side have their things they like about our side of the border. Hopefully they open things up again soon!!!!

As an American, I can only say "Thank You for Tim Horton's".

 

[Husko]

As an American, I can only say "Thank You for Tim Horton's".

As someone that went to college in Buffalo, trips to Canada at ages 19 and 20 were pretty clutch

 

[BKIslandersFan]

The fact that they will play in Buffalo but Buffalonians probably won't be able to watch their regionally telecast games is funny.

 

[Buffaloed]

How the Sabres, developer Douglas Jemal worked to accommodate Blue Jays

When the Toronto Blue Jays were unsure whether they had a home for the pandemic-shortened Major League Baseball season, their assistant general manager, Joe Sheehan, sought help from the professional team they’ll now call a neighbor.
Sheehan asked a mutual acquaintance to contact Kim Pegula, co-owner and president of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, about the Blue Jays using the Sabres’ KeyBank Center and LECOM Harborcenter as off-site training facilities if the baseball team needed to move its operations from Toronto to Buffalo’s Sahlen Field.
Pegula saw the Blue Jays' potential temporary relocation as an opportunity to lift Buffalo’s economy and on July 6, she connected Sheehan with Mark Preisler, an executive vice president at PSE. Thus began a collaboration in which the Sabres and developer Douglas Jemal, owner of Seneca One tower, offered accommodations such as housing and areas to train.

Score one for Kim Pegula.

PSE presented the Blue Jays with a plan in which the locker rooms in Harborcenter would be converted into clubhouses and batting cages, and pitchers’ mounds would be installed on the facility’s Rink 2. The Blue Jays would also have access to meeting rooms and IMPACT Sports Performance’s 5,000-square foot training facility on the sixth floor.

Jemal is offering to furnish apartments for the players in the tower, offered access to areas to team broadcasters that overlook the ballpark, and suggested areas that can be used as individual changing rooms. He has 120 apartments that can be made available and is open to finish any areas of the building the Jays might need.

Upgrades to Sahlen field, including training areas may make it unnecessary to use Harborcenter as a main training center but they have an open invitation to use it.

 

[MayDay]

As someone that went to college in Buffalo, trips to Canada at ages 19 and 20 were pretty clutch

Haha, yeah.

My friends and I, at age 19-20, had our favorite bar right across the border in Niagara Falls, Ont.

Sure, we could have done what teens everywhere have done since time immemorial, and obtained booze illicitly.

But we were all pretty straight-laced honor roll kids, so having an option to cross the border and drink legally was huge.

Plus, back in those days you didn’t even need a passport to cross the border. Just a drivers license.

 

[Old Navy Goat]

I made a few of those crossings after NYS raised the drinking age and didn't grandfather anyone adversely affected. A few of my friends and I were also supporters of the performing arts so we'd attend the 'ballet' on occasion

 

[JThorne]

I made a few of those crossings after NYS raised the drinking age and didn't grandfather anyone adversely affected. A few of my friends and I were also supporters of the performing arts so we'd attend the 'ballet' on occasion

My half brother was born on Jan 3rd. He was about to turn 18 when, two days before his birthday, they upped the drinking age to 21. Growing up in NC, he didn't have the luxury of going to Ontario. And he did get busted for underage drinking.

 

[Husko]

Haha, yeah.

My friends and I, at age 19-20, had our favorite bar right across the border in Niagara Falls, Ont.

Sure, we could have done what teens everywhere have done since time immemorial, and obtained booze illicitly.

But we were all pretty straight-laced honor roll kids, so having an option to cross the border and drink legally was huge.

Plus, back in those days you didn’t even need a passport to cross the border. Just a drivers license.

Yeah our groups sound pretty similar. Our favorite bar was the wild muchroom. Sad day when they closed up shop.

 

[MayDay]

Yeah our groups sound pretty similar. Our favorite bar was the wild muchroom. Sad day when they closed up shop.

Same bar we went to! Haha, that’s funny.

