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Blue Jays fan from Belfast flies 5,000 kilometres to catch wild-card game

The Toronto Blue Jays may be Canada's baseball team, but it can also count a man from Belfast — who flew thousands of kilometres to watch Tuesday's all-important wild-card game at the Rogers Centre — as one of its die-hard fans.

BBC sportscaster 'fell in love with the Blue Jays' when he lived in Toronto in 1995

Justin Li · CBC News ·
Blue Jays fan Colin Murray, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, works as a sports presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live. (CBC)

The Toronto Blue Jays may be Canada's baseball team, but it can also count a man from Belfast, Northern Ireland — who flew thousands of kilometres to watch Tuesday's all-important wild-card game at the Rogers Centre — as one of its die-hard fans.

Colin Murray said he's on the first leg of his 10,000-kilometre round trip from the U.K. to Toronto to see his Jays take on the Baltimore Orioles.

"I lived here in 1995," he told CBC News outside of the Rogers Centre. "Fell in love with the Blue Jays, had nearly two decades of nothing."

Murray said he usually takes two or three trips a year and catches about nine games a season. But Tuesday's tilt was his first round trip for just one game.

"Even when we weren't doing well, to come and see [Roy] Halladay pitch, back in the day to see... Vernon Wells, there's been so many memories," he said. "You're not a fan just to win, right? You're a fan because you're a fan."

"I've had great moments, but nothing like the last two seasons."

Murray admits that baseball does not have much of a profile across the pond. (CBC)

'Grown men in pajamas playing rounders​'

Murray currently lives in London, England, where he works as a sports presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live.

He admits that baseball does not have much of a profile across the pond.

"We cover a bit of baseball, not a huge amount," Murray said. 

"The problem with Britain is that we have one national baseball diamond that opened recently just outside London. There's nowhere really to play baseball," he added, noting the U.K. even has an ice hockey league that does quite well.

Murray said a lot of people in the U.K. see baseball as just "grown men in pajamas playing rounders," and that fellow fans are hard to come by.

"It's quite a lonely existence. There's a couple of Jays fans in Belfast, literally," he said.

"For me, [baseball is] the greatest sport on Earth."

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