‘Buffalo Blue Jays’ Trends After Canada Says ‘No’ to MLB Baseball

Baseball is back this week!  Well…sort of.

The MLB will be returning to some sort of action in the coming days, with a heavily abbreviated schedule, several prominent players absent by choice, and maybe even one less team.

The Blue Jays have been denied approval by the Canadian government to play in Toronto amid the coronavirus pandemic.

An official familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Saturday the federal government has denied the request. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak ahead of the announcement.

Worse still was the fact that the Blue Jays had jumped through a number of other hoops previous to this in order to keep their season plans on track.

The team had been given clearance by city and provincial governments to play regular-season games at Rogers Centre and was awaiting approval from Canada’s federal government.

MLB needed an exemption to a requirement that anyone entering Canada for nonessential reasons must self-isolate for 14 days. The U.S.-Canada border remains closed to nonessential travel until at least Aug. 21.

Allowing games in Toronto would have meant frequent back-and-forth travel to the U.S., where COVID-19 cases are surging. Canada has flattened the epidemic curve.

This briefly has “Buffalo Blue Jays” trending on Twitter, as baseball fans suggested that the team could move to nearby Buffalo, New York and remain exclusively within the United States for the duration of this global pandemic.