Tonight’s World Series game – Game 6 — the Dodgers vs. the Blue Jays, feels less like a sporting event and more like a collective emotional field. If you’ve stepped outside (or online) in Canada, you can feel it: the hum of hope, anxiety, national pride, and something deeper — and those emotions are contagious.
As a therapist, former journalist and media academic, and lifelong baseball and Blue Jays fan, I can’t help but view this through both a psychological, media, and sociocultural lens. It’s fascinating, and revealing, to see how sports media, PR, and fandom create not just a story or narrative but a shared nervous system.
This series has been framed through media of all kinds, as a clash between the moneyed empire and the scrappy underdog — the Dodgers as lions or elites, and the Jays as honey badgers or working class grit. It’s a clean dichotomy, and irresistible for a media narrative. However, like most binaries, it’s emotionally satisfying but intellectually lazy. Still, that framing does what all good PR does: it hooks into the unconscious.
Canada loves the myth of David vs. Goliath. We love to feel underestimated. We’ve built an entire national identity around being smaller, quieter, humble, and supposedly more “polite” — until the stakes are high. And when the Blue Jays take the field, we feel it as a collective projection: see us, take us seriously, count us in. On a smaller scale, it is also how many of us feel in our daily lives, either at work, in social settings, or with family. As a therapist, I know that many of us grow up feeling unseen, undervalued, unappreciated, and those feelings are hard to shake in our adult lives. This team and its narrative this year represents the opportunity to break free from that — at least for now. And who could have guessed based on last year’s record, or how they appeared at the beginning of the season? Even better.
What’s fascinating (and slightly ironic though not unusual) is that almost no one on the Jays roster is Canadian. Many players are from deeply conservative U.S. states — red-state America. Yet, they’ve become symbolic carriers of a nation’s emotional life. That’s what emotional contagion looks like on a mass scale. The players know it. The owners know it. The media knows it. Playing into Canada’s narrative (even though many had never been here before joining the Jays), they are consistently humble when talking about their own great plays and their wins, and they regularly turn the spotlight back onto the fans. Media eats it up, following them around, keeping them active on social media – asking players to comment on Toronto, on Canada, on the fans. If the players hadn’t considered or known Canada before, they do now. And they have no doubt come to understand our collective psyche. In sort of “becoming us” through their trajectory this year (and brilliant PR campaign), they reinforce this shared illusion — that they are somehow ours, that they represent something uniquely Canadian. And we lean into it too, fully enjoying this mutual love affair between players and fans, even as we know that, come winter, most of them will return to their permanent homes far from here.
In psychology, emotional contagion refers to how feelings spread across groups — joy, fear, hope — almost like a virus. Neuroscience shows us that mirror neurons help us attune to the emotional states of others, even strangers. When a nation collectively holds its breath before a pitch, that’s group nervous system activation. When millions of Canadians exhale in unison after a hit — or a heartbreak — it’s a physiological release. I ran into a neighbour recently who told me he hadn’t watched baseball before now, figuring it was slow and boring. He said “I didn’t realize how much stress I’d feel with every pitch. It’s intense!”
He’s right! And that’s why, even if you don’t care about baseball, you might still feel something tonight.
Social media, of course, amplifies this contagion. The Blue Jays’ postseason slogan — repeated, hashtagged, memed — floods feeds and comments like a ritual chant. We click, share, and echo it, each post reinforcing the illusion of belonging. The “we” in We Are The North or Let’s Go Blue Jays is emotionally real but psychologically constructed. The PR teams know what they’re doing; they’re orchestrating affect.
There’s something therapeutic and something mildly troubling about that.
On one hand, in an age of loneliness and doomscrolling, it’s comforting to feel part of something larger — to belong to a hopeful narrative. On the other, it’s a reminder of how easily our emotions are shaped, sold, and streamed back to us through branded messages.
For therapists, this cultural moment is a live case study in collective regulation. We often speak of the “window of tolerance” in trauma work — the optimal arousal zone where we can think, feel, and stay connected, calm, clear. Sports fandom creates a collective version of that: the ups and downs, the tension, the release. It’s a vicarious way of processing hope, loss, and uncertainty — safely, symbolically. Just watch what happens with the crowds at the games. The expressions of happiness and grief are priceless.
And perhaps that’s why we need it.
In a time when despair feels ambient — be it wars, climate grief, rising political polarization, economic uncertainty — this Blue Jays’ playoff run is a (generally) socially sanctioned way to feel again (though try disagreeing with certain fans online and…ouch!). It’s safe to care about something that doesn’t destroy us. For a few hours, we can project our longing for resilience, fairness, and redemption onto a team of strangers (we think we know and want to know) in matching uniforms — many of whom are just learning our national anthem.
So, tonight’s Game 6 isn’t just about baseball. It’s a mirror — for our need to belong, to hope, to matter. It’s about what happens when we project our psychic life onto a beautiful, diamond-shaped stage.
Whether the Jays win or not, the emotional narrative has already done its work. It has gathered us, momentarily, into something resembling connection.
And I think that’s worth cheering for.
If you’re feeling the highs and lows of this cultural moment — whether through sports, news, or life transitions — therapy can help you find steadier ground amid emotional waves. I help people dealing with anxiety, depression, grief, life transitions, collective overwhelm, and relationship challenges. I offer in-person counselling and psychotherapy in Hamilton and online therapy across Ontario. You can find out more about me and my services and reach out for a free, 15 minute consultation at ontariotherapist.com.
Take care and hang tight! The ride’s not over yet!
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