If you didn’t get the memo, Marcus Stroman loves Toronto. Marcus Stroman loves playing for the Toronto Blue Jays.
However, that wasn’t always the case.
“When I got drafted by the Blue Jays out of Duke in 2012, I was pretty upset about it,” Stroman wrote in a post in The Players’ Tribune. “I didn’t want to go to Canada. I didn’t know anything about Toronto. All I knew was that it wasn’t New York, where I’m from. It wasn’t Duke. It was Canada. It was a different country.”
Since making his major league debut two seasons ago, Stroman has fallen in love with the city he now calls home.
“When I got called up in 2014, that’s when I got to truly experience Toronto, and I learned that it’s such a hip and trendy city — very up on the times. Perfect for a young guy like me,” Stroman explained. “It’s a small city in the sense that it’s not overwhelming. I live right downtown, so I’m a five-minute walk from the Rogers Centre or a Raps game or a Leafs game. I’m 10 minutes from the sickest restaurants in the city.”
Stroman recalled a game in 2014 against Max Scherzer and the Detroit Tigers where he gave up two runs in nine innings. The Blue Jays won in extras and even though Stroman didn’t get credit for the victory, that’s the day he says he felt like he belonged in the majors and in the city of Toronto.
“That was the game where I realized, ‘I’m here to stay. I’m here to not only play, but I’m here to dominate.”
Stroman has quickly become one of the faces of the franchise and Blue Jays fans have no difficulty cheering for a player like the energetic starter who wears his heart on his sleeve. Despite tearing his ACL during spring training last year, the 24-year-old returned to the mound with a remarkable recovery in only six months — he even completed his sociology degree at Duke while undergoing rehab — and helped lead the Blue Jays to their first playoff appearance since 1993.
The 2015 season really was a whirlwind for Stroman, the Blue Jays and baseball fans in Toronto. Stroman reminisced about the time last year, prior to Game 1 of the 2015 ALDS against the Texas Rangers, when he and some teammates attended a Toronto Maple Leafs game.
“We had a Blue Jays chant going…in a hockey arena…in Canada. That’s baseball city status,” Stroman said. “But Toronto isn’t just a baseball city. Let’s face it: Hockey is No. 1 in Canada. So Toronto is a hockey city. It’s also a basketball city these days with all the buzz around what Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are doing with the Raps. Then you got Drake, Bieber, The Weeknd — so it’s also a music city. It’s a fashion city. A food city.
“The Leafs show love to the Blue Jays. Drake and the other artists show love to us and the Raps. Nobody’s trying to dominate the city. They just rep The 6ix. And if you also rep The 6ix, they got your back. Nothin’ but love. That’s why Toronto is my favorite city.”
As a player who stands just 5-foot-8, Stroman was dubbed at an early age as too small to make it as a pro, so he developed a “make them eat their words” attitude. Stroman says he uses his naysayers as motivation and is fuelled by any criticism he hears.
“Our team is a lot like that, too,” he added. “We’re very aware of the outside noise that gets attached to our team — that it’s the Red Sox and Yankees’ division, and we just play in it. But the noise doesn’t affect us. It motivates us. We’re just going to do everything in our power to go out there and get a win every day. We’re going to have fun with it. We’re going to let our personality show. We’re going to let our emotions show.
“And if you have a problem with that, you’re going to have to deal with it… I’ll never be the biggest guy on the field. But I’m going to go out every day and compete like I am. And Toronto will never be the biggest city. We’re not New York. We’re not Boston. We’re not Chicago. We’re Toronto. And we’re out to show everybody what that means.”
