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A pleasant surprise awaited French-speaking baseball fans recently. More specifically, those of the Toronto Blue Jays. In an extraordinary marketing coup, the Toronto team paid tribute to the club's French-language broadcast.
If you haven't seen it yet, in a series of short videos, the highlights of the Blue Jays' most recent playoff run were highlighted against the backdrop of the voices of the Blue Jays' official French-speaking commentators, those of TVA Sports.
You can hear Denis Casavant, François Paquet, and Karl Gélinas shouting themselves hoarse as they describe the finest moments of October 2025. Ordinarily, we would also have heard the voice of Rodger Brulotte, but he was absent for health reasons. Our heartfelt thoughts are with him.
Like a Trey Yesavage fastball, nobody saw this one coming, and it's undeniably a stroke of genius.
French baseball
Hats off to the Blue Jays for this initiative. Because yes, the Toronto Blue Jays are Canada's team, and Canada is an officially bilingual country. Thank you to them for recognizing and valuing a fan base that, while a minority, is very much present to support their favorites. Whether directly at the Rogers Centre or on the various platforms, including PassionMLB. This base doesn't just come from Quebec. It also extends to the other nine provinces and three territories. There are francophones all over this country, and they've been greeted with this delicate attention.
What's more, what's great about all this is that it's not just Canadians who follow the activities of the Canadian team on the various social networking platforms. There are people from the United States and many other countries around the world. The latter have been introduced to the French-speaking terms of baseball, a vocabulary invented by people from here, from Quebec, where none existed in the past. It was Québécois, Jacques Doucet for the most part, who created words and expressions such as home run, butterfly ball, and candle to describe the magnificent sport of baseball. It's a fitting tribute to Quebec's baseball pioneers. It's a tribute to the French-speaking world.
When we think of baseball in the language of Molière, we think of the Montreal Expos. We think of Jackie Robinson's career with the Royals. We think of Éric Gagné. We even think of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s home run in a preseason game at Olympic Stadium. It's been a long time since French and baseball walked together, but hand in hand. Thanks again to the Jays for bringing back all these fond memories, and long live baseball in French, which is beautifully described and analyzed, Toronto Blue Jays or otherwise.
This content was created with the help of AI.