It doesn’t exist anymore? Bummer.

Then again my two favorite bars from my college years and my grad school years are both also now closed, so maybe I’m just bad luck. After grad school, I stopped having favorite bars. Now that I have a family and kids, I don’t get out to bars much anymore.

 

[Jim Bob]

On to Buffalo: How the Blue Jays landed in players’...

 

[SackTastic]

I suspect this won't matter much soon. Marlins are going to have to shut it down really soon because of the outbreak on their team, and it's only a matter of time before other teams have the same thing happen.

Between team outbreaks and players opting out because of said outbreaks, I have to assume this short season is shut down before the end of August.

 

[MayDay]

I suspect this won't matter much soon. Marlins are going to have to shut it down really soon because of the outbreak on their team, and it's only a matter of time before other teams have the same thing happen.

Between team outbreaks and players opting out because of said outbreaks, I have to assume this short season is shut down before the end of August.

Good chance you are right. I have always thought that MLB's re-start plan seemed the most precarious and risky out of all the leagues.

NBA and NHL were wise to re-start in bubbles with no travel. And the NHL was wiser still to place their bubbles in a place that has COVID really under control.

NFL is kind of in-between. The good thing for NFL is that there are so many fewer games to worry about, stadiums are big with lots of space for social distancing, and rosters are big with lots of depth, and teams are already accustomed to losing starting players for multiple weeks and filling in other guys. And they have more than another month before they even have to get started, in which time there might be some positive developments on treatments. The bad thing for the NFL is that rosters and staffs are so huge that one infected person can infect a lot of other people. Plus every practice and game involves so much close physical contact that's unavoidable.

Crazy that out of all these leagues, the NHL might actually have the smartest plan here. Which is I think the first time I've ever said that in my life.

 

[Buffaloed]

 

[brian_griffin]

Haha, yeah.

My friends and I, at age 19-20, had our favorite bar right across the border in Niagara Falls, Ont.

Sure, we could have done what teens everywhere have done since time immemorial, and obtained booze illicitly.

But we were all pretty straight-laced honor roll kids, so having an option to cross the border and drink legally was huge.

Plus, back in those days you didn’t even need a passport to cross the border. Just a drivers license.

Heck, you really didn't even need to show a license. They'd just ask where you were born.

I made a few of those crossings after NYS raised the drinking age and didn't grandfather anyone adversely affected. A few of my friends and I were also supporters of the performing arts so we'd attend the 'ballet' on occasion

Same experience working as a college co-op student in a NF, NY factory. More than one Friday payday ended with a carpool over, a couple pitchers, then home in time for puck drop. That season was to be Perreault's final full year in the NHL. Sabres missed playoffs because the Adams was the toughest top-to-bottom in the NHL.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

There's a risk the season shuts down and there's never a game played here.

 

[Jim Bob]

There's a risk the season shuts down and there's never a game played here.

And Buffalo will be blamed.

 

[Buffaloed]

Riches overjoyed about their deferred baseball “dream” | News 4 Buffalo
It's too bad Bob Rich wasn't more of a hockey fan.

 

[Taro Tsujimoto]

 

[Buffaloed]

The Sabres will be selling blow up dolls to fill the empty seats.

 

[JThorne]

The Sabres will be selling used blow up dolls to fill the empty seats.

 

[MayDay]

I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the season will be called off before they ever play a game in Buffalo.

 

[brian_griffin]

I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the season will be called off before they ever play a game in Buffalo.

That’s 45/45 CDN.

 

[Buffaloed]

A number of the cardboard cutouts have tested positive putting fake fan attendance in jeopardy.

 

[Old Navy Goat]

A number of the cardboard cutouts have tested positive putting fake fan attendance in jeopardy.

Goes to show you not to use fake Marlins fans

 

[MarkusKetterer]

That’s 45/45 CDN.

Wrong. It’s more like 57/30 at this point (based on buying my daughter a Queen shirt for her upcoming bday and it cost me close to the 1st number Canadian )